Why the battle over Downhills Primary School matters

strapworld

Gove and this government should learn from General Booth of the Salvation Army. They should take the fight to the streets. By that I mean Gove and as many of the conservative/liberal democrat MP's and local supporters should flood this meeting. They should bus supporters alongside them. Just give these unelected people (apart from the failed politician Lammy) and give them a lesson in TRUTH.

Stop just accepting the nonsense from the left. Give it to them Gove!

ButcombeMan

Social Justice-absolutely correct.

Improving the system of education, which has let so many children and the country down-over a 30 year plus period, is THE perfect battleground on which to take the Guardianistas on.

Health is too complex, with outcomes too difficult to analyse.

More strength to Gove's arm. This is a critical battle. He MUST win.

Lammy and others have fallen into a trap.

Hold onto your seats.

Frank Sutton

Does Mr Lammy says what he does want for his old school? His website is vague on the subject, saying merely that "we all want the best for our schools...".

daniel maris

I don't think creating Toby Schools is the way to really improve inner city education.

The first thing to do if you were serious about improving it is to stop mass immigration, which has been creating chaotic conditions in inner city schools in London.

Secondly, improve discipline.

Thirdly, be serious about nutrition.

Finally, reduce the tuition time, so you can reduce class sizes. Taht will be an efficient use of resources and children will be happier.

Tigers (from Melbourne, Australia)

This is a battle we are yet to have in Australia, but we are watching Gove's work with interest

Owen Morgan

David Lammy doesn't take education too seriously. After all, he is the one who stated on television that Henry the Eighth was succeeded by Henry the Seventh.

Alan Douglas

It is entirely unfair that any pupil should have an advantage of any other pupil, especially if this is obtained by way of anyone trying to make a profit.

Or in Lammy-speak : duh duh duh-duh duh, duh duh duh-duh duh, duh duh duh-duh duh duh duh duh-duh duh duh duh !

ALan DOuglas

Frothy

From what I've read parents are opposed to what Gove wants to do with this school.

I can't quite see how forcing it into Academy status will help. Can anyone explain?

Sean Haffey

@Frothy

Good question, and one that I expect is fundamental to this campaign. Parents should be clearly and concisely informed of the factual benefits of academies if they are to support them.

Education is critical. Change is notoriously difficult. Consequently everything possible should be done to communicate why this change is needed.

JaneS

making Downhills into an Academy will remove it from its current failed management and the influence of the failed Children Services in Haringey.
Without a change in management it is unlikely that there is any real hope for the children who attend that school..Close scrutiny of Haringey's educational services will demonstrate why Mr Gove is correct. All the failings identified during Ms Shoesmith's leadership remain.

Austin Barry

daniel maris, 9 January @1.22 am, has a point:

From the School’s latest Ofsted report

“The largest (pupil) groups are those from Caribbean, Bangladeshi, African, Gypsy Roma and Eastern European backgrounds. A large majority of pupils speak English as an additional language and over 40 languages are spoken at the school.”

How do you teach the benighted pupils of this bonkers Tower of Babel anything at all? Even the UN has simultaneous translation.

Best to close it down and bus the pupils to suburban schools where the majority speak English as a native tongue. For Downhills that probably means Royal Leamington Spa.

Fred

Gove is voluntarily painting himself into the corner "my way is the only way, everyone else is etc". Where do all the people with reasonable objections to Gove's plans go? Hard cases make bad law, and picking a fight on principle on a specific school (which Gove has probabaly not investigated) and trying to bully people is not a good idea.

RMH

A bunch of champagne socialists whose kids wont face the issues most do.

Their parents will sort it for them, or they have already bought a nice house near a nice school.

Cogito Ergosum

@Austin Barry 8.41am

You could teach them arithmetic, or music.

David L

Keep 'em ignorant. Keep'em welfare dependent. Keep 'em voting Labour. Such is the essence of Labour.

Heartless Curmudgeon

Lefty intellectual midgets + hand-wringing po-faced Grouniadistas trying to ruin a mighty movement for the betterment of children and the country!

Who will win? Which side does the BBC support?

[And WHEN will the H2B pin the BBC against the wall and cleanse it? - no answer required.]

Janee

There is, according to independent research, absolutely no evidence that changing the status of a school improves the educational outcomes. Until recently, academies were exempt from Freedom of Information but there is evidence that some apparently "improved" results by cynically forcing children to taken vocational courses, or that the academy covertly selected students.

Michael Wilshaw, ex head of Mossbourne Academy, has warned that something needs to be done about failing academies. The Financial Times has warned that something needs to be done about tighter controls on academy financing.

Forcing schools to become academies (particularly improving schools) on the basis of random league tables will have the same affect as all the other changes in forms of governance - direct grant, ctcs, etc - it will cost a fortune and will not improve educational outcome overall.

Wilhelm 1

Cog Ergo

Don't be an ass all your life.

Wilhelm 1

This David Lammie joker should be deported.

Bob Lindsay-Smith

I'm a parent of a child at another school which has been told the same thing : 'Become an academy, but we won't tell you who the sponsor might be. By the way, you don't need to consult the parents beforehand'. I might at some point choose an academy for my child, but resent having it forced on me in this way.

