School governors’ network Articles

The autumn term approaches and for Michael Gove it will be a difficult first day back. The Building Schools for the Future cancellation turned out to be a fiasco and there’s still uncertainty about whether all capital investment in schools has been stopped.

We’ll hear a great deal about ‘freedom’ in relation to schools over the next few months. ‘Every state school could have the chance to free itself from bureaucratic control,’ says the Tories’ schools spokesman, Michael Gove. At its most extreme we have his notion of ‘free’ schools which are supposed to be founded and run by parents, an idea which I think will unravel even before we get to the election. But at a more general level politicians have been talking about ‘freeing’ schools for a generation and Labour’s academy and trust school proponents have sometimes used similar language.

Secondary schools face a challenge when dealing with violent and difficult students. Disruptive students can affect the learning of their peers and prevent teaching staff from effectively delivering the curriculum, they can also pose a physical and emotional threat to other students if they are involved in bullying or other unacceptable activities in school.

Recent research has shown that, even in Labour’s third term, too few
children from lower socio-economic groups are getting to university.
David Lammy recently made an interesting speech pointing out that low
teachers’ expectations can reinforce this imbalance. He is apparently
frustrated, for example, by certain schools which, when offered the
benefit of induction courses for universities such as Cambridge then
don’t take them up, because they think the children won’t “fit in”. His
comments struck an immediate chord with my own experience as a governor
at an upper school. That is to say, although parental background is the
key factor for underperformance, low expectations from teachers and
even governors can also play a part.