Beccles Free School: Rob Cawley the "not so independent adjudicator" appointed Principal

Rob Cawley

The Beccles and Bungay Journal report today that Rob Cawley has been appointed by the Seckford Foundation as Principal Designate of Saxmundham and Beccles Free Schools (later this will include Stoke by Nayland and Ixworth if they are approved too).

Readers of this Blog may remember that I wrote an article speculating that he might apply for the post back in early March. Rob Cawley chaired the Beccles Free school consultation meeting in Hungate on 27th January the EDP reported that:

"The meeting was led by independent adjudicator Rob Cawley, who was appointed by Cambridge Education, the team employed by the Department for Education to see if the bid is viable" (my emphasis)

It is clear that is is how he was introduced to the meeting from another eye witness account available on Wikisuffolk.

In fact Cambridge Education are project managers working for the Seckford Foundation but paid for by the DfE and and employed Rob Cawley, a former Suffolk headteacher who works for another consultancy Leading Schools to lead consultation meetings.

Cambridge Education project managed the Norwich Free School and are understood to be likely to project manage the Beccles and Saxmundham bids if they are approved. They also handled the recruitment of the Principal (and are handing the two Headteacher posts as well).

Rob Cawley was until last year Executive Headteacher of both Deben and Orwell High Schools in Felixstowe. When the schools merged to form Felixstowe Academy, sponsored by AET, Cawley did not stay. The Evening Star reported that:

We would have been delighted if Mr Cawley would have accepted the post but he has chosen not to be part of the academy. This is a very private matter for Mr Cawley. It is his choice not to stay and I cannot discuss it.

It was widely understood at the time that Cawley did not want to work for an academy chain and since that time he has been working for educational consultancy Leading Schools as a Senior Associate. Leading Schools website disappeared a few weeks ago and was replaced with this holding page:

Meanwhile there have been reports that Cawley and other members of Leading Schools have been involved in the proposal for a Felixstowe free school, ironically on a site closing because of the creation of a single site Felixstowe Academy. A project led for much of its life by Cawley himself.

Felixtowe is a town of around 30,000 is considerably larger than Beccles and what is curious is that during his time there Rob Cawley was advancing exactly the opposite policy that the Seckford Foundation are in Beccles. He was proposing that in a town three times the size that the two high schools were merged together to form "one school". 

In fact you can see two videos of Rob Cawley on Felixstowe TV talking with great passion about these plans and also re-assuring parents that the size of the proposed school was not an issue comparing it to Farlingaye High in Woodbridge and also explaining that a "school within a school" system would make it seem smaller for the children. 

Video from Felixstowe TV

Seckford have constantly stated the small size of their proposed schools as a major advantage and that the Ixworth Free School proposers have constantly complained that Thurston Community College will be "too big" despite operating almost exactly the same school within a school (House) system advanced by Cawley.

Video from Felixstowe TV

Indeed Rob Cawley also appears, bizarrely, to agree with the Head of Sir John Leman High about the impact that another school could bring. He is reported in the January 2011 edition of the Felixstowe Flyer as saying:

Cawley is of course right "the more students there are, the more money comes in and the more courses we can run. The reverse means that the more students study elsewhere, the less money we have and the less courses and opportunities we can provide". Such, as Headteacher Jeremey Rowe has pointed out, is what is likely to happen at Sir John Leman School in Beccles if the Free School goes ahead.

Talking to Stradbroke WI about Social Networking

Stradbroke WI Table Cloth

Last night my wife Claire and I gave a presentation to the Stradbroke Women's Institute (WI) about social networking. I had described this earlier on Facebook and Twitter as "possibly the most terrifying speaking engagement of my life" although Claire had pointed out that I had never taught five year olds! Which is true.

As you will not be surprised to hear I had never attended a meeting of the WI before so I guess this was another Suffolk village "rite of passage", a bit like joining the Parish Council and finding yourself talking about peacocks and milking sheds.

