The Education Secretary also wants more checks on how teachers perform in a bid to weed out any who are not up to the job. He said: “A headteacher should be able to observe a teacher whenever he or she wants to in order to keep standards up. You have regular supervision to make sure teachers are constantly improving.” Parents also come under the spotlight with teams of troubleshooters targeting 120,000 of the most troubled families.
Mr Gove warned: “If you don’t ensure your child is in school we can take you to court, where you can be fined and your benefits can be docked.
“You’ve had a system in the past where some of the fines haven’t been enforced, where some fines have been reduced to take account of the cigarette consumption or satellite TV subscriptions of families.
“We need to change how the courts and how the system operate to send a consistent message that if your children are going to succeed they need to be in school and nothing is more important than this.”

As the Chief Executive of the Independent Association of Preparatory Schools (IAPS) says, The Prime Minister is ‘wrong’ to suggest that independent schools have a ‘duty’ to sponsor academies. “The sponsoring of academies is an entirely laudable role for any independent school which has sufficient resources and will not compromise their commitment to fee-paying parents”, he told Attain magazine this week. “But the Prime Minister is wrong to suggest that our schools have a ‘duty’ to sponsor academies. It is well beyond the capacity of most independent schools to be a sole sponsor. More fundamentally, those who can will simply scratch the surface of the problem the Government seeks to solve.”

Hanson’s comments follow pressure from the Government for independent schools to become lead sponsors of academies. There is growing concern amongst Heads that the Government needs to move beyond the headline-grabbing ‘quick fix’ of persuading a tiny minority of rich and financially well-endowed schools to create academies. Instead, they should be encouraging strong partnerships between state and independent schools.

“I believe that all our schools have a moral imperative to share best practice and establish lasting and meaningful partnerships with local state schools”, suggests David Hanson. “The potential benefits of greater partnership are legion. Academy sponsorship however is sadly beyond the reach of all but a few schools.”

A highly successful partnership scheme is the Dorchester Area Schools Partnership (DASP). The main objective is to work together to assist all the DASP schools to improve academic results for all their children. For the independent prep school involved – Sunninghill Preparatory School – the additional benefits have included access to expert advice, INSET support, and the sharing of best practice with state-sector colleagues. The financial benefits have been considerable thanks to joint buying power across the partnership: Sunninghill saved £20,000 in IT costs in the first year and are aiming to save 10%-15% in utilities costs each year.

Sunninghill’s Headmaster, Andrew Roberts-Wray, comments: “There has to be a better and less patronising way to develop academies and improve education provision across the country. As increasing numbers of state schools are converting to academy status, many state school heads are having to make business management decisions that they are not used to making. I find that by working in partnership we are learning a great deal from our state school colleagues and they are interested in our broader approach to education, but that together we all able to offer a better provision for all the children in our local area. This does not mean that our staff or those of our State school partners are being taken away from caring for their own pupils.”

“As well as the academic, behaviour support and financial incentives, the most important benefit for my school is that all the pupils gain enormously from the opportunities of working alongside their state school peers on science, maths, humanities, sport, music and enrichment activities.”

Andrew Roberts Wray

A third of parents are so unhappy with their child’s school they would advise other families not to send their children there, new figures from Ofsted have revealed.
Thousands of parents who have rated their schools on a new website run by the schools watchdog have raised concerns about teaching, behaviour, bullying and levels of homework. An initial analysis of results shows that just under a third of families with children at the 650 primary and secondary schools with sufficient responses to give results said they would not recommend their school to others. This rose to half for schools with a poor Ofsted rating. More than 9,300 parents have filled in the online anonymous questionnaire since the school inspectorate launched the “Parent View” rating website in October. Results are published if the school has received more than three responses. It is designed to give families more power to raise concerns about schools and can, with other indicators, trigger a snap inspection. Parents’ views will also be passed to inspectors carrying out routine visits.
Jean Humphrys, Ofsted education director, said: “It is very useful to parents when they are choosing schools. Parents very often go by word of mouth. They like to go by other peoples’ experiences so it will help them in that respect. “It also helps people who are unsure about whether what they are experiencing at the school is a one-off event that is happening to their child or whether it is more common. “As the results build it will be possible for parents to get a good view about what other families are thinking and feeling about the school. “Schools will also be able to look instantly at the areas that parents are very happy with and where they may have concerns.”
Minster School in Nottingham, which is rated “outstanding” by Ofsted has received 107 responses from parents so far. While many were positive, nearly one in five parents disagreed with the statement that their child made good progress at the school and 23 per cent did not think pupils received appropriate homework. A similar proportion said the school did not respond well to concerns raised by parents. More than 80 per cent of parents said they would recommend the school to others. More than a quarter of parents disagreed with the statement that their child was taught well at Hanson School, a secondary in Bradford, which has received 69 responses. More than half of parents said they would recommend the school.
An Ofsted spokesman said: “Slightly over two thirds of parents have answered that they would recommend their school. If you look only at the responses for schools which are inadequate you still see close to half of parents saying they would recommend their child’s school.”

Supply teachers campaign group as carried out research, which revealed that it is becoming rare for teachers to cover PPA time in primary schools, that is 2 ½ hours per week that a child is possibly not being taught by a teacher or 2 ½ hours of non-education time. We have evidence of a school, which admitted that unqualified staff taught last year 60 hours of lessons (around 10% of lessons) permanently every week. We say this is wrong, not just because it impacts on us in terms of income, but because we say that education matters and the future of the young people matters. England and Wales are the unique in that they how people without any teacher training to teach, even Uganda, a third world country does not allow people without teaching qualifications to teach.

We ask the ‘Parent Outloud’ group to ask your child’s school ‘who is teaching my child in their lessons today’ and campaign with us to restore teachers to the classroom.

Please click on the video below to see this show.

Please click on the video below to see this show.