Section:GDN 1N PaGe:31 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 23/8/2019 15:52 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Tuesday 27 August 2019 The Guardian •
31Letter from a curious parent
Michael RosenDear Gavin Williamson,I
am delighted that a new
secretary of state for
education was not just
educated within the state
system but attended a
comprehensive school. I
hope this will give you insight
and empathy in your dealings
with students, teachers, teaching
assistants, school-workers and
parents involved in this sector.
You will have heard by now of
problems concerning cut s, in
particular in the area of special
needs provision, and when you
compare the situation now with
what was available in your time at
school, it must horrify you.
As you are a great example ofthe success of the comprehensive
system, I hope you will champion
it and do what you can to reverse
the expansion of overt selection
through grammar schools and
covert selection through exclusions,
off -rolling and non-admission of
pupils with special needs. You
will be able to step forward and
off er yourself as a fi ne example of
how comprehensives can and do
succeed.
I confess I was concerned
that you’ve taken on a job in an
area that up until now hasn’t
interested you. Looking through
your Wikipedia entry, you seem to
have focused so far on fi replaces,
chinaware, Northern Ireland, car
boot sales and aircraft carriers.
These are all fascinating areasbut for the moment I don’t see a
direct link to education. Do you
think it would be a good idea if
the person in charge of education
had expertise in such matters as
how young people learn, or what
it actually means to assess what a
student knows, or which education
systems in the world deliver the
fairest outcomes for all?
In your political career, you’ve
worked as the chair of Conservative
students, and deputy chair of
Conservative party districts; you’ve
been a parliamentary private
secretary in the fi eld of transport
or working directly to the prime
minister, you’ve served as chief
whip and, famously, as defence
secretary. This is all good ladder-
climbing stuff in the adult world
and, it has to be said, it’s an eff ort
you’ve made at some distance from
schools themselves.
On one occasion you were able
to win a £30,000 donation to the
Conservative party after an evening
out with Lubov Chernukhin , the
wife of one of Putin’s ex-ministers- well done for that – and you were
chosen to help your party come
to an agreement to govern with
the DUP. Perhaps the wiliness you
needed at these moments will
help you in your work with the
Department for Education.
In your maiden speech to
parliament, you said: “We will have
a truly vibrant economy only when
we recreate the Victorian spirit
of ingenuity and inventiveness
that made Britain such a vibrant
country.” Perhaps you and I went
to diff erent history lessons but I
learned that it may well have been
vibrant for those with the resources
to be vibrant but for millions in
Britain it was a life of crippling
hard work, poverty, foul living
conditions , high infant mortality,
low life expectancy, very limited
education for most, and a lack
of democratic representation.
For those under the yoke of the
British empire, there was racism,
exploitation, lack of freedom, and
summary justice. I hope you’re not
thinking of using education as a way
of recreating this kind of society.
However, as you look at
the expanding landscape of
academies, with their glaring lack of
accountability, you could do worse
than to compar e their governance
with how the Victorians ran public
education. Their system was
balanced between national and local
representation – one thing they did
that worked rather well.
I look forward to more of your
speeches.
Yours, Michael Rosen‘You seem to have
focused so far in your
life on fi replaces,
chinaware, Northern
Ireland, car boot sales
and aircraft carriers’▲ Gavin Williamson in army training
when he was defence secretaryI hope you’re not thinking of
using education as a way of
recreating a Victorian society
▲ ‘I was most worried about getting
lost. If I could talk to my younger self,
I’d say: it will be fi ne’
PHOTOGRAPH: MATTHEW LLOYD/GETTY IMAGESChelsy Reyes
North Cambridge
academy
“ I was worried
about making
friends and fi nding
my way around.
But my older sister gave me some
advice : not to think about all the
negative stuff , but to think instead
about the good stuff , like how I will
fi nd new friends and meet some nice
new teachers.