I found the meeting interesting. Starting with singing the hymn Jerusalem and moving onto cake and a lot of talk about trips and then more talk about cake you might think this is Middle England personified but the WI have a little bid more of an edge to them than just that. We heard from one member about the success of a previous WI campaign to get more research money to study disease amongst bees which is a really important issue in sustainability.

WI campaigners lobbying parliament speaking up for libraries

And this is the second time this year that this Blog has featured the WI, I published this photo (which I got from Twitter) of the WI's participation in the "lobby" of parliament to speak up against library closures. In 2000 Tony Blair was famously heckled by WI members at their conference which would have surprised nobody who had lived in a small village with an active WI!

But far from heckling us the 25 or so members present were very welcoming, friendly and asked interesting questions. It interested me that all but three had computers and Internet connections and their Secretary talked about skyping a relative earlier in the day in a matter of fact way. Indeed three members were on Facebook and this WI was pretty typical of the demography you might imagine.

Here are the slides from the presentation we gave:

Social Networking for Stradbroke WI

 View more PowerPoint from James Hargrave

I don't think that all of the members are going to rush off and get on Facebook and Twitter tomorrow but they seemed interested in knowing more about the services and a few members expressed an interest in blogging and putting more content on the Stradbroke website.

Coffee Cake!

We received some requests to provide some "hands-on" help doing this kind of thing. Having broadband now in the Community Centre - which is something the Parish Council have paid for made this session possible and will mean that we can consider running some drop-in sessions.

Indeed longer term this kind of thing could happen in the Court House as plans for the Library and Courthouse hopefully become a reality. With computers there we could enjoy coffee (and cake) whilst putting content onto the web!

I took the opportunity to upload a few photos onto Instagram from the meeting and a picture of the lovely coffee cake that we bought there. One thing the WI do brilliantly is cake and I approve strongly!

I have joined the Green Party to make a difference

Sometime ago I wrote a blog post explaining why I had left the Liberal Democrat party. For me the straw that broke the camel's back was their failure to act to stop the Conservatives damaging and ideological education policies.

As someone generally on the left of centre politically my natural "home" might seem to be the Labour party and I do have a lot of respect for many Labour party members. But Labour's failure to even challenge on education and its continuing belief in the discredited neoliberal economic polices has convinced me that that would not be the right choice.

I should say these are the policies of the leadership. I know many local Labour supporters do not go along with this and I wish them good luck in convincing their party to change their position. The same is true of Liberal Democrats and in Suffolk we should be particularly grateful for the small number of Lib Dems on the County Council who have "punched above their weight" and succeeded in providing effective challenge and opposition - together with Labour and the Greens - despite being vastly outnumbered by Conservatives.

Nationally and locally a broad coalition of the centre and left is the only alternative I can see to Conservative hegemony.

Of course I could stay like almost everyone a non-party member. Until recently that has been my position but I feel that there is too much going on I feel the need to challenge because of the damage being caused to local communities and particularly to children.

I feel that the Green Party offers a genuinely different choice and not just different flavours of neo-liberalism. I agree most with its policies and so I have decided to join and stand up for what I believe in.

Now we don't have local elections this year in Suffolk but the County Council elections are looming in May 2013 which will be a chance for people in Suffolk to choose something different. A council that doesn't cut or privatise all of our local services - selling off care homes, stopping rural bus services, closing waste depots and trying to shut local libraries.

The Greens in London have produced this excellent video for their local election campaign there focussing on children who don't have votes so seem to be completely ignored by almost all politicians. Decisions about schools seem to be made to suit adults rather than children be they politicians or, even, parents. In Suffolk the County Council removed the discount travel scheme for children without even consulting them and with no regard for the impact of the decision on them, their education and their well being.

As the video says, children can't vote but you can! The video is well worth watching.

I look forward to campaigning for a different approach to local and national politics. The three main parties seem to have the same policies on so many issues and many people end up effectively disenfranchised as a result. In any event I don't think the tribalism of politics helps to produce the right solutions to society's problems.

There are people in all of the mainstream parties that I have time for and think should be listened to. For example there is much our local Conservative MP Dan Poulter does that I support.

