I was interviewed this afternoon by BBC SE with regard to expansion of grammar schools and the new £50m growth fund, for which applications are due in tomorrow, to be broadcast this evening.

A previous article I wrote in January sets out clearly the expansion in numbers of grammar school places since 2012, without the use of any such incentive. It is expected that some half dozen Kent grammar schools out of the total of 162 will have applied, and I considered these in a subsequent article in May following the announcement of the growth fund. Time will tell how these fare. 

I was also on KMTV, the online TV station earlier this month talking about two other subjects,

Just before the end of term, three Gravesham primary schools, Kings Farm, Lawn and Whitehill, took over Community Square, the central space outside the Civic Centre, on a Saturday afternoon to present the Gravesham Festival of Mathematics, as part of a sponsorship by The Goldsmiths’ Company of London.

The event was designed to enlighten the local community about mathematics in schools, with children explaining their activities to visitors and engaging them in mathematical games and competitions, following a Mathematics week in each of the three schools. 

The three pupils who shared the Goldsmiths Award for Excellence in Maths have been rewarded with a visit to Oxford to take in a tour of the University followed by a maths workshop run by current students and staff at the University. They will be accompanied by ‘bright disadvantaged’ peers across the three schools.

Kent County Council has sent its annual letter to out of county families registered for the Kent Test for admission to grammar schools in September, as many are not familiar with the Kent scheme. This year it warns them that because of ever increasing numbers, the Council is unable to offer all candidates a Test Centre in the West or Centre of the county, as they are having difficulty finding schools willing to host them. As a result, some may have to travel to East Kent (Canterbury or Thanet) to take the test, in order to meet demand. The letter goes on to provide sensible and objective advice to these families, including noting that large numbers never turn up, costing time, money and resources.

This has produced a torrent of negative comment on the 11 Plus Exams Forum website for Kent, predominantly from just one contributor, one of the few who actually lives in Kent. Even though the Forum is dominated by out of county (ooc) families, many acknowledge and support the points being made by KCC, although others pursue the familiar and false lines that are so misleading. 

One of my major concerns about this Forum section is that I am regularly contacted by Kent families who have been misled into thinking that the views expressed are widely held across the county. On the contrary, they predominantly come from a small atypical group wanting to maintain maximum access to Kent grammar schools for children right across London, at the expense of local children.

Update Friday: Holcombe Grammar School has written to the 12 families whose sons were denied places on the waiting list by Medway Council, and invited them to join the list. This is explained in a further article published today (Friday 20th July).    

Over a month on from the Holcombe Grammar school appeals, and two days from the end of the school year, distressed families whose sons were found of selective ability by the Holcombe Appeal Panel are still waiting to learn if they are to be placed on the waiting list. This follows eight months of worry leading up to the appeal process. I have worked with many families in the past waiting and planning for school admission appeals, and know the enormous stress this places on them, as they believe their child's future depends on their performance at appeal. This extra and unnecessary dragging out of the decision, with the mistakes, misinformation  and  confusion that surround it, can only pile the pressure on.  

The mystery of why and how Holcombe Grammar misrepresented Medway Test scores in its case to the Appeal Panel is no clearer in spite of an FOI by me asking these two questions, and an Internal Review into the process whose outcome also fails to answer the questions, itself offering a response that is clearly untrue. Along the line the school has put in writing repeated demonstrable falsehoods, as explained below, most of which it has not even acknowledged. I now have copies of the appeal notes of a number of the appeal cases that confirm the parental version of events, proving the school’s versions in its role as Admission Authority are false. 

I look at two of the central issues below, events up to this point having been explored in two previous articles, most recently here. 

Elias Achilleos, the founder and until recently, CEO of the financially mismanaged SchoolsCompany Trust, responsible for SchoolsCompany Goodwin Academy in Deal and three PRUs in Devon, has at last resigned, on 18^th May (my thanks to a subscriber to this website for informing me). My previous article sets out the background to this debacle.

All the other Directors with responsibility for the Trust as it plunged into deficit taking Goodwin Academy with it, had previously departed along with the salaries most drew from the Trust, and it is now run by a team put in by the Regional Schools Commissioner.

Hartsdown Academy’s recent OFSTED Report records that the school ‘Requires Improvement’ which, before publication I would have thought generous, because of factors I have identified in previous articles.

