Why Spielman is perfect for the Lords

What do we want in the ideal member of the Lords?

They should bring with them a range of personal and professional experiences, which they can draw upon as they interrogate ministers, contribute to debates and examine legislation. Being able to consider issues from a number of different perspectives means laws that better achieve their aims.

They also need to have serious expertise in the kind of matters that will pass through the Lords. This is more important than ever when the Government has a massive majority in the Commons, too many bills are poorly scrutinised for coherence, and MPs lack understanding in how things will land in the real world.

A Lord should also be independent of mind and temperament in order that they will speak their mind whether or not it will be popular. 

It is for the above reasons and more that I think the former head of Ofsted Amanda Spielman is a superb choice for elevation. I’ve seen myself the impact for the better that she’s had on our education system over the years. Amongst other things, she helped set up one of the best school groups in the country (Ark), at Ofqual transformed for the better our exam system, and then take on the herculean task of running and reforming Ofsted

Whilst she’s been doing this, I’ve worked in and around schools too, first as a maths teacher, then free school founder, Principal, Special Adviser and now Executive Headteacher.

I’ve been through five Ofsteds in my time, three as a Headteacher. Two were before Spielman’s time and one just after, using the reformed framework she’d introduced. The most recent could not have been more different to those before. The inspection was done with, not to, us, by a team of people with real experience and expertise in running schools. Inspectors explored in detail the substance of what was actually taught, to properly check the underlying thinking and impact on students. They wanted to understand the quality of education as well as exam results. It was a real testament to the changes brought in during Spielman’s tenure.

I’ve also seen Amanda up close as she worked with different Education Secretaries. It’s not easy to speak without fear or favour to smart, powerful and important people. Telling folk things that they might not want to hear is hard, but that’s the job of HMCI. It's why all Chief Inspectors finish their term far less popular than when they started it.

(Although interestingly enough, Spielman earned the respect and affection of many on the frontline because she took it upon herself to engage with lots privately. She also enjoyed quietly attending grassroots events to hear directly from teachers about their research or experiences.)

Given her achievements and lengthy service, I believe the tragedy that occured during her final year at Ofsted should not preclude her from making further contributions to public life. Indeed, I think she will be a better Peer because of the experience. If we reach the point that only those without critics or controversy can enter Parliament then we’ll all be the worse for it.

All-too-often people moan about politicians being ignorant, inexperienced or self-serving. Spielman is none of these. I look forward to seeing what she does from the red benches.

Good grief

On the morning of May 1^st, my younger brother Tony died suddenly. This afternoon, under a beautiful spring sky, we buried him. He was 33 and lives on through Lauren and their children Joseph, Anthony, Maria, Elizabeth and Lucia.

A few nights before he passed, I mentioned to a friend how blessed I had been in life to reach my forties without losing anyone close to me in an untimely fashion. Little was I to know what would happen a couple of days later.

I’ve been taken aback at how Tony’s death has hit me. The grief is unlike anything I have experienced before. I’m normally a fan of stoicism, but on this occasion I’m trying not to ignore the feelings that have been unleashed. Instead, I’m attempting to surf the waves of grief that come my way, and embrace the moments where I fall and get temporarily sucked under.

He was such a smashing guy. The memories of him shared by friends and family have been inspiring, hilarious, and heart-breaking in equal measures. It is clear that the teenager voted “Boy of the Year” by his Sixth Form peers went on to be a treasured member of the wider community. Again and again people have mentioned his kindness,  and an ability to form and maintain relations with all sorts of people from all walks of life.

Tony was a man of faith and family. Where I moved away from the religion of our upbringing, he remained a committed Catholic of the most traditional flavour. On all sorts of issues, we held very strong, and very different opinions. This could have been a source of tension or argument, but it never was.

We generally chatted about the usual sort of things – kids, work, childhood memories, our disappointing lawns, and so on. However, when we discussed more provocative topics, he never let things get personal or descend into an argument. In this way and many others, he was one of life’s diplomats. Where others might have pulled back, he forever tried to balance responsibilities and respect, to seek common ground and maintain relationships.

This trait of Tony’s keeps bubbling up in my mind when the grief tries to pull me down. Angry arguments have dominated our country in recent years. We’ve increasingly celebrated division over diplomacy, purity over pragmatism, and cynicism over compassion.