I know many people still think the Green Party is all about recycling and environmental issues. Of course these issues are important but the Party is about much more and offers a real alternative approach to economic and social issues.

Read more about the Green Party
Read more about Mid Suffolk Greens

Yes, I read the comments under a Telegraph education article...

As the Easter conference season ends one thing is clear. Teachers and their unions are not happy. I lost count of the number of threats to go on strike, particularly from the NUT. I can understand and share quite a bit of this anger. It is clear to me that the Government are imposing ideological educational policies on schools with little or no evidence that they will improve education.

Only yesterday the LSE academic Stephen Machin wrote in the Guardian that the Government were effectively mis-using his research to back their academies programme. He says:

Under the new programme, it is not only secondary schools that can convert – primaries can, too. So drawing comparisons with the Labour academies is simply not comparing like with like. 

Nevertheless, our research has been widely cited in policy circles and in the media, usually as evidence for the success of the coalition's academies programme. Sometimes it is said that our research refers only to the Labour academies; more often this goes unstated. And unfortunately, our evidence on Labour academies has frequently been marshalled in support of the new academies programme, usually (though not always) without offering the caveat that the new academies are rather different. 

We do not yet have robust, academically rigorous evidence on the coalition academies. For one thing, it is very early days, and as research on US charter schools also shows, time needs to pass before it is possible to evaluate their impact in a meaningful way. 

It may be, in due course, that these new academies do deliver performance improvements. But we know nothing of this yet, and translating the evidence from the old programme over to the new, without appropriate reservations about whether the findings can be generalised, is, at the moment, a step too far.

So the Government's plans to force over 200 primary schools to become academies - which at Downhills in London is opposed by 90% of parents, all the teachers and the Governing Body (before Gove sacked them) is taking place with no evidence at all that it will produce any improvements.

However an opinion piece in the Telegraph tonight takes a quite different view suggesting the NUT and the other teaching unions are showing their "true colours":

In truth the teaching unions have done us a great service at their recent conferences by revealing just how reactionary and self-serving their agenda is. We don’t need to dwell on the fact that the NUT conference is heavily attended by the Socialist Workers Party, which speaks for a tiny handful of voters on the extreme Left who want to change the government via a workers’ revolution rather than a democratic election. We can pass over the fact that NUT delegates once forced David Blunkett, then Labour education secretary, to take refuge in a room for 30 minutes after he committed the heinous crime (in their eyes) of condemning teachers’ strikes and promising to sack bad teachers and shut failing schools. These things scarcely matter, when compared to their actual demands in regard to education and their own privileges.

I can't say this surprises me. There are certainly some extreme members of the NUT who make a lot of noise and speeches and to some extent this is playing into the Government's hands.  It is easier now for Gove and others to suggest that it is the unions that are being unreasonable. Trots. Enemies of promise. Ideological. Call them what you will.

But read under the article and it gets a lot more frightening. Scores of comments where teachers are referred to in extremely derogatory ways by Telegraph readers. Take this as an example:

Do as Regan did when the ATC went on strike....Draw up a ready reserve of teacher's from the recently retired and personell from industry. Avoid the teacher training colleges at all costs as they are a hotbed of the lunatic left. Instruct the intelligence services to draw up a hit list of SWP /RCP and the political allegence of other known manevolent teachers currently employed in the profession, then wait for the strike to begin.
Fire the above immediately... As in day one of the strike and make sure you drop as many on the first pass as possible and make damn sure it numbers in the thousands. Delete the bad apples from the barrel and the rest should fall in line pretty damn quick.

And these:

Surely we should line them up against a wall and shoot them as well, no? 

No... Ammunition is expensive and they arn't worth the cost of the rounds.... Besides who am i to deny macdonalds the opportunity to recruit new burger flippers.

And the inevitable:

Those who can do, those who can't teach. 

They want to try life in the real world beyond their little gates and they'd be in for one almighty shock.

I am not quite sure I go anywhere that seems more like the "real world" than my youngest son's primary school classroom. Certainly it is more "real" than most workplaces...