However, the Report focuses on the other side of the picture, with some very positive aspects, including: ‘the school’s work to promote pupils’ personal development and welfare is outstanding. It has always been a strong part of the school’s work and continues to be essential to support pupils and respond to issues within the local community’.

Its main praise is reserved for Matthew Tate, the headteacher, who: ‘is transforming the school, having been in post for two years. He continues to steer its future path in the right direction with resolute energy and determination’. I am delighted to learn this, although still critical of some of the methods he uses and casualties created to achieve this outcome, as explained in my article on ‘Tough Love Academies’.

The biggest anomaly comes in the fall from Ofsted ‘Good’’ in March 2014, to the current rating, the headline then being ‘As a result of good teaching, students’ standards are broadly average at the end of Year 11. This represents good achievement from low starting points’ , the school described being not far off Outstanding.

Update 5th June: To no-ones surprise (surely), Tina Lee, currently Interim Principal, having been at the school for three years has been named as the new permanent Principal of Isle of Sheppey Academy. Whilst I genuinely wish her well with this poisoned chalice the academy surely needs, and the Trust was surely looking for an external candidate 'someone with a strong track record of outstanding leadership' with, as a priority in the next two years: 'Ensure the Academy is well placed to secure a judgement which is at least good and ideally Outstanding at its next Ofsted inspection'. I am afraid in salary terms offering up to £100,000 was never going to attract such a candidate to the second largest, split site, most troubled school in the county.  

Update 28 April: Several updates to the article below in blue. Mr John Cavadino, Principal of Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey Academy (OAIS), has left his post at short notice after just over 18 difficult months in post.

Update 1 July: At least one MP appreciates what is going on in his constituency and is taking action. He has taken this up with the Schools Minister. Now there is an idea Mr Henderson! 

Ihave written several articles about the mismanagement of the school over this time, and indeed during the time of his predecessor, one of which The scandal of Oasis Academy Isle of Sheppey, written last summer, explores most of the issues. 

Note: Some data updated

A study by two researchers at the London Institute of Education has discovered some unsurprising facts about tutoring for grammar school places across the country.

For me, the most important one is that taking school achievement at the end of Key State One into account, children are 20% more likely to be found selective if they have been tutored than not. Actually, I am surprised by this one as I would have thought it higher than this, as explained below.

They also come up with the slightly bizarre proposal to tax tutors and use the funds raised to provide vouchers to assist lower income families to purchase tutoring, an idea that has gained much media coverage. I consider this counterproductive, unworkable nonsense, as also explained below.

The research has received considerable media attention including two interventions by me on BBC SE and Meridian TV. Interestingly the BBC has rapidly dropped the item from its website! 

However, the headline is that children living in prosperous areas and who receive tutoring are far more likely to be offered a grammar school place than those living in deprived areas without tutoring, but who may not have chosen to apply for grammar school. 

I suspect that school teachers, who are employees of schools or Academy Trusts aren’t usually in the business of tax avoidance. As a result the following, relating to one of the highest paid leaders of a Kent Academy Trust in the county, caught my eye.

The leader in question has arranged his contributions to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme to be paid in blocks of five months in the scheme, then withdraw for five months, then renew, the pattern to be replicated indefinitely. I am not privy to the rationale for this, but the tax consultant who advised senior leaders of the trust, at cost to the Trust itself, clearly considers this advantageous.

Whilst he is assured this is legal, as to the moral use of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme in a way it is clearly not intended, I leave it to others to judge.

I also wonder how the teachers in the Trust view his actions. Teachers in state schools in England have been subject to a cap on annual pay increases, initially of 0% and then 1%, which has been in place since 2010. There are no tax reduction arrangements for those on the front line, as the gap between their salaries and those of their leaders gets ever wider year on year, as my previous article shows. This manipulation of tax schemes not available to the classroom teacher,  increases the gap even more.

 Hartsdown Academy has featured in national and local media after it placed the following job advertisement

Excerpt from Original Hartsdown Job Advert in the Guardian (rapidly replaced but still on the Internet)

The advert continues with such selling points as: ‘Margate is on the margins of English society, both culturally and economically – as well as geographically’. As one of Kent’s three ‘Tough Love Academies’, it is difficult to match ‘Hartsdown is a beautifully inclusive school and I am immensely proud of the care the school takes over every single child’ from the advert, with the robust disciplinary action on minor infringements that has attracted bad publicity ever since the headteacher was appointed. This has made the school so unpopular with families, leading to the second lowest proportion of first preferences for admission at any school in the county, and the highest number of children abandoning the school for Elective Home Education. 

