Oxfordshire County Council, the council that runs the schools in Oxfordshire has the worst
key stage 1 results for literacy at age seven in the UK. It recently lost
its bid to be world book capital, this despite having one of the best
universities in the world. It is also cutting 313k from its libraries budget,
not that it actually saves that amount, it saves practically nothing. Considering
the history of Oxford and the fact that the schools spend is the only part of
the OCC budget to escape the cuts (the schools budget is outside of councillors control) this is very, very poor.
Their
answer to this problem seems to be more volunteers.
OCC
is looking for ex teachers and others to do one to one reading with children in
the schools that are failing badly. It actually isn’t a bad idea but what needs
to be understood is why some schools are doing OK at this and others are failing,
making Oxford the worst in the UK. Without understanding the problem it cannot
be fixed.
The
councillor responsible for schools, Melinda Tilly, was recently interviewed in February by
the BBC and came up with some astonishing responses on schools. This below is from a great local blogger @tonyox3 (link at the bottom) who listened to the interview at the time and
includes a link to the interview on Iplayer:
“However,
Ms Tilley's first comment was that "we don't really know what's gone
wrong" with our schools. Strange, given her job title, and it immediately
begs the question that if we don't know what's wrong, how can we expect to fix
it? Next she was asked if academy status would improve the schools.
"Probably", she replied, "we have to do something". Could
she guarantee the schools would improve? "I'm not going to guarantee that
... it's not my job", she said. Doesn't academy status mean the County
loses control over the schools? "We don't have any control now,
really", was her astonishing response. "There's not much point in
your job then, is there?" asked the interviewer. Her reply, "I'm just
waiting for the music to stop .. [something about finding another chair] .. No, not really."”
While
it is true that OCC have no control over the school budget, they are
responsible for the schools and have the power to hire and fire the head
teachers in those that are poorly performing. They have whole departments in
country hall, what are these people doing all day? The comments from the person
politically accountable are not inspiring.
I
hope then that the head teachers in the poorly performing schools are given
time to look at what is working at the other schools and if they are unable to
turn it around they are given the boot. If OCC have no control over the schools
as Melinda Tilley complains then I fail to see how turning them into academies
will make any difference whatsoever.
Today
is the start of the Summer Reading Challenge, a libraries initiative to get
children and adults reading. I don’t have the data (yet) but I bet anyone a
pound that the 80 schools targeted by their new scheme are also the areas where
there is poor participation for the Summer Reading Challenge.
I have already put
myself up to the local school to volunteer to help kids with reading but I doubt the local school is one of those that are failing because we fantastic levels of participation in the reading challenge, punching well above our weight compared to other libraries, a great credit to our library manager and assistant. As I have
previously said though, I will volunteer to help make the service better,but I won't volunteer to replace staff that in our library are performing a fantastic job.
The
Oxford mail story on the new reading scheme:
The
Blog on the Melinda Tilley interview:
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