Others speak of the "gold plated pensions" they assume teachers get with a mixture of anger and envy. Now I know Telegraph commentators are probably as unrepresentative of most people as the more vocal NUT reps are of all teachers but this shows that many people are going to believe that it is teachers that are unreasonable.

But what really gets me is the complete and utter lack of any respect for teachers by these commentators. Doubtless the same people that lament the lack of discipline in schools and the fact children don't do what teachers tell them. Whey should they? I am sure many of these people are parents and perhaps pick the Telegraph up and say these kind of things in front of their children....

It maybe that what the Government really wants is the unions to call strikes and then "defeat" them. I hope not. The last thing any of us need is even more disruption to children's education. As I blogged before it is our children that will be the collateral damage.

But it doesn't have to be like this. Just have a read of this description of the education system in Finland. A country that outperforms us on the international league tables the Government is so keen to talk about. 

Q: How does your country measure school success and hold schools accountable for educating students effectively? 

Finland is not very inspired of measuring education but we take educational assessment very seriously. This is perhaps because our definition of school success is very different compared to how success is understood in the United States or in much of the world. Successful school in Finland is one that is able to help all children to learn and fulfill their aspirations, both academic and non-academic. Many educators in Finland think that measuring of what matters in school is difficult, if not impossible. That’s why assessment of and in Finnish schools is first and foremost a responsibility of teachers and principal in school. They are reporting to parents and authorities how successful their school is in achieving commonly set goals. By this definition, school success is a subjective thing that varies from one school to another. 

We don’t use term ‘accountability’ when we talk about what schools are expected to do in Finland. Instead, we expect that teachers and principals are responsible collectively for making all children successful in school. There is a big difference between social responsibility for all children’s learning in school and holding each teacher accountable for their own pupils’ achievement through data from standardized tests. External reviewers of Finnish education have repeatedly recognized this difference between Finnish schools and American schools, for example. Shared responsibility has created strong mutual trust within Finnish education system that is one frequently mentioned success factor of Finnish education. As a result, we don’t need external standardized tests, teacher evaluation or inspection to assure high quality.

You can read the rest on Pasi Sahlberg's excellent Blog. What a world of difference. I am not suggesting we can just adopt the Finnish approach just like that but it shows that education doesn't have to be about competition, testing, inspection and pitched battles between politicians. Teachers need to be trusted and valued. Until we do so, I don't think we can be surprised that many are angry and fed up.

Perhaps this is some kind of an anglo-saxon disease, this piece from America today is also well worth a read. Talking about education in America Diane Ravitch says:

What has happened in the past two years? Let's see: Race to the Top promoted the idea that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students; "Waiting for 'Superman'" portrayed teachers as the singular cause of low student test scores; many states, including Wisconsin, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio have passed anti-teacher legislation, reducing or eliminating teachers' rights to due process and their right to bargain collectively; the Obama administration insists that schools can be "turned around" by firing some or all of the staff. These events have combined to produce a rising tide of public hostility to educators, as well as the unfounded beliefs that schools alone can end poverty and can produce 100 percent proficiency and 100 percent graduation rates if only "failing schools" are closed, "bad" educators are dismissed, and "effective" teachers get bonuses.

Is it any wonder that teachers and principals are demoralized?

Sound familiar? To be honest we have better teachers than we deserve given the level of abuse they have to put up with. And I mean abuse from adults not children.

NUT Case Study on Beccles Free School

Earlier today I published a post entitled Teaching Unions declare war on "poster boy" Gove where I quoted from a case study of free schools produced by the National Union of Teachers. This referred to a more detailed case stud that the NUT have produced specifically on Free School.

I am grateful to the NUT for allowing me to publish the case study in full below:
Beccles NUT Case Study - Beccles Free School

Teaching Unions declare war on "poster boy" Gove

Chris Keates from the NASUWT with a cardboard
cut out of Michael Gove (photo BBC News)

Michael Gove is seen by many as the "poster boy" of the coalition. In the right wing press he is lauded for his "success" in taking on the "educational establishment" in particular the teaching unions.