Publius

"Fiona Millar who was a Cherie Blair adviser"

aka Mrs Alistair Campbell, no? And a tireless hater of excellence.

Bob Dixon

What a shame.On Marr yesterday I thought Lammy was almost sensible.

Now I know he is years behind the pace.

Austin Barry

Surely Lammy's Al Jolson impression is a tad infra dig.

David Ossitt

David Lammy, the local MP, is as thick as two planks of wood, how he dare to get involved with anything to do with education is beyond me

I do urge anyone who has not yet seen the YouTube clip below to have a look, if the link does not work simply Google ‘David Lammy on Mastermind’.

His chosen subject was Mohamed Alee he was dreadful but on the general knowledge he showed intelligence that was less than a fruit fly.

A typical answer, when asked ‘who succeeded to the throne on the death of his father Henry V111', he answered Henry the V11.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5QT78gt1C8

Yam Yam

In fairness to David Lammy, anyone who has read his book "Out Of The Ashes" will be aware that he most categorically does NOT subscribe to the standard left-wing narrative about the riots, family breakdown or the importance of fathers and marriage in building a strong civic society..

Which makes it all the more strange (nay, sad even) than he feels this pavlovian urge to publicly echo the present Labour leadership's absurd opposition to one of the last Labour government's best policies.

LMS

Gove will have to be careful here. His argument is obviously right and just, but this is Haringey, and he will be portrayed as a honking profiteering Tory... his argument will be ignored by the parents when presented by the vague "fairness for all" babble of Lammy and co.

Hexhamgeezer

My kids old school had 70+ languages in it with Urdu dominating and, would you believe it, among the white parents there was a severe shortage of magazine editors and journalists helping us celebrate the diversity. My, how we needed them to show us the multifarious advantages we just could not see for ourselves (being the ill educated white working class bigots that we were/are).

Ofsted were no help. They just said it was a 'strength'

Jeremy

Labour loikes 'em ignorant, Mr Forsyth. An' you knows why...
 
"...tomorrow night, David Lammy will address a public meeting called to oppose a conversion to academy status. Speaking alongside Lammy will be the head of the National Union of teachers Christine Blower, Fiona Millar who was a Cherie Blair adviser before leaving and becoming a fervent critic of the Blair government’s efforts at education reform and Alasdair Smith of the Anti Academies Alliance who was billed at a recent Institute of Education Conference as Secretary of the AAA and a member of the SWP."
 
What a parade of gargoyles! I certainly do not envy Mr Gove his task - noble though it undoubtedly is...

Hexhamgeezer

..and talking about hackneyed old stereotyping...

Is Mr Lammy bragging in that picture? I always thought he was a modest gent with much to be modest about.

Austin Barry

Having read Ofstead’s latest report on Downhills, it seems to be run by idiots.

Under Main Findings, the report states:

“Standards in English ….are well below average..”

The report then goes on to state:

“Pupils are provided with opportunities to learn French…”

Mais bien sūr!

Cynic

Well, if the comments on CiF are anything to go by, just about all of the Guardianistas are wholly behind Downhills. Fairness and equality can only be achieved by dragging everybody down to the same level, obviously. Gove's attempt to raise standards is anathema to them.

Francois Joubert

In response to strapworld: I believe that William Booth would be on the same platform as David Lammy, campaigning against forced academies. Gove's plan is anti-democratic: foisting and forcing academies on schools and communities without consultation and without a mandate. We take our troops into countries that ride rough-shod over the wishes of their citizens. Perhaps the AAA should look for support from the MOD instead of attempting to engage with the DfE.

balthazar

Should I be surprised by the not-so-thinly-veiled racism in comments on a Spectator article? Probably not.

Verloc

I am seeing lots of people praising what the Education Secretary is trying to do.

It looks like this school is an incredibly difficult one to run.

Can anyone explain to me why it becoming an Academy will automatically change that so certainly that the government is forcing it to happen?

Surely it will still have the same language problems, social problems and poverty?

clare murphy

Downhills takes in many young children of asylum seekers who arrive with little or no English. The children are often traumatised, or at the very least, destabilised. Before any formal learning can take place, they need to develop some sense of stability and trust. (Thanks to the National Curriculum, they are also required to learn French) Just what does turning the school into an academy achieve? The ability to sack people? Who are these great and good characters who will parachute into Haringey? What is this magical curriculum which will ensure that these pupils emerge as fully literate Level 4s when they have arrived in the school at the age of 7 without a command of the language? Criticisms of management and behaviour are misplaced. The behaviour at Downhills - I have visited it on a number of occasions - puts that of the House of Commons to shame. (Indeed, the standards of behaviour exhibited by many braying and hooraying MPs would not be tolerated in any Primary school!) However, it is also clear that Mr Gove will not be able to back down on this one - it is far too high-profile. I am saddened. He has picked the wrong fight.n Just becoming an academy is - in the long run - going to change little. The challenged remain the same.

SAliceC

Please sign this before the 15th of February. If there are 100,000 signatures parliament will have to discuss removing Michael Gove. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/5646

Brian Hinchcliffe

Where an area has a severe problem with crime, that area gets more officers and resources. Where an area has an education problem it seems that sacking everyone and closing the school is deemed more effective