Another headteacheer bites the dust

After 17 years as a headteacher, Richard Arrowsmith is retiring early, fed up with the endless initiatives of a government that refuses to listen to those who work in schools

Tuesday August 8, 2006
The Guardian


The early retirement of a secondary school head is not really national news. Even when he has had 17 years' experience of headship in two schools, and a total of 34 years in seven schools. But I am just too fed up with too many things. The problems of excessive bureaucracy, ridiculous deadlines and unconvincing consultation processes keep duplicating with each new initiative and, more seriously, the ongoing conflicts between educational ideals and political ideals show no sign of abating. Heads are asked to do far too much where the interest of the child is not the primary motive.
It seems to me that most major planks of policy introduced during my 17 years as a headteacher in two comprehensives have run into problems that were foreseen by us in schools.

How many people remember John Patten having to apologise for the national curriculum being too prescriptive? It was unsustainable, and everybody except the politicians knew that. There was another apology for the fiasco of Charles Clarke's first schools budget, though none for the disgraceful way in which languages were dropped at GCSE level two years ago. We know Clarke was taken completely by surprise by the massive fall in numbers taking languages that followed. Yet he was probably the only person - apart from those in the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) - to have this reaction.

A civil servant once spoke to me of the "unintended outcomes" of policy. Unintended they may be, but unforeseeable they are not.

Political agendas

We have had successive governments with big political agendas. "Parental choice" is being driven through the system, not because it improves schools, but because it attracts votes and is felt to be "a good thing". Everyone knows that the exercise of choice by one person can limit the choice of another.

Everyone in schools also knows that parental choice means that, ultimately, successful curriculum continuity from key stage 2 to key stage 3 cannot be achieved. If we had started out by asking how we can improve continuity between primary and secondary, we would quickly have identified parental choice as one of the biggest obstacles to progress. So which is more important: the political ideal of parental choice or the educational ideal of curriculum continuity?

If I had not already decided to call it a day this summer at the age of 57, I would have done so when it was announced recently that £15,000 is going to local authorities to appoint advisers to help parents choose schools, in case they cannot understand league tables and Ofsted reports. The idea that these sources of information capture the spirit and essence of schools is laughable.

I could probably think of 15,000 better ways of spending that money - but no one would be listening.

Similarly with "raising standards". No one can argue with the idea that we want every child to do as well as possible. But teachers know that a heavy emphasis on improved performance for all will not lead to uniform progress. Secondary schools are seeing an influx of young people who have been "boosted" and intervened with ad nauseam. The very vehicle that was meant to be their salvation - the curriculum - has been identified by them as the source of their disaffection and failure.

If we had started with the question "how can we use a big injection of fresh money to improve the standards of all children?", we might now be in a different place. Instead, it became a political imperative to meet targets set for specific age groups at specific times, thus dividing children into those who did and those who didn't make the grade.

End of term

At the end of my 101st term, I find that I am less concerned with my legacy than the prime minister is in his third. Experience has taught me many things. Rapid and radical change can occur only when everyone is on board and believes the gains will outweigh the losses. This has not been achieved in schools.

You cannot issue edicts and expect other people to pick up and run with ideas that are barely formed and only rough in outline. You are bound to get the proverbial camel instead of the racehorse.

It is obvious that the prime minister's personal agenda for education is very forceful and supersedes all else. Governments cannot work like this. No wonder the DfES has an appalling reputation among teachers for poor planning, poor communication and even worse implementation.

Headteachers would not have been among the many people who were surprised by John Reid's recent revelations about the ineptitude of the Home Office. They would have smiled quietly about accusations of "shocking inefficiency" levelled at ministers and civil servants.

Serious problems

Left hands that do not communicate with right, and personnel who constantly move on from key jobs pose serious problems for schools. We would have given anything to hear Alan Johnson go into the DfES and say the same thing, for it would be equally true. Alas, the face changes (again), but the message remains the same: reform must go on. We must accelerate the pace of "radical change" and standards need to rise even faster, with more and more demanding targets.

If this is to be the way forward, the DfES does not need heads like me. They need a more compliant, less challenging group of heads who will think only within the parameters they are allowed.

There are many things I feel strongly about. The fraudulent use of the term "value-added" is one. To me, the value a school adds to a child is difficult to measure and is found in exciting experiences, opportunities to take responsibility and residential visits. It is certainly nothing to do with the small statistical variations between dubious sets of data predictions.

I hate the over-emphasis on data and targets, which has misled everyone, including the DfES and Ofsted, into forming judgments about schools that are not valid. The real issues affecting achievement are often things that cannot be measured. I am a person who is not motivated by targets, and a lot of children are not, but the prime minister is guilty of the very criticism he levels at us by insisting on one-size-fits-all systems of judgment.

It angers me that the role of Ofsted is to measure the comparability between schools instead of celebrating the diversity between them. The use of Ofsted to police the government's flavours of the month is dreadful.

I am frustrated by huge inequalities in school funding while the same expectations of all are set. I am irritated beyond words at opportunities missed by totally unrealistic deadlines. I deplore the political rhetoric about making it easy for schools to manage poor behaviour while, beneath the surface, there are constant attempts to make exclusion harder and harder.

It is offensive that we should be berated about our work-life balance when we have so little control over the tons of work coming across the desk. It is a government blithely unaware of the contradictions that run through most of its policies that gives schools and authorities such huge problems.

My farewell is not a bitter one. I have enjoyed all my seven schools, and many notable achievements have been recorded for individual students and teachers.

It is clear that the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is not closing, however, and I do not want to reach the point where the frustrations outweigh the pleasures. For the future benefit of education, I hope the DfES can find ways of being in touch with its critical friends. We may oppose aspects of their policies and thinking, but that experience and foresight really can be of value.

· Richard Arrowsmith was head of The Grove school in Market Drayton, Shropshire

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