However Chris Keates, the General Secretary of the NASUWT delivered her conference keynote stood next to a cardboard cutout of Michael Gove who she described as "the "poster boy" for building support for teachers' unions". She claimed he was responsible for "soaring" recruitment to the union. There were no speakers this year from either the Conservatives or Lib Dems.

Meanwhile the other large teaching union the NUT opened an attack on no less than three fronts starting with an attack on free schools claiming they they are wasting millions of pounds and having a negative impact on good and outstanding local schools.

The Beccles Free School case, much covered on this Blog, is cited as one of the examples in a case study available for download on the NUT website.

The case study reports on the Beccles case:

Beccles Free School plans to utilise the site of a middle school which is closing as part of the re-organisation of the Suffolk schools system. Opponents say it could jeopardise the future of a recently converted and highly-rated academy, Sir John Leman High School in Beccles. Jeremy Rowe, the Head Teacher at Sir John Leman has labelled the proposed free school a ‘disaster’ stating that: “You can’t invent children, there is a given number who go to school in Beccles. We remain full and the new school is empty or both are half empty. Either one is a waste of public money”. He believes the free school cost his school £1 million, or 15 per cent of his budget. A consultation meeting on the free school proposal held on 27 January also saw criticism from local residents. One parent described the plans as a ‘shabby compromise’ whilst another said that students at the school would be ‘guinea pigs’. There has been widespread cross-party opposition to the free school including from the local Conservative MP and Leader of Suffolk County Council.

UPDATE - the full NUT case study on Beccles Free School is now available on my Blog

In fact the NUT are consulting lawyers as a result of the failure of the DfE to - wait for it - comply with a freedom of information request. Again. This time they have refused to supply the assessment they did on the impact the 24 existing free schools would have on other local schools as they are required to do under the Academies Act. Christine Blower the NUT General Secretary said:

The NUT is obtaining Counsel’s opinion on submitting an appeal to the Information Commissioner over the refusal of the Secretary of State for Education to disclose under the Freedom of Information Act copies of the statutory impact assessments that the Secretary of State is required to make when he considers whether or not to approve the opening of free schools. 

The Union is not convinced that the Secretary of State has applied the law correctly when considering the impact of these new free schools on existing local schools. 

The Union’s research shows that many of the Free Schools already opened, and those due to open later this year, will have a negative impact on existing local schools.

In many cases the Government is allowing Free Schools to open regardless of the concerns raised by local authorities, heads, governors and parents.

The NUT also passed a resolution considering non-cooperation with Ofsted inspections in a move that could see inspectors told to leave classrooms by teachers.

Meanwhile all the 22 teacher at Downhills Primary school, which Gove has forced to become an academy, who are all NUT members have are all claimed to be in favour of strike action. The union is pledging to pay members who strike and to call "discontinuous" strikes if a ballot is successful.

I have no doubt the right wing press will portray the unions as "extremist" or "trots" and as is always the case the conference delegates are the more vocal members of the profession. But there is clear concern and in fact anger right across the teaching profession about the Government's education policies and not just from the "usual suspects".

Gove might well be able to succeed using his friends in the press in giving the impression that these are union extremists that need taking on and defeating. But this isn't the miners strike and unless Gove has a stockpile of teachers somewhere he risks our children's education becoming the collateral damage in a war it will eventually be clear he started.

Michael Gove, however, does look on target to succeed in doing something nobody has ever done before. Getting the fragmented teaching unions to work together.

Making a Lego iPhone Dock!

Some time ago one of my sons made me a lego dock for my phone using instructions he found on You Tube. I got a new iPhone 4S recently but the dock didn't work so well. As it is Lego, no problem! So I set about modifying the dock.

With a bit of help from my two youngest children and from a few pictures and in particular this guide I found on the Internet I managed to modify the dock into a charging dock for my iPhone.

You can see a few pictures below of the old dock and of the new one:

Happy Easter everyone!