David Hughes, vice-chair of Park View Academy Trust - statement

"Here is the full statement from David Hughes, the vice chair of Park View academy trust. He stressed that he was not a Muslim himself, but a practising Christian."

NOW HERE IS THE GOVERNOR'S STATEMENT

"I have been a governor at Park View school for 17 years and I'm immensely proud of what's been achieved here and what's been done, and very distressed about what happening to undo that work ...

On behalf of staff, students and parents who have worked so hard improve their schools, we are extremely disappointed to confirm that Ofsted has graded Park View, Golden Hillocks and Nansen schools as inadequate and put them into special measures.

We support the role of Ofsted in holding schools to account in a fair and transparent way, but we wholeheartedly dispute the validity of these gradings.

Park View, Golden Hillocks and Nansen are categorically not inadequate schools.

Our Ofsted inspections were ordered in a climate of suspicion created by the hoax Trojan letter and by the anonymous, unproven allegations about our schools in the media. Ofsted inspectors came to our schools looking for extremism, looking for segregation, looking for proof that our children have religion forced upon them as part of an Islamic plot. The Ofsted reports find asbsolutely no evidence of this because this is categorically not what is happening at our schools.

Our schools do not tolerate or promote extremism of any kind. We have made a major commitment to raising all students' awareness of extremism. People who know and have worked with our schools are appalled at the way we have been misrepresented.

Our schools serve some of the most disadvantaged communities in Britain. In spite of this, 75% of students at Park View achieved at least five good GCSEs last year, including in English and maths. This makes it the best school of its type in England. Golden Hillocks and Nansen are on course to get the best results ever. Quite simply, this is because we believe our role is to break the links between demographics, deprivation and destiny.

We refuse to let our students' backgrounds limit what they can achieve, and who they can become.

The speed and the ferocity with which Park View school in particular has been condemned is truly shocking. Park View school has helped transform the lives of local families by realising their hope and ambition for educational success. School communities at Park View, Golden Hillocks and Nansen that have worked hard to turn round failing schools are being condemned when they should be being celebrated.

The problem here is not extremism or segregation or religious indoctrination, all the things that Ofsted looked for but failed to find in our schools. The problem here is the knee-jerk actions of some politicians that have undermined the great work that we do here and undermined community cohesion across Birmingham and across many of our cities. They have put Muslim children from these communities at substantial risk of not being accepted as equal, legitimate and valued members of British society, and they have allowed suspicion to be cast on the aspiration of their parents and anyone else who believes that these children deserve the same rights and excellent standard of education as any other child.

And it is important you know we will now be challenging all these reports through the appropriate legal channels."

Politicians try to herd us into their version of 'us'

One of the complicated things about governments targeting minorities is that on the surface it is about 'the other'. It's about what's wrong with 'the other'. 'The other' is a bin into which a set of objections are put. These objections are always 'common sense' as with Farage saying that this or that is 'natural'. He says he finds it problematic that people on a train are talking in a foreign language - even though his wife seems to talk to their children in a foreign language! But of course he was trying to hit a button, 'the other' is doing 'other-ish' sorts of things and 'we' all agree, don't 'we'? When we discover that in other circumstances he tolerates people 'talking foreign' we realise that his objection is empty, it has no meaning. What he really means to do with the statement is define his version of 'we' and 'us'. He is putting his arm round an imaginary 'us' and defining it as 'we who don't like foreigners, eh?' This is much more important than any 'content' to the objection itself.

This is what's happening with the Birmingham schools. The 'other' has been defined as 'Muslim' and Gove et al are trying to recruit non-Muslims to an 'us'. Because these are politicians, they are hoping that this act of saying there is a 'we' who are against this Muslim stuff, this 'we' will also vote for them, thanking them for defining 'us' like that. They hope that we won't read what the governors and teachers are saying. They just hope that they will be able to create a big enough 'we' to be glad that 'we' have got a Tory Party to fight for 'us' and our 'right' to be different from the Muslim 'them'. 

Today's statements by David Hughes and others in and around the schools is a big snag for them. They have said they are not Muslims but clearly are saying that they are in a 'we' or 'us' with Muslims. This is very awkward for the government. Not impossible to overcome. They will vilify and sneer. They will recruit willing servants to 'express anxieties' about the 'them'. And above all they will be highly selective in their objections. That is to say, that many of their objections to what they say that Muslims say and do, can be found in other institutions with Christian and Jewish emphasis. For example, some Academies are not 'faith' schools but have e.g. a 'Christian ethos'. 