I’ve certainly played my part in this at times. I was already rethinking things these past few months, but Tony dying has brought into focus for me an example of how someone can make a difference in a really positive way. I wish I’d seen it and told him before he died – not that he’d have accepted the compliment if I’d given it, as he was modest to a fault.

Instead I’m left trying to work out how to extract positives from his passing. He was strong of opinion yet had friends from all over, and I’m convinced I can learn from this. And while he is no longer here to bring people together, we are and we can*.

I want some good to come of this grief. Kindness and respect towards others were his hallmark; I’m going to take time to figure how I can make it mine too.

Anthony Keith Lehain
4th July 1986 - 1st May 2020

* He also once forward-rolled for a mile for charity. I’m not sure what we can take from this, but I’m never shy of making tenuous links between things, so anything is possible.

To everything there is a season...

Confession: until I was well into my 20s, I didn't know that the lyrics to The Byrds song "Turn! Turn! Turn!" came from the Bible. When I finally twigged, suddenly there was an additional depth to it all, followed by a feeling of embarrassment that I'd not know this before.

In the same category as this can be placed:

- not knowing that Garibaldi was anything other than a type of biscuit;

- the discovery that the ship Bismark was named after someone quite important; and

- aged 30 realising that "Summer of '69" was not, after all, a song about Bryan Adams growing up in my hometown of Reading. (Don't ask.)

Not just a biscuit, apparently.

Ecclesiastes 3 1-8 has been going around my head quite a bit the last few weeks as I carried out one of my regular "where am I now? what should I do next?" ponderings.

I have been so very lucky. Getting the chance to set up and then lead a new school in one's own town has been even more amazing that I'd ever imagined. Yes, we've all worked incredibly hard as a team along the way - but we have always recognised the role of luck, and of the kindness of others, in our successes.

In just seven years we've managed to go from an idea among a group of teachers to a popular, oversubscribed, high-performing school, and then most recently we've formed a new multi-academy trust ("Advantage Schools") and got the green light to open a second new school in nearby St Neots. And actually it is because of this success that I have decided that now is the time for people to find my successor and for me to move on.

We've been working hard as a new MAT to have a very clear plan as to what we are going to do over the next few years. As a family of schools, we are looking to build upon what both BFS and Elstow School (our primary partner) has achieved to date, and to grow over the next few years. 

We're in a really strong position for someone to come in and lead. We've accumulated decent reserves as a result of careful management since we opened, and have a pretty healthy financial picture over the next few years too. Student numbers are growing at BFS as our local reputation develops, and our partner primary is consistently oversubscribed. Our St Neots Academy project is going to bring something quite special to the families of St Neots in the next year or so. And linked to the above, we will probably have the strongest set of staff to date next academic year, with potential for further development as we continue our move to a knowledge-based curriculum, and the benefits that brings to everyone.

So considering the above, and the next few years for both Advantage Schools and me, I decided that it would be a good time to have someone else come in and oversee the next phase of our journey.

Right from the start I'd always said that when we reached a point where I felt it was right for someone else to take over my baby, I'd happily move aside. This has always been about trying to improve things for local kids. We've made quite a bit of progress in this regard, and soon it will be someone else's privilege to head up our mission.

If you fancy taking over my hotseat or just to find out more about what we've got planned, drop me a line.

Between now and when I move on, I'm sure there'll be a time to weep and a time to laugh. In the meantime I've got some Year 11s to finish off for GCSEs, a curriculum to finalise for September, and the day-to-day lovely, crazy, brilliant, joyful, frustrating, unbelievable things that go with being Principal of my favourite school ever. 

***Bedford Free School to introduce 12 hour school day***

**PRESS RELEASE – EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 ON 01/04/2016**

Bedford Free School in significantly longer school day announcement:

• BFS to be first in country with compulsory 8am – 8pm lessons, Monday to Saturday.
• Changes to be introduced after extensive consultation with current Year 11 students.
• Impact of 72 hour school week to be assessed in partnership with University of Luton.
• School exploring the possibility of compulsory weekly-boarding and 24/7 learning from 2017.

BFS is delighted to announce today that from this September they will be the first school in the country to have lessons from 8am until 8pm, Monday to Saturday.

Principal Mark Lehain said:

“We have always been proud of our longer school day, and for a while now it has felt as though the obvious next step was to extend the school day late into the evening, and the school week into Saturday.”