All my teachers were encouraging,
but there’s one who sticks out: Miss
Bailey, my RE teacher. She always
had a smile on her face when she
greeted us. She’s really calm and
kind and the work she gave us wasn’t
too overwhelming.
If I were to go back in time , my
advice to myself would be: don’t
overthink the whole process of
making friends. I thought it would
be hard for me because normally I
like sticking with the people I know.
But friends I knew from primary
school introduced me to new
friends they had made, who were
really encouraging. I’d meet them
and we’d just sort of click. Within a
couple of weeks, I realised I’d made
all these new friends all by myself. ”Douglas Finch
Oxford Spires in
east Oxford
“I don’t think you
need to actively
try hard to make
friends. You’ll
be in classes
together and so will have to talk
to them , out of necessity. And if
you don’t make many new friends,
it won’t be much of a problem.
You don’t need 20 people you can
reliably talk to. You’ll be fi ne with a
few that you like.
The simple solution if you get lost
is to ask an older child to explain
where you should go. Often, they
will be perfectly friendly. Unless
they’re terrible people, they won’t be
saying to each other: let’s go terrify
those year 7s.
Some teachers can be quite strict ,
but I get a lot more done in the
lessons I have with the m. Besides, if
you don’t disrupt a lesson, it doesn’t
really matter whether the teacher is
strict or not.
The one thing you have to worry
about is the long-term homeworkI think sometimes older kids try
to make you scared of year 7, so that
you don’t want to go. I told my mum
how worried I was feeling and she
said: ‘You’ll be fi ne.’ She told me that
if I went, I would start to enjoy it –
and she was right. ”Grace Lavill North Cambridge
academy
“I was most
worried about
getting lost. If I
could talk to my
younger self, I’d
say: it will be fi ne.
You can just speak
to teachers and older kids if you get
lost and they will help. And actually
the school isn’t even as big as it
seems from the outside.
One time, I came out of class and
made friends with this girl because
we had the next class together, and
we thought we had got completely
lost on our way there – but we
hadn’t. We just had to go up a few
stairs. It was really funny and thathelped us to bond. We’re really good
friends now – and that was the fi rst
time we spoke.”Isabelle Sukroo Chauncy school
in Ware,
Hertfordshire
“I was quite
upset when I
discovered, on the
day I started, that I
wasn’t in a set with
all my friends from
primary school. But in fact, I made
new friends in my set, and I still get
to see my other friends at lunchtime.
My advice is: put a checklist
on the door so you remember the
things you need to take with you in
the morning. Because at secondary
school, you get detentions and if you
do something bad, they will shout at
you. In primary school, they didn’t
do that.”Riaz Hagger North Cambridge
academy
“If I had to go back
in time to the fi rst
day , the advice I’d
give myself is: pay
attention more and
don’t do things
that other people
tell you to do for
their own amusement.
My brother always got in trouble
at school, so I asked my three older
sisters for advice. They said: ‘Don’t
be naughty and don’t muck about .’
They also told me which teachers
were their favourites. I looked
forward to starting , thanks to them.
My top piece of advice would be
to get involved in clubs, because
there are people there you wouldn’t
normally interact with – but as they
go to the same clubs , you might have
a lot in common. ”Interviews Donna FergusonYear 8 advice to year 7s
‘If you don’t disrupt a
lesson, it doesn’t matter if
the teacher is a strict one’
Starting at big school
can be scary. We asked
for advice from children
who braved it last year
projects. The general rule I’ve
found is: if the teacher thinks the
homework will take half an hour, it
will take less time. But if the teacher
says it will take an hour, it will
probably take longer.”Tyler Jolly North Cambridge
academy
“Before I arrived,
I thought I would
get homework
every single day
and everyone said
it would be really
diffi cult. But I
discovered that the homework was
actually quite easy and it can be
really fun.
People also told me the teachers
at secondary school are horrible. But
they were really kind – especially Mr
Kelly, my head of year.RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws