Academies - the creeping privatisation of British schooling and its many failure
9 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/may/02/well-make-badly-behaved-pupils-repeat-a-year-say-academies
An academy chain has been criticised for saying it will hold pupils back a year if they break school behaviour rules.
Outwood Grange Academy Trust (Ogat), which runs 31 schools across the north of England and the East Midlands, has previously been criticised for its high exclusion rate and for putting pupils in isolation for long periods of time.
Last year a former pupil took legal action against the trust after he spent up to 35 days in isolation. The action was dropped when the trust said it would consider the points raised by lawyers in a planned review of its behaviour policy.
In the new policy, published on Wednesday, Ogat said: “Students who do not show, over time, good behaviour, attitude and effort in their lessons, will not graduate at the end of Year 8 [aged 12 to 13] and may subsequently remain in Year 8 until improvements are made.”
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said the threat of failing a year was too tough a sanction and was unlikely to resolve the underlying causes of bad behaviour. “Separating a student from their friends and peers could cause more challenges for the child,” she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/03/isolation-of-children-at-academies-prompts-legal-action
A woman whose daughter tried to kill herself while in an isolation booth at an academy school is to take legal action against the government.
The child, who cannot be named, has autistic spectrum disorder and mental health problems, but was put in an isolation booth by her school in Kent for more than a month.
Prior to the intervention of lawyers in mid-March, she had spent every day since mid-January in isolation, meaning she had to remain silent throughout the day and had no directed teaching.
Lawyers from the firm Simpson Millar are now taking action against the Department for Education (DfE) on behalf of the girl and a boy at another academy in Nottinghamshire for failing to review its guidance to schools about the use of isolation. The schools cannot be named for fear of identifying the children.
In a pre-action letter seen by the Guardian, lawyers said extended time in isolation had had a significant impact on the girl. “It has caused her depression. It also led to her taking an overdose while in the isolation room itself,” they said. “Following pre-action correspondence from us, [the school] has removed her from isolation.”
The unregulated use of isolation booths – spaces in which children sit in silence for hours as punishment for breaking school rules – has been criticised in recent months.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/16/outwood-grange-academy-trust-accused-assemblies-intimidate-students-discipline
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/15/53000-pupils-in-limbo-after-rise-in-zombie-academy-schools
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/22/tough-lessons-from-academy-schools
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/28/accidental-activists-essex-parents-fight-academy-trusts-takeover-of-school
Outwood Grange.
What a fucking shit place that was.
Even before this Academy group nonsense.
I was part of the last year group at Outwood Grange proper before they formed their stupid Academy Group.
Staying on a year in Sixth form, I saw the first year that their Year 7-11 students had to wear a blazer, not a soul liked wearing them.
They did jack shit about years of bullying that has fucked me up mentally, leaving me with trust issues.
My old secondary school failed its Ofsted inspection the year I finished (2013) and got put under special measures, then got taken over by Outwood and converted into one of its academies. A friend of mine who was in sixth form when it happened said it was a load of shite, they just implemented blazers, forced sixth formers to wear uniforms, reduced break times and got really strict with students. I know a few former teaching assistants from the school who didn't agree with the direction it took. Before, it had a reasonably decent unit for students with autism and other special needs but that got thrown out the window when Outwood got involved. It's been in local news here and here a few times.
Yep, that's Outwood for you.
Quarter hour for a morning break and half an hour for lunch.
I'll make the guess they adopted the Consequence-System or whatever they called it.
You'd get C numbers as you interrupted the class (or if you were just seen whispering to someone next to you)
C1,2 and 3 were your first warnings.
Getting to C4, you would be sent to immediate isolation in a nearby classroom for the rest of the class hour and same day after-school detention. Some teachers would give you an immediate C4 for coming into class late without an excuse. (which was very regular because they would lock toilets almost completely at random during the day so you had to run all over creation to find one that was open, also getting into trouble for wandering the halls instead of being outside during break)
Being an issue during your C4 would give you a C5, Isolation for the rest of the day in a dedicated "Isolation room" where the desks were almost literal cells with Office cubicle dividers between them.
Getting to C6, you would be sent home for the day.
There's an Outwood in the village I live in. It's a disgusting shitheap. It's been in the news over and over and people talk about it like it's a prison. The students despise the place.
Sadly this is seeming like an example of good intentions manifesting into failure. Calling it privatisation is a bit misleading though, as it brings up parallels with for-profit schools when they are non-profit charitable trusts. What I don't get why Outwood Grange Academy Trust is running 31 schools, seems to defeat the point of being self-governed when the people governing you are probably miles away.
Looks into Outwood's performance most of the ofsted ratings are outstanding or good, banning mobile phones does seem like an extreme policy so kind see why they get so much hate from that alone.
Normal for Outwood, but sounds like a downgrade from what GordonZombie had before privatisation.
According to my friend who was in sixth form at the time things improved from a learning perspective but at the same time it ground students down. And as you can see they also wind up leaving behind/punishing kids who don't deserve it.
My former secondary school became an academy pretty much as soon as they could, and slowly started getting worse and worse - pushing grades regardless of the consequences. The mental health situation there got to the point where one teacher told me that the levels of stress and anxiety she used to see in people just before their final exams was now apparent in year 7s, and then it just gets worse.
A year after I left, I went back to do some outreach stuff and spoke to another old teacher, who was complaining that her students weren't able to solve the more difficult extension questions she set in the way my class was. We did it by sitting in the common room as a group and discussing it, each providing a part of the solution, and it turns out that they'd banned talking in the common room.
The final fun thing they introduced was that they'd refuse to submit people for exams if they thought their results would be bad, and what a shock, they had better average results. The whole system right now is so geared towards tests and numbers - for my school specifically: getting the B grade rich kids to an A - that they're forgetting that they're bringing up human beings, not certificates.
What the fuck? Why would you ban talking in the common room, I thought that was the point of having one? Idiots coming up with this policy ought to be shot, they're fucking over kids and setting them up for failure/burnout with this stressful approach.
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