Before making this momentous decision, extensive consultation with students was conducted. Mark Lehain said:

“Whilst our Year 11 are leaving us in a couple of months and won’t be around to actually experience the 72 hour school week, we decided that being the oldest and most mature students they would be most objective about such a change. I was delighted when they agreed so wholeheartedly with our proposal.”

Louisa Gradgrind, Head Girl, said:

“I only wish that I had been able to benefit from such a long and intense educational experience. My time at BFS has been amazing, but when I think of the hours I’ve wasted in the evenings relaxing and spending time with my family, I shudder to think what learning I have foregone.”

Timothy Cratchit, Head Boy, added:

“It’s not just about extra English and maths - when the Deputy Head Mr Donald pointed out how many extra hours of History that BFS students would enjoy, the penny dropped. Being able to study both Nazi Germany AND Vikings will transform life chances. I was delighted to be able to recommend adoption of the 72-hour school week to the Governors.”

The impact of such a long school week will be assessed in a unique partnership with Prof. Isla O’Daly at the University of Luton. Prof. O’Daly, Emeritus Professor of Feast Days & Holidays at the University’s Cauldwell Campus, explained:

“The short school day is a legacy of Victorian Britain, when today’s students need to be prepared for the jobs of tomorrow – jobs such as cyber-tree surgeons and cake database designers. The 72-hour school week is a brave move by BFS – its impact on student engagement, achievement and sleep patterns will be fascinating to track.”

Initial findings from the research are expected to be available by April 1^st next year. In another innovative move, the additional lessons will be staffed by local volunteer 6^th formers. BFS Chair of Governors Nigel Smythson said:

“We know how powerful peer teaching can be. We also know that school finances are only going to get tighter. Putting these two facts together, asking local teenagers to teach our teenagers for free made sense.”

Looking ahead, BFS are also exploring the possibility of converting the rooftop extension, currently being constructed, into a 500-bed dorm, and introducing compulsory weekly-boarding. Principal Mark Lehain said:

“The brain functions 24/7, 365 days a year – we are looking at how closely we can match the school experience to this. It’s also what Michael Gove would have wanted were he still Education Secretary. This is my tribute to him.”

Pride and Exam Results - lessons from our first set of GCSEs, no 1: "nobody knows nothing"

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a free school head in possession of exam results must be in want of a blog to explain the reasons for their incredible success.

However... this is not one of those posts.

A week on from Results Day, whenever I have talked through everything with people, two points keep pushing their way to the front of my mind:

1) we did alright in the end in terms of attainment (top of the town & second in our LA in terms of 5A*-C inc. E&M), and really well in terms of progress, but I can't stop focusing on those that didn't do as well as we'd hoped (for instance, 9 kids missed out on the "magic 5" by one subject & fewer than 3 marks - that's >10% of our cohort);

2) truthfully, during the long wait for results, we had no idea how we had done; if results had been 67% or 47%, as opposed to 57%, we wouldn't have been completely surprised (although obviously we would have been delighted with the former & heart broken with the latter. * )

Me, discussing forecast
grades with governors

If I'm honest, it's all left me feeling somewhat flat. (I wasn't expecting euphoria - but was hoping for more of a sense of relief than I'm experiencing so far!)

I know that a big part of this is just me being me. I also know that there was the fact that I/we felt under particular pressures as these were our first results, and one of the first for free schools.

But forget my irrelevant feelings. I've made a conscious effort to talk to other Heads this past week, and read as many related articles and blogs elsewhere too, and this seems to be a relatively common response. Anticlimax abounds. Is this really the case amongst Heads and other teachers - or just my reading of things?

Here in Bedford results remained flat compared to last year and undoubtedly too low for anyone's liking - and this certainly wasn't for want of colleagues trying their best to rebound from last year's large falls.

The LA average was 51.9%. Strip out the two big village schools and I calculate the town average to be roughly 44%. I don't know how other schools' outcomes compare to their forecasts, so can't say if this is what was expected.

Anyway, what is the first lesson I'm drawing from our results?

I think it is this: right now I reckon that "nobody knows nothing." With all the changes working their way through English education right now - and I think they are nearly all necessary - the volatility within the system is going to make students' outcomes (and teachers' lives) pretty unpredictable.

There were some amazing results at BFS across a whole bunch of subjects. My school came out on the "right" side of it this time around. But will we next time?

Even with our all-important first set of results out of the way now, seeing what is going on elsewhere hasn't half left me nervous about next summer already!

Whilst we landed roughly where we thought we would this time, and forecast a big jump next year, I'm no longer sure we can say that last bit with any great security. So the nerves I've felt for the past 6 months, which I thought were just a first time freakout, haven't dissipated yet. I think I am going to start the new year as anxious as I finished the last... 


(* = Don't get me wrong - we had an internal forecast of 60%, and a range that we thought we'd be in, but it was massive: when asked by people how we'd do, I'd say "somewhere between 45% and 65%.)

The Free School Final Checklist, point 1: agree your Red Lines.

(This is part of a series of posts looking at the final things to check before opening a new school: http://lehain.blogspot.com/2014/08/opening-free-school-next-week-few-last.html )

Working on the basis that people who had done it before would know far more about things than me, between the start of the Bedford Free School campaign and its eventual opening in September 2012, I made it my business to talk to as many people as possible who had already opened schools themselves.

Two (or more) heads are better than one when setting up a school

So many people were so generous with their time and experiences. Amongst others I spoke to Bruno Reddy & Max Haimendorf of King Solomon Academy, Sarah Counter of Canary Wharf College, Iain Denning (who was starting head at Hazeley in Milton Keynes & is now at Sharnbrook Upper School) and Peter Barnes (Head at Oak Grove in MK)

[Of course I also spoke with Toby Young, whose West London Free School opened in 2011, a year before BFS, and who wrote a great book about it called, of course, How To Set Up A Free School.]

Two things cropped up with every single one of them. The first wasn't a surprise to me: the importance of getting culture right from day one.

What I wasn't expecting - and what I would encourage all people about to open a school to get sorted NOW - was the other point: BEFORE THE SCHOOL OPENS make sure you have agreed with your Governors what your behaviour "red lines" are going to be.

Don't want no blurred lines at your school. (For SO many reasons.)

Every new school will have had to produce its behaviour policy & exclusions policies well in advance (these policies will have been checked during the pre-opening OFSTED inspection). However, it is one thing writing (copying?) and adopting these - it is another thing completely to have to implement them.

The last thing you want in any school - particularly a new school - is for there to be any differences of understanding between the Governors and those running the school when it comes to hard decisions, especially those as important and emotive as exclusions.

So, if you are about to open a school next week and haven't yet done so the most important thing I think you should do is:

1) find some time (somehow!) to meet with the Governors - at the very least those you have lined up to form your Governors' Discipline Committee in the event of any exclusions (and if you somehow haven't agreed who those will be and got them the necessary training, do it IMMEDIATELY)

2) talk through (again) the principles you want the culture and day-to-day behaviour to be based upon

3) more specifically, consider scenarios with more extreme breaches of behaviour & how they expect that they will be dealt with: do they want internal procedures to manage them - when might it have to be a FTE or even a PX? 

What exactly does "zero tolerance"
mean to your governors?

No one wants or expects poor behaviour in their brand new school, and the vast majority of schools won't need to draw upon the more serious aspects of their behaviour/exclusions policies any time soon. 

Having things clear in the minds of you and your governors means you can make things clearer in the minds of your staff and students come opening day - helping to prevent the kind of incidents that would require its use in the first place.


Next up: - Hold on to the Vision: keeping your eye on the ball amidst everything else.

Opening a free school next week? A few last minute things to consider...

It has been a real privilege to be involved with the free school programme right from the go.

I first got involved when I heard about the New Schools Network through a friend & met Rachel Wolf for a coffee to find out more. That would have been early 2009 I think - it's been around 5 and a half years since then and in that time free schools in England have gone from a Policy Exchange idea to Conservative party policy to a reality.



There's been a General Election & the 2010 Academies Act to make them happen, and processes for application and pre-opening set up (and relentlessly retweaked) by the DfE. As I type this 174 schools have opened, with another 156 approved to open in the future.

One of the best aspects of being in the first wave of free schools has been the goodwill and support available to us from so many sources - including, but not limited to, NSN and the DfE. We have been able to see how things evolve over time and to be able to share our experiences with new groups wanting to open their own schools.