One wonders how the headteacher would describe the remainder of the school’s teaching, which provides by some way the lowest examination performance in Kent across the board. Is science really so much worse than the other subjects? Perhaps instead of condemning his teachers as indeed he has publicly condemned many pupils and their families coming from possibly the most deprived District in Kent, he should reflect and try a different approach.

I have published 72 news items on this website in 2017, almost exclusively about education issues in Kent and Medway. This article has been somewhat delayed as other matters have intervened. The website continues to be unique in the country, offering a fully independent take on state education matters in the two Local Authorities. 

In total there have been 106,810 different browsers on the site, making up a total of 168,222 visitors. The most popular item attracted 26,823 visitors countrywide and sparked off a national news story which changed attitudes in schools across England. You will find links to the ten most popular stories below, featuring four major scandals, five articles reporting on admission and Test data, and one with a family connection. I have 958 subscribers who have linked by email and, although I find it difficult to comprehend, 10,790 subscribers by RSS, the vast majority based in England, further details below.

Since the website was reorganised into its current format in 2010, the most popular pages have been predominantly from the Information Section, accessed to the right hand side of this article, headed by Kent Grammar School Applications with 294,251 hits. It is followed by Kent Secondary School Admissions with 139,240 hits, both being updated on an annual basis. These are followed by a listing of Kent Special Schools and Units which, until a few years ago, wasthe only comprehensive source of such information but now, like too many other pages, in need of updating. 

More details on all these matters, and others, below. A number of the items covered in last year’s Review also continue to be headlined.

Update: No Kent grammar schools were successful in the 2019 Round for grammar school expansions. 

A Freedom of Information Request to the Department for Education has discovered that three grammar schools have made enquiries about opening possible annexes in the past year, one of which is the mixed Barton Court Grammar in Canterbury.

With the new Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds signalling his ‘enthusiastic’ support for grammar and faith school expansion, this now looks very much on the agenda.

I have followed the Barton Court proposals closely and commented on them for some years,  proposals which date back to the 1980’s when KCC planned to move the whole school to the coast. A satellite provision in Herne Bay was proposed in 2013, followed by a proposal to shift the whole school, which was dropped in the face of opposition by parents.

In the case of Faith Schools, the proposition is to remove the current requirement to remove the 50% maximum bar on faith children being removed. The Roman Catholic Church is currently refusing to sponsor new Free Schools whilst it is in place and it may be that Mr Hinds, a Catholic himself, has a different take on the consequent issues. 

Note: This article has been revised because of updated data. 

The BBC has published an analysis of grammar school pupil numbers, that seeks to show the proportion of pupils in grammar schools rising whilst overall secondary numbers in areas with grammar schools have fallen, linking this to ‘parental power’.

This may be true nationally, but a closer analysis of Kent figures shows a different picture, with the number of Year 7 children admitted to all Kent mainstream schools rising by 12.0% between 2012 and 2017, and the number of Year 7 grammar admissions up by 11.7%. Over the same period the proportion of children of compulsory school age in Kent grammar schools has increased by 1.4% to 31.7%. The number of grammar school places officially provided increased by 6.3%, although many schools took in above their Planned Admission Number as a deliberate policy or after admission appeals. 

Whilst there were 31.7% of Year 7 children in Kent schools attending grammars in October 2017 (school census), against a target of 25% and up slightly from 30.3% in 2012, this increase over the target has little to do with the operation of the Kent selection process, that delivered 25.4% of the cohort for entry in September 2017, as explained in my analysis of Kent Test results. 

There are four specific reasons for this increase as explained below, and I am sure there are rational local circumstances behind many of the other expansions featured in the BBC article. 

Patrick Leeson, Corporate Director of KCC’s Education and Children Services Directorate, retired from his post at the end of November. He has been succeeded in a revised role by Matt Dunckley CBE, who has become Corporate Director Children, Young People and Education.

What follows is a brief look at Mr Leeson’s time with KCC, together with a summary of the background of Mr Dunckley.....