CEO Thought for the Week

Morning All,

I hope this email finds you well in midst of what I know is a huge week in our schools.

You wouldn’t expect SATs week to come and go without me referring to it and sharing my views. Well, my view is simple….I don’t like them!

I don’t like them in the same way that I don’t really like cauliflower! In the fact that I would literally choose anything else other than to have to do them or have our schools judged from afar based on the performance of our children on a given day. However, I do understand that the performance of schools needs to be monitored and just like cauliflower I might not like the taste, but it is good for you in some ways. Now hear me out on this….I remember what schools were like pre-SATS, pre-national curriculum and pre- Ofsted. It was the wild west! A complete lottery about your experience at school- you may leave being able to read and write competently or you may leave having spent a disproportionate amount of time doing PE, playing with the class guinea pig and constructing life-sized rockets out of cardboard boxes and tin foil. Now don’t get me wrong some of those experiences were (and still are) important and things we all look back on fondly. But we do have to ask ourselves what we want for our children. We want them to love learning and enjoy school, but we also want (and need) them to be articulate, great readers, capable writers, and competent mathematicians. Our curriculum offer across our schools is now set up to achieve that but how do we know it is having an impact and really working and furthermore is comparable to schools all over the country. I think the only way is for us to have a standardised assessment at the end of the primary journey. Unfortunately, we must eat the cauliflower!

Now to be clear I do not endorse and argue vehemently against the use of school performance data by Ofsted and others as a metric for attacking schools, undermining their hard work, and making huge assumptions about what happens behind the school gates without setting foot inside. I don’t think they should be in a league table or plastered publicly on banners. I think they should be used as another tool in the toolkit of school leaders to say where things are going well, what can we improve and how do we measure up. But that’s for us to do in our schools not for public consumption. I hate the pressure they create for colleagues (and unfortunately pupils) but much of that is driven not by the tests themselves but the public nature of the outcomes. We don’t feel the same about our Spring NfER tests do we! I also resent the pressure and burden the administration SATs puts on schools. If you’ve never been directly involved, you can’t imagine the security and scrutiny that comes with test administration. It’s like handling classified MI5 material knowing that one false move, a cough in the wrong place, the incorrect packaging or an accidental smile and you could be accused of maladministration and cheating. It’s completely over the top and ridiculous!

Our role within Infinity is to ensure our children get a brilliant education in our schools, that our curriculum is rich and engaging, that we assess and check that our pupils are knowing and understanding more and that ultimately, they leave us ready for the next stage in education. And SATs well just like cauliflower on a Sunday roast they’re something we must swallow in the midst of what is otherwise a very delicious meal.

I wish you all the best and please know that we’re proud of every single child and adult working in our schools. We know you give it your all!

Best Wishes

Gavin