Bedford Free School has now been open for two full academic years, and next summer we'll be (I think) the first brand new free school to have a set of GCSE results - 20th August 2015 is very much on all our minds already. (This will be only our third year of operation but Bedford still has lower/middle/upper schools, with transitions between years 4/5 and 8/9, and so we opened with both a year 7 and a year 9).

With around one hundred new free schools due to open in a week or so, I thought it might be worth sharing some of the main things we have learned since opening in September 2012. I don't particularly claim we are experts at anything, and we still have huge amounts to learn as a school - but I think our experiences to date provide some useful examples and pointers for those about to start on the next (and most important) part of their free school journey.

I've been pondering what lessons are most relevant with only a week to go, so I won't be discussing building works (too late now!) or the pre-opening OFSTED (presumably passed long ago).

For ease, I'll break them up into a few posts, and start with those most pertinent to getting off to a smooth start next week. (If there are any experienced free schoolers out there who think I've missed anything, or anyone about to open who wants me to write about something on their mind, get in touch to let me know: mark@lehain.com)

Topics:

- (No) Blurred Lines: things the Head & Governors need to agree before a student crosses the threshold.
- Hold on to the Vision: keeping your eye on the ball amidst everything else.
- Day 1 practicalities: things to have to hand.
- IT and other lesson resources: assume nothing.
- Student & staff records and your MIS: get it right first time.
- Bye bye friends & family: planning for term 1 survival.
- Sept '15: recruiting another intake whilst running a new school.
- Switching from start up to delivery: getting from ideas to implementation.

No ifs, no buts - what we can learn from Outliers & outliers

Like many teachers, a frustration I have is the lack of time (and energy) to read as much as I'd like during term time.

Fortunately, my birthday falls at the start of the summer holidays & I am blessed with friends who buy me great books as presents knowing that it's the one time of the year when I am likely to be able to commit to read them properly. Until I set off on the epic adventure that is setting up and running a free school, summer holidays were a festival of reading.

The Good Book

Summer 2009 one of my reads was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I love pretty much everything he has written. (I finally got around to his latest, David & Goliath, this holiday.)

The way he takes complex concepts and brings them to life through anecdotes, examples and evidence always leaves me wanting more. I love the way he gently but firmly forces his readers to confront counter-intuitive ideas. In Outliers he takes the reader on a journey, exploring what we can learn from exceptional individuals and organisations, climaxing with the tale of KIPP, and a brilliant telling of his own family's story.

It blew my mind, and was the single biggest thing that got me seriously working out how we could improve educational standards where I live. When I returned to work that autumn, I didn't know quite what I wanted to do, but I knew that I would be doing something different the following year.

And 5 years on, here I am at BFS, focused every day on how we can achieve our own outlier status next summer.

Why am I writing about this after results day 2014?

There were many fascinating concepts explored in Outliers that have stuck with me: "accumulative advantage", the 10,000 hours rule, and rice Vs wheat & the link with maths ability, to name but three. The one of most interest to me today though is the idea that by looking at persistent outliers we can nearly always learn something about how we can do things better. 

All too often in life, when we come across someone or something exceptional we revert to "yes... but-ery". We look for reasons why the success of others can be explained away and our own relative failures can be justified:

"Yes, it's great that artist has had such success, but he always had the backing of his family"

"I love what they've achieved, but they had a lucky break"

Since entering teaching in 2002, I have been amazed at how often people dismiss strong performances by others with "yes...but-ery". If students haven't done so well over time when compared with others, we have a whole litany of reasons to hand as to why ours underachieved or theirs did better:

"Yes, but that school has improved the intake of the kids it gets..."

"Yes, but in Bedford we lose loads of bright students to the private schools..."

"Yes, but that school doesn't have as many kids on FSM..."

Outliers suggests we should be doing the exact opposite: rather than dismiss outlandishly good results in individual schools, we should be knocking down their doors to see what they're doing & what (if anything) we can learn from them.

Mr Reddy's Secrets to Success

I was lucky enough to meet Bruno Reddy, one of the founders of King Solomon Academy in 2010. It turns out he grew up in Bedford & he heard we were setting up a new school, so he got in touch and insisted we meet so he could share what KSA had learned so far in their journey.

Clearly they continued to learn lots as yesterday they announced one of the most phenomenal set of GCSE results I've ever seen. Look them up. Amazing.