I am an atheist. I am in favour of all schools being secular. For the time being, this battle has been lost. In the meantime, any attempt to single one religion out from the others as specially problematic, needs to be looked at very carefully. Is any kind of selectivity going on? Gove et al appear to have undergone some kind of conversion in relation to these schools: one year they are stunningly brilliant and should expand…a couple of years later they are failing schools….Is the approaching General Election a factor? Are we about to be flung into a great bog of politicians trying to herd people into their version of 'us'?

Hurrah for mortgages, say the zero-hour contract workers (re-write)

Hurrah for mortgages, say the zero-hour contract workers.

You want a house?
You want a mortgage?
You want to get on the first rung of the housing ladder?
You want to be part of the property-owning democracy?
Are you happy that this is what the government is doing for you?

Yes - hurrah for mortgages, say the zero-hour contract workers,
and thanks to you,
there are now many more of us
on zero-hour contracts.

Jolly good, they say back to the zero-hour contract workers,
thanks to you not having a mortgage
you won't be "sub-prime"
you won't trigger a crash

Hurrah for mortgages anyway, say the zero-hour contract workers
we love our property-owning democracy
even though we're not property-owning.
We love spending most of what we earn
so we can't save to buy our way into
the property-owning democracy

And thank you, David Cameron
for telling us on the Today Programme
of your "thrill"
that day you walked through the door
of your first flat
knowing that it was yours.

Everyone on zero-hour contracts
cheered
when you said that…

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.

Poem for Tony Benn Memorial Event June 5 2014

Poem for Tony Benn Memorial Event, Camden Town Hall, June 5 2014


Mme Le Pen,

la raison pourquoi
on a donné une étoile jaune
à l'oncle et à la tante de mon père

la raison pourquoi
on a demandé qu'ils devaient attacher
une affiche disante 'Entreprise juive'
à leur étal de marché

la raison pourquoi
ils ont fuit leur asile
dans la rue Mellaise à Niort

la raison pourquoi
ils se sont réfugiés à Nice

la raison pourquoi
on les a arrêtés et on les a transportés
à Paris, à Drancy, à Auschwitz et a leurs morts

est parce que
les officiers de Vichy
ont fait un 'Fichier juif' des juifs étrangers
et l'a donné aux Nazis au moment exacte
que la Résistance a dit bienvenu aux juifs
bienvenu aux étrangers

et c'est ça, la raison pourquoi
je vous dis ces choses
Mme Le Pen.

Mme Le Pen

the reason why
they gave a yellow star
to my father's uncle and aunt

the reason why
they told them they had to fix a sign
saying 'Jewish Business' on their market stall

the reason why
they fled from their refuge in the rue Mellaise
in Niort

the reason why
they took refuge in Nice

the reason why
they were arrested and transported
to Paris, to Drancy, to Auschwitz and to their death

is because the officials of Vichy
made a 'Jewish File' of foreign Jews
and gave it to the Nazis
at the exact moment
that the Resistance was welcoming
Jews and was welcoming foreigners

and that's the reason why
I am telling you these things
Mme Le Pen.

Is 'decoding' the same as 'reading'?

I've mentioned something in the past which I've called 'phonics drift'. This is really just a gag to describe what I think some exponents of phonics do.



So, phonics exponents will say that phonics teaches children to 'decode'. Children learn the 'alphabetic code' through phonics. If this is all they said, there might be some argument but not a lot. We might say, for example that phonics won't necessarily teach all children the alphabetic code. We might say that because English isn't absolutely 'regular' that phonics alone won't teach you to access the 'true' sound of every word. We might say that because there are big variations in the way that people speak (accent and dialect) that making a particular sound match a particular letter is not always simple. We might say that some children will get the alphabetic code in other ways or including other ways. As a result of these things we might say that phonics doesn't solve all the problems there are for all children in all circumstances. However, at the heart of the statement, 'phonics teaches children to decode' holds good in many circumstances.




But then it emerges that what phonics people want to really say is that 'phonics teaches children to read'. Now this is another matter altogether.




So, going back to 'decoding': the way in which phonics people test whether people can decode is to set decoding tests. The only way they know how to do that is to ask people to say words out loud. So, really the statement, 'phonics teaches children to decode' is really only ever known by saying 'phonics teaches children to say words out loud'. As we all know - and indeed as the Phonics Screening Check shows - we can say out loud words that have no common shared meanings - the so-called nonsense meanings. (Incidentally, as with Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' even nonsense words have 'connotations' and we will have great fun giving nonsense words meanings derived from words or parts of words that they sound like.)




Now, the key question I'm posing here though is whether 'saying words out loud' is the same as 'reading'?




