BRIGHT SCHOOL CHILDREN TAKE BACK SAET TO 'SOCIAL MISFITS'

[Daanyeer]

"The more disruptive the child is the more attention it receives and the more benefits,"

Bright schoolchildren take back seat to 'social misfits', says head teacher

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... acher.html


State schools are being forced to prioritise "social misfits" at the expense of the majority of pupils, according to a former academy head teacher.

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor
Last Updated: 12:44PM GMT 12 Mar 2009


The most disruptive children are being plied with "indulgence and sentimentality" instead of firm discipline, it was claimed.

Steve Patriarca blamed Gordon Brown's decision to create a new "Orwellian" Government department with dual responsibility for schools and social services.


It meant education for the most able often came second best to the needs of problem pupils, he said.

The comments will come as a huge embarrassment to the Government.

Mr Patriarca led fee-paying William Hulme's Grammar School in Manchester when it was tempted out of the private sector by Labour in 2007.

In a high-profile move, it axed parental fees and academic selection to become one of the Government's flagship city academies - semi-independent state schools sponsored and run by the private sector. A total of five independent schools have now converted.

Mr Patriarca, who retired last summer, said the school agreed to the move because academies offered the chance of "effective denationalisation" of state schools by taking education out of the hands of "overpaid, ill informed, over comfortable" civil servants.

But talking openly about the move for the first time, he said the school struggled "to retain educational values" in the face of pressure from the Government.

"The Department for Children, Schools and Families lives up to its Orwellian title," he said.

"There are direct tensions between its responsibilities for social work, children and families and its commitment – if that is the word – to education. It seems to me to be a cumbersome hybrid which fulfils none of its roles very well.

"It is politicised in a way which seems to find achievement embarrassing. It is preoccupied with the less able and the social misfit – which would be fine if it actually achieved anything in dealing with such children. It doesn't because it panders to them – it prioritises their needs over the needs of the vast majority."

The DCSF was created in 2007, replacing the old Department for Education and Skills.

In a speech at Wellington College, Berkshire, Mr Patriarca backed the principle of academies but insisted they were no longer "independent" of civil servants, despite Government claims.

Academies are not allowed to put pupils on alternative exams, such as the International GCSE now favoured in private schools, he said.

He also criticised the lack of freedom to control admissions, and he attacked the practice of forcing academies to share pupils expelled from other schools.

"The more disruptive the child is the more attention it receives and the more benefits," Mr Patriarca said.

He added: "We have a chance to break free of this through the establishment of academies as genuinely independent schools with the DNA of the private sector operating within the state system. The present Government has lost its nerve on the academies programme."

It comes just days after a delegation of academy principals wrote to the Government, saying their attempts to improve education standards were being "increasingly hampered".

A DCSF spokesman said: "We make no apologies for the fact that the DCSF has broadened Government's focus beyond the school gates. Common sense and every teacher in every classroom tell us that what happens outside school hours and parents' involvement in children's education are both vital to their progress.

"By strengthening family support during children's formative early years, getting parents more involved in their child's learning and making sure young people have more exciting things to do outside school, we hope to make this country the best place in the world to grow up."