Yet if you go on Twitter right now and search "King Solomon Academy" or "Perry Beeches" or the name of other super-high performing schools, you will find teachers discussing their amazing results, and all too often it's done with a sense of "yes, but..."

Too much discussion is about whether their success is because they have small year groups/more funding/high attrition rates/sneaky selection etc etc etc - not "OMG, that's AMAZING, I want that for my students, tell me more!?"

And whilst these outliers are, by definition, relatively few and far between, they are starting to grow in number, thus making their success even harder to ignore. Maybe when it was just one school it would be forgivable - but just off the top of my head I can think of KSA, Perry Beeches and Mossbourne as three schools who seem to have bucked historical trends and shown that entire cohorts of kids can achieve.

So well done to Liam Nolan & Team PB, Max/Bruno/Natasha & the KSA crew, and everyone else engaged in the mission of bucking trends and becoming outliers. Thanks for showing us the way ahead & what is possible.

It's now for the rest of us to be humble and listen and learn from them.

(I've already blocked out time in my diary to go and visit. Guys - you teach me how you do it and I'll bring cake, that sound like a deal?)

A reflection on three years of free school policy...

This piece was first published elsewhere last Friday, 6th September...

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Today is the Bedford Free School's first birthday – we have all learned so much

Today marks two very important anniversaries for Bedford Free School. It isn’t only a year to the day since we opened our doors to our first students, it is also exactly three years since our project was on the list of the first 16 free schools approved by Michael Gove.

Last September we opened with two year groups and nearly 200 students, and yesterday we grew to four year groups and just under 400 students. We had a phenomenally successful first year of operation: all 200 places filled, a strong staff body, excellent feedback from students and their families and, perhaps most importantly, incredible academic progress: on average our students made 2 years’ progress in maths and English in just 10 months.

And all of this took place against an extremely hostile local political backdrop and a planning permission dispute that dragged on and on and on, until it was eventually resolved in our favour.

As I reflect upon how the last three years have been, both for free schools in general and my school in particular, a number of key observations jump out at me.

First of all, how much the political controversy around free schools has faded away. I remember clearly the uproar from teaching unions, anti-academies campaigners and others when the policy was announced, and how nasty some of the campaigns run against free school groups in the early days were.

We faced some pretty vindictive campaigning ourselves – and it’s only now with a bit of distance that I appreciate how much that took out of those involved, especially my family.

Most of the people who opposed us did so for genuine, principled reasons – and I have complete respect for them. We are a democracy after all, and education is a legitimate topic for debate. A minority though crossed the line, and I will never forget the pain and distress they caused to those close to me.

On our first morning last year, it felt like there were as many journalists as students outside the school; as we opened for year two yesterday we couldn’t get any press interest in the fact that we’d doubled in size and are doing so well.

And think back to when the latest batch of projects were approved. Very little response, other than from the usual lines from the automatons at the unions. Which leads me on to my second observation.

The reasons used now to oppose free schools have changed. Initially much was made of the dangers of schools being set up that were in charge of their own destiny, outside of council control, and responding to specific local parental demand.

It was telling that the limited sniping with the 2014 free school announcement focused not on whether free schools were a good idea, but whether they were in the right place. This says to me that the argument against academies – and free schools are just brand new academies – has been won, leaving opponents now just to snipe at where they open and the specific types of education they offer.

Which leads to my third observation. There can be no doubt that the setup and support for processing new bids is far smoother and more streamlined than that which we pioneers faced back in 2010. However, there is still debate around where free schools have opened, and where they are allowed to open in the future. In an age of limited government funds this seems completely reasonable.

I am a believer in parental choice, and this can only happen in an environment where there is both a surplus of school places and the ongoing possibility of new entrants coming into an area. Free schools allow this to happen in a very focused, effective and lower-cost fashion (think of the millions that are saved from campaign and project management costs alone as volunteers develop business cases).

Free school sceptics argue that new projects should only be approved in areas with a shortage of places. I understand their reasons for this – I would just plead that we don’t lose sight of what is, I believe, the most powerful argument for the policy bar none: its impact on innovation and standards.

I am confident that as time passes and the number of free schools grows, we will see an innovation effect, both within the new schools and existing schools, as they have to start responding more to parents’ demands. For the same reason it should also lead to a greater focus on standards.

However, this can only happen if free schools can open anywhere that parents – and not politicians – desire them.

A final thought occurs to me as a write this: what would happen to free schools under a different government? On a personal level, having been through all we have to set up an independent state school, I don’t really want to end up the Principal of a council-controlled school in September 2015. I am watching policy developments across the political spectrum with great interest.

So in three years free schools have come a long way – the policy and supporting procedures have grown up! The declining interest from sceptics and the press is a symptom of the successes so far. The hard work of providing outstanding education to all the students in these schools – and working with surrounding schools to support and learn from them too – is what really matters now, and that is what all free schoolers now have to focus on.

I want to believe...

Having committed the last three-and-a-half years of my life working to open and run a new school in my town of Bedford, I'm clearly going to be a keen observer of the main political parties' approach to school reform now and into the future.

Me, hard at work at my office desk.

I am regularly asked by parents and colleagues what I think will happen to our school if there is a change of government in 2015. I have had more than one set of parents tell me that they will change a lifetime's habit and never vote Labour or Lib Dem again, after the local parties collaborated to try to prevent us from opening last autumn.

So it was with keen interest that I have been reading all the briefing going on around Stephen Twigg's announcements on Labour education policy, where he tried to clarify what a Labour government would do if it came to power. 

In this post I am going to just focus on one key part of the speech - where he announced the "end" of free schools and their replacement with "parent Academies". He said:

"Labour’s vision for creating new schools is... Where priority is given to setting up new schools where they are needed most, particularly in areas with a shortage of places."

I'm really concerned by this: how does one actually define where new schools are needed most?

Basic need for school places? Not good enough. Surplus places may exist because parents may feel that they are not appropriate or of sufficient quality for their children. This was certainly a key driver behind the support for Bedford Free School.

And if we place a "basic need" requirement for new schools then existing schools fearing a new rival could easily collude to create "spare" places by raising their PANs (Published Admissions Numbers), and so keep alternative and innovative providers out of their area. Don't believe me? It would happen.

So do we only open schools where Local Authorities want them? This is an even worse idea. If LAs have a say in whether or not parent Academies went ahead, as has been briefed elsewhere, then we are back to the days of managed-supply, when councils controlled the provision of school places.

We had that until 2010 and this led to a class-divided school system, with the poorest stuck in failing schools propped up by councils, and a shortage of places across the country.




I have always argued that, aside from their freedom to innovate, the most important aspect of the free school policy is that even where they don't yet exist, they could... and that this alone could be enough to keep existing schools on their toes and be even more attentive to the needs of the children they serve.

After all, if they don't keep their communities happy, then they will find a new school opening up on their doorstep. (In our case, quite literally: our school is on the doorstep of the Council's HQ.)

A final point: Academies without free schools would be a big mistake.

You know how we all grumble about the higher energy prices we face these days? A big part of this is because after privatisation successive governments allowed lots of smaller energy companies to be bought, up and down the supply chain, and they increased regulation on the remaining firms, preventing new entrants, removing competition, and allowing the market to be carved out between the big players.

Well, if we remove free schools from the mix, then we would face once more a situation where empires could be carved out between existing schools and Academy chains.

Free schools in the final analysis are about creating a sector where new providers can emerge if the needs of children aren't met. They provide a safety valve on our school system that hasn't existed before. Tony Blair knew this. Lord Adonis, architect of New Labour's original Academy programme knows this. I want to believe that Stephen Twigg & the rest of Labour know this too - they fiddle with free schools at their peril.

Couldn't resist checking another area...

...and it seems that my gut was correct: the NUT claim about school places in Central Bedfordshire was based on them not understanding the classification of middle schools. 

The data actually shows that, without additional capacity, both the primary and secondary age ranges will end up with a shortage of places.

A spreadsheet with the numbers can be found here - if I have made any errors, please let me know in the comments below.

A couple of charts to sum it up are here:

  

Don't get me wrong - there is a legitimate debate to be had about where free schools go and on what basis the DfE should approve them. But if the NUT are going to make a contribution to this important policy discussion then I feel that it's important that they check their facts before wading in. Assuming I've got the numbers right, then they didn't do that on this occasion.

Lies, damned lies, and NUT statistics

I'm a maths teacher and always tell my students that, if nothing else, I want them to learn how to understand data and statistics, so they can hold those in power to account.

