Warwick Mansell

Reflecting on this some more. The least the government should do, given we have this system, is try to mitigate its weaknesses, in terms of making it a more public-facing public service, and to regulate it properly. Instead, it has turned cheerleader for this flawed structural set-up. It's bizarre.

"We should not cave in to vested interests", says Labour. Sadly, it has just done that in education. New (open access) piece:

educationuncovered.co.uk/analysis/we-...

warwickmansell.substack.com/p/we-should-...

With Mossbourne yet to outline any detailed response to Sir Alan’s review, more than two months after his report was published, this story still seems to have a way to run.

And the pay of the top-paid person at Mossbourne has risen by nearly £100,000 in two years, from £150-£160,000 in 2022-23, the last two years’ sets of accounts show.

The federation’s latest accounts also show that the top-paid person at this modestly-sized trust, who is unnamed because of relatively lax transparency regulations on this front for academies, saw their pay jump up by at least £40,000 or 20 per cent last year, to £240-£250,000.

I asked Mossbourne Federation for a response to the FOI disclosure, but have yet to receive one.

So I FOI’d the trust to ask for the cost. Mr Gamble re-iterated his concerns to me today about this spending.

The safeguarding review had also quoted Jim Gamble, Hackney’s independent safeguarding children and young people’s commissioner who oversaw the report process, as raising questions about the trust’s use of public money, in its spending on lawyers.

Sir Alan Wood’s safeguarding report on behaviour management practice at Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy in Hackney, East London, which handed out 77,000 detentions in 3.5 years, had criticised the trust for choosing to communicate with it via solicitors.

The trust spent £191,267 on its own investigation by a King’s Counsel, launched shortly after the safeguarding probe began, and £209,220 on “other legal services” in relation to the safeguarding review.

Revealed: how academy trust at centre of behaviour row spent £400,000 on legal fees.
educationuncovered.co.uk/news/if-we-h...
FOI response to my request shows Mossbourne Federation spent the cash in response to the statutory safeguarding review into practice at one of its schools.

Another multi-academy trust CEO to stand down following controversy over its high "topslice," or central charges,and questions in Parliament. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... This follows Arthur Terry Learning Partnership's CEO's departure amid row inc over its 20%-plus topslice.

Wow! Re SEND not needing a different consequence. If the consequence for "X" is being sent to an isolation room, a non SEND kid may cope, but a SEND kid might kick off, leading to possible exclusion. I think consequences need to be adapted appropriately.

Agreed and viewed as whole or at a student level fails too many. Although serves those schools who adopt it fairly well- making it a tempting path to take for leaders

Interestingly, someone on the end of these systems has made a similar point.

Ironically the system has become more behaviourist not less over the last decade. The influence of people like KB and TB.

Sorry, ironically in what way?

Yes it's really complicated! I do CPD sessions on motivation and the whole area is fraught with complexity. Most schools are still very behaviourist and teachers are always surprised when I say we don't do it that way. But a lot of it is just the practicalities of 30 kids and a stuffed curriculum.

Questions which arose then, about whether LAs would actually want to set up academy trusts themselves – it is possible to ask what would be in it for them? – and possible conflicts of interest re these trusts and other academies operating in their areas, seem to persist.

These foundered as that draft legislation, initiated in the dying days of Boris Johnson’s premiership, was itself abandoned over concerns about DfE intervention in academy decision-making.

Just as this new move overall carries echoes of the Tories’ proposal, later abandoned, to academise all schools, the specifics of LA-created academy trusts echo plans in the 2022 schools bill.

New: DfE move to allow local authorities to set up “school trusts” appears to be a rehash of Conservative government’s 2022 plan
educationuncovered.co.uk/analysis/dfe...
New piece on one aspect of the all-schools-to-be-in-trusts section of the DfE’s white paper.

New comment under this piece, from Emeritus prof Ron Glatter: "If it does go ahead (let's hope it doesn't)...it will give even more power to national government in an education system which is already heavily centralised."

Everyone brings their own perspectives to these debates, of course, and I come at this from that of a parent and also someone who asks qs of decision-making for a living, so that influences my thinking on this.

...in reality, decision whether or not to issue this "consequence" will/should involve human judgement, eg if a child with ADHD fidgets, is "consequence" for that somehow inevitable, or a decision? Language can make this seem inevitable/less challengeable...

I wonder if there's subtle form of authoritarianism here, tho. "Consequence" can apply to something which is natural/unavoidable, eg a consequence of gravity is that a ball thrown in the air will fall. Similarly,sch wants to suggest if child acts in certain way, this consequence is inevitable.But...

Dear @microsoft.com, is there any way of switching off the super-annoying messages that pop up from "copilot", advising me to take advantage of its (unwanted) services to improve my emails?

I think the change got embedded by the behaviour for learning stuff with that C1, C2, C3 thing. And now it's mostly used as a synonym for sanctions (although not in early years) - we don't have any punitive consequences in our setting (nor any extrinsic rewards).

So for me, consequence is something that happens as a result of the behaviour and doesn't have to be punitive, which a sanction would be. For instance, a restorative conversation could be a 'consequence'. But I think in lots of contexts it is just used as a softer synonym for sanctions.

That sounds brilliant. Issue of pupil voice is very important in all of this, I suspect, especially given the stats we see on pupil disengagement, esp in Eng secondary schools. (To be fair, DfE did acknowledge that in white paper this week, though not looking at causes).