When pushed, most of the phonics exponents I've met will say, no, reading does imply 'understanding' and 'decoding' is not the same as 'understanding' . So, the question that some of us ask, is how do we get from 'decoding' to 'reading with understanding'? Do all children do that simply be learning how to 'decode' - that is, by doing phonics?



Here is how one phonics exponent puts it (as posted up on my twitter account earlier today:




"By learning to 'decode', you can match words to ideas and knowledge through reading."


Yes, it's possible, 'you can'. On the other hand 'you might not'. Or, 'you might not be able to'. Or 'you might find it difficult'. Or, 'sometimes you might be able to and other times you might not be able to'. And so on.


Why should that be?


Because the 'sound of words' (i.e. what you have 'decoded') is not the same as the 'meaning of words'. And, 'the meaning of words' is not the same as 'language'. In other words you can 'decode' a word without knowing its meaning, so decoding it will not by magic release its meaning. Something else will have to have happened in your life for the meaning to be apparent.


What's more,  'text' - passages of writing - cannot simply be described as 'words'. Passages of writing are made up of very complex arrangements. The words are held together by grammar and they can come in more or less complex sequences, with all kinds of add-ons, interruptions, time-changes, allusions, idioms. Again this is not revealed through 'decoding'. This is only revealed by exposure to the meaning of such passages of writing. 

(I would plead with anyone interested in any of this to compare a full transcription of people talking with a passage of writing.)

There is a big difference between 'varieties of spoken language' and 'varieties of written language'. The two spheres - spoken and written - often use different tactics, different methods. To take one example: much of what I've written in this blog today, is written in a way that I wouldn't usually speak. It is written in 'written-ese'. Part of learning to 'read with understanding' is 'getting' how 'written-ese' works.


One of the ways we 'get' meaning from 'written-ese' is through a great deal of exposure to 'written-ese' and the most pleasurable way of doing this is through hearing and sharing books and comics and written stuff that is fun for the particular age group trying to 'get' it.


Now let's go back to what the phonics exponent said:


" By learning to 'decode', you can match words to ideas and knowledge through reading."

No mention here of getting to what she calls 'ideas and knowledge' through a lot of exposure to 'written-ese'. Quite the opposite - she  is suggesting that you get to 'reading' through learning to 'decode'. So she has got to 'reading' through - and only through - 'decoding'. 

This is what I mean by 'phonics drift'. 

She has downgraded or eliminated the need for a good deal of exposure to 'written-ese' - whether through the ear  (as with reading to children) or through 'sharing' where a child will both hear and follow the text on the page - which any parent sharing a book with a child will end up doing at least  some of the time. Either the child or the adult will notice or point out words. 

In this way of 'reading' - clearly, there is a mix of 

hearing the sounds of words 

hearing the sound of 'written-ese', 

seeing the sentences, 

seeing the words, 

seeing the letters, 

and getting the meaning. 

It's all mixed up.

In the discussion I had with this phonics exponent, she repeated the position that this mixing up is NOT what happens. She claimed that it's a sequence: decoding first, meaning later. But millions of people have learned to read without it being 'first decoding, meaning later'. We've learned to do both. 

Now, another phonics exponent came on to my twitter account to denounce this very process. She said that it 'confused' children because it gave them different 'cues' in order to read. 

This is the theory of 'first, fast and only'. According to this theory, the point at which your child is learning to read, you should not do any other methods of reading other than decoding (teaching children how to 'say words out loud') through systematic, synthetic phonics. If you play with magnet letters on the fridge, stop it. If you read 'Where the Wild Things Are' and you point to the word 'another' as you turn over the page - don't. If you look at a picture and back at a word and let the child say the word because they've linked it to the picture, don't. 

Just finished - a book about education

I have just finished the first draft of a book primarily for parents called 'Good Ideas' - on ideas to do with thinking, talking, writing, playing, doing and looking. 

It's not about 'education' in the sense of schooling, but it's all about education in the sense of...er....education. 

It'll be out in September. 

I see that the Sunday Times is calling it a 'rival' to Gove. 

Not really.

Oradour and the vote for Le Pen

In Oradour-sur-Glane, site of one of the worst Nazi atrocities during the war (over 600 civilians massacred in one afternoon with no apparent motive other than reprisals against the whole region's resistance to occupation and the advance of an SS regiment towards the Normandy landings) - Marine Le Pen's Front National scored over 20% of the vote. 

That means she has successfully detached the party from fascism and Nazism and Vichy-ism. She has done this by making out that she is fighting for France. She has done the classic thing of alternating between saying the enemy is the 'other' (immigrants etc) and the 'big guys' (in this case the EU). The truth is that of course fascism is not against the big guys. It makes a historical marriage between fascists and the big guys...or put it the other way round: the big guys make a historical compromise with the fascists.