It really annoys me when people misuse numbers to try and pull the wool over people's eyes for political or other purposes. It takes the public for mugs, assuming that they will hear the headline and be too busy to drill down into the facts underlying the statement.

Two key checks...

In particular, when teaching students about handling statistics, I try to get them into the habit of carrying out two checks before they do any number crunching:

1) how reliable is the data they are using? And if it's data someone else has collected, what exactly have they measured - is it actually what you think they have measured?

2) what kind of answer might they expect, and what would be unexpected/an anomaly? If you think about this before you have any potential answers, hopefully you'll spot any errors or dodgy underlying data.

A quiet bank holiday weekend...

The other day my ears pricked up then when I heard - amongst the usual sorts of statements made by the NUT during its annual conference - a mention of free schools being set up in areas where there a big surplus of school places is already being forecast.

Suffolk, Central Bedfordshire and Bedford - where I live and where my free school is - were singled out as being particularly bad in this regard.

For Bedford, they said that:

"the local authority is projected to have a 38.2% shortfall in primary places by 2016/17 yet the Bedford Free School – a secondary that opened in September 2012 despite opposition from the local authority – will add to the projected 25.4% surplus in secondary place provision by 2016/17." (1)

My gut instinct was that these figures were totally wrong, for a number of reasons.

First of all, what kind of local authority would allow that kind of shortage to occur in primary without doing something about it? 

Secondly, when we were planning our free school, we used Local Authority and Department for Education data to forecast the number of students of secondary school age out into the future. Our calculations showed a small surplus of places now falling over time as the primary "bulge" worked through the system.

Finally, the three areas that they claimed were most out of kilter are all places that have a mainly 3-tier school system (with lower, middle and upper schools, rather than primary and secondary schools). This made me wonder if they were getting confused by the fact that for DfE categorising purposes, most middle schools (which educate students from years 5-8) are deemed to be secondary schools, even though they cover 2 years of primary education.

Data hunting

It being the Easter holidays, I've had a bit more time on my hands to follow up my instinct that the NUT researcher tasked to produce some "facts" for a press release had been sloppy (or worse).

An hour of hunting down data and playing about with a spreadsheet later, what did I find? (2)

The NUT stats for Bedford were totally wrong.

Why? They had made a simple but fundamental error, and one which they should have spotted if they'd stopped to check their “findings” when their % surpluses and deficits came out so large.

For the demand for school places, they had correctly taken the forecast number of students for the primary & secondary age range (R-6 and 7-13), but for supply they had:

• only taken lower school capacity  to be the supply of primary places (which only covers years R-4, so giving a figure too low), and

• taken middle and upper school capacity to be the supply of secondary school places (which cover years 5 - 13, and so giving a figure too big).

And what do we find when we use the data in the correct way?

A totally different picture in 2016/17:

• over the primary age range, a 2% deficit rather than the 38% the NUT claimed, and

• over the secondary age range, a 2% surplus rather than the 24% they came up with. (3)

Conclusion...

Not quite so shocking, is it?

If anything, the trend would tend to support MORE free schools in the area, to maintain a decent surplus of places and allow some parental choice - not what the NUT were claiming. 

I haven't yet looked at the same data for Central Bedfordshire & Suffolk, the other areas where the NUT reckon there are "massive" surpluses of secondary school places, but I would bet that they've made the same mistake

If this were a project submitted to me by a student of mine what feedback would I give them..? I'll let you decide...

Notes:

(1) The NUT press release can be seen here: http://www.teachers.org.uk/node/17931

(2) All data is from here: http://www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/datasets/a00219162/school-capacity-2011-12  and my spreadsheet with calculations in is here .  

(3) The trends over time show how a rising population will lead to a tightening in the places available:

• in lower schools a current surplus of places falling to zero in 2016/17
• in middle schools a small current surplus turning into a 7% shortage
• in upper schools the current small surplus is virtually unchanged.

If you look at the same data from a "primary/secondary" perspective (sharing out middle school capacity between lower and upper schools) you get the same sort of thing:

• over the primary age range a current 8% surplus falling to a 2% shortage 
• over the secondary age range a current 5% surplus falling to a 2% surplus.

[NB: There are some significant changes planned for Bedford's schools - some lowers becoming primaries, some middles closing, some uppers becoming secondary, some totally new primaries opening - but these weren't taken into consideration in their calculations, and anyway are largely neutral in their effect on places.]