Climbie lessons 'not learned'

The death of Victoria Climbie in 2000 supposedly marked a turning point in the welfare of children in the UK, with the following inquiry lead by Lord Laming and the launch of "Every Child Matters". The mother of Victoria, spoke on BBC Radio 4. She thanked the government for establishing the inquiry but is "hurt" by the lack of action by local government.

Responding, Lord Laming agreed that the performance of social services was patchy and that some local authorities are not moving towards integrated working in the way intended.

Listen to the interview (28-May-2008)

Click on BBC News to read their report (28-5-08)


Read speech by Kevin Brennan, MP.

Victoria Climbie Foundation UK

Child povery: everybody's business

2007 saw the establishment of a Child Poverty Unit to integrate strategy across government towards the targets of halving child poverty by 2010 and eradicating it totally by 2020. March 2008 saw the release of the overall strategy in the paper Ending child poverty: everybody's business.

Key points:
- The paper sets out the wide range of causes of poverty which are dynamic and influential at various levels (individual, family, neighbourhood) showing that the one strategy will not reach all of the children. Work is seen as the best root out of poverty, but this does not always work.

- The costs of child poverty are significant, not only to the child themselves, but to the wider society and economy.

- Government strategies such as sure start, school standards and others have helped improve the life chances of children in poverty. However, not all strategies have had the intended full impact and there is more to do.

- The final section indicates what the government will do next. The theme is on a "contract" between the parent and the state. The state will increase opportunity (such as opportunity to take up employment, increased childcare places etc.) and expect that parents will use these opportunities. Most of the section refers to changes in benefit payments and employment opportunities but there is also mention of improving the professional skills of all children's service staff so they can address poverty and ensuring children's trusts can focus on poverty.

OECD Report: an overview of English schools

This report was published in August 2007 but is worth noting as a comprehensive account of the recent past and current state of English schools. It is a large report and is split into the following sections:

Chapter 1: The National Context of Schooling
Chapter 2: Overall description of the school system
Chapter 3: School governance and leadership
Chapter 4: Enhancing learning and school leadership
Chapter 5: The attractiveness of school leaders’ role
Chapter 6: Training and professional development of school leaders

Finally the report highlights key areas likely to see changes in the future, such as succession, personalised learning and standards.

Impact of support staff in schools

This DCSF paper is the third report from a five year study (2004-09) providing information on the types, characteristics and deployment of support staff in schools in England and Wales and their impact on teaching and learning.

Key points:
- Support staff spend most of their time on support for the school in two ways:
1. administrative/communicative activities (1.7 hours on average per day),
2. support for the school’s (physical environment (1.4 hours).
Overall, support staff spent more time supporting the school than pupils (3.1 vs.1.7 hours).

- The single most common individual activity was working with one pupil (29%). This was particularly true of secondary schools. Followed by listening to the teacher teach (20%), and then working with different pupils by ‘roving’ around the class (16%) - again most true of secondary schools. The next most common activity was working with a group of pupils (15%) and this was much more common in primary schools. At secondary level, classroom based support staff therefore tended to work with individuals and walk around the classroom, while at primary level support staff worked with groups of pupils.

- Teachers were mostly positive about the impact of support staff on teaching. Support staff helped by bringing specialist help; allowing more teaching overall; affecting the curriculum/tasks/activities offered; and taking on specific pupils.

- The presence of support staff had a beneficial effect on pupils. First, support staff allowed more individualisation of attention. Second, there seemed to be benefits in terms of classroom control as a result of support staff presence.

- The presence of support staff had a beneficial effect on pupils in terms of allowing pupils to have a more active role in interactions with adults. There was also evidence that the presence of support staff increased the amount of classroom engagement. However, this might have resulted in less active interaction with the teacher.

- Teachers were mostly positive about the impact of support staff on pupil behaviour and
learning. They felt that support staff affected learning/behaviour through taking on specific pupils; bringing specialist help to the teacher & classroom; having a positive impact on the pupils’ behaviour, discipline, social skills or behaviour; and by allowing individualisation and differentiation.

- It was noticeable that teachers and headteachers tended not to refer to pupil attainment and learning when addressing the benefits and effects of support staff, even when they were considering classroom based support staff and were specifically asked to consider effects on pupil behaviour and learning. Instead comments were more about effects on teachers and teaching than pupil outcomes.

Future of school leaders

The National College of School Leadership have released this interesting paper which captures the main thoughts on leadership by looking through this history of leadership theory. Originally designed for the NHS, it is amended for school leaders and shows the relevance of the theory across various disciplines. A good introduction to the basic ideas around leadership.

Review of school governance

The DCFS working group into governing bodies met on the 8th May and was led by School Minister Jim Knight and is intended to ensure that school governors can meet the 10 years children's plan. (Read BBC News article).

The Ministerial Working Group on School Governance formal terms of reference are:
• consider the effectiveness of the current governance arrangements in relation to the Children’s Plan objectives and consider the future role and purpose of school governors;
• establish principles for a streamlined stakeholder model of governance that can deliver public accountability through good and robust governance in the diverse range of schools in the maintained school system;
• examine how to develop the stakeholder governance model to act as a help to delivering better outcomes for children, where schools are merging and federating; and
• ensure school governance arrangements complement the development of stronger pupil voice, parents’ councils and new engagement of other stakeholders.

The National Governors Association support the review but do express concerns about some of the data and terms of reference. The Association of School and College Leaders also support the review.