There's a lot about Katie Price that seems – how can I say this politely? – unreal. Her house, perched Southfork-style in the middle of a Sussex field, feels like a show home. Her hair could be a Barbie wig. Her lips and breasts clearly owe something to the wonders of cosmetic surgery, and her skin colour looks spray-on rather than sun-kissed.
But then into the room comes Harvey, Price's 10-year-old son. Harvey has complex special needs: he has autism, Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disorder that gives him a tendency to gain weight easily, and septo-optic dysplasia, which means he's visually impaired. And suddenly, everything that's false about Price falls away, as she pulls her boy on to her lap, gives him a kiss, and talks to him about what he's been up to and what else the family is doing that day.
What's absolutely obvious is that, when Harvey is around, Price isn't playing to the cameras (and there are two film crews in attendance on the day I visit). She just wants what's best for Harvey. "Mind that door doesn't bang!" she calls as she hears someone arriving. "Harvey can't stand it when the door bangs."
And it's that desire to get what's best for Harvey that is now pitching Price into the unlikeliest role of her life to date. She's founding a school: a special school for Harvey and other children like him. "Not in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to be starting a school," she says. "But we're planning to open in September 2013, on a site in Sevenoaks in Kent. It's going to be called the Visually Impaired Special Needs academy – it will have places for at least 20 children initially, but we hope to go up to 90 in time. And once we've got it off the ground, we hope to open more schools just like it: because we haven't got enough special needs schools in Britain, and we have to get them so that children like Harvey have the best chance in life."
School is an important part of every child's life: but, says the model-turned-businesswoman, for a special needs child like hers it has an especially crucial role. "The thing for Harvey, and others like him, is that everything has to be the same. He needs stability and continuity – if things around him are different, he finds it really difficult to cope."
All of which explains why news that Harvey's current school, Dorton House in Sevenoaks, was to close came as a huge blow. The RLSB (Royal London Society for Blind People), which runs it, says it is harder to access funding for pupils from out of the area, and also more special needs children are going to mainstream school. But that, says Price, isn't an option for Harvey. "A mainstream school couldn't deal with a child like Harvey. I knew that with Dorton closed, Harvey would have to be educated at home.
"And that made me shocked and angry, because Harvey needs to be at school. School has given a lot to his life. He's been going there since he was tiny, and we expected him to stay there right through his education."
The school has also helped to provide support for Price and her family. "You learn so much, as a parent with a special needs child, from talking to others who have a child in a similar situation. School puts us in touch with one another."
Read more...
Showing posts with label recent news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recent news. Show all posts
Ofsted
Ofsted is facing criticism after it emerged that inspection reports declaring two schools inadequate contained a number of identical sentences and phrases.
Union leaders raised concerns that inspectors were "cutting and pasting" in reports, and warned that there was a problem with formulaic guidelines that inspectors must follow for school visits.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said the practice was unacceptable, given that the fate of a school could rest on an inspection.
Two reports, one on Belvedere junior school in Bexley, south-east London, and one on Malmesbury primary school in Tower Hamlets, east London, were found to include a high number of similarities, the Times Educational Supplement reported.
Read more...
Ofsted said it stood by the judgments in the reports, but is looking into the similarities in wording.
Both contain the sentence: "Some teachers do not plan learning for pupils at their different levels of ability and marking is not leading to improvement."
Union leaders raised concerns that inspectors were "cutting and pasting" in reports, and warned that there was a problem with formulaic guidelines that inspectors must follow for school visits.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said the practice was unacceptable, given that the fate of a school could rest on an inspection.
Two reports, one on Belvedere junior school in Bexley, south-east London, and one on Malmesbury primary school in Tower Hamlets, east London, were found to include a high number of similarities, the Times Educational Supplement reported.
Read more...
Ofsted said it stood by the judgments in the reports, but is looking into the similarities in wording.
Both contain the sentence: "Some teachers do not plan learning for pupils at their different levels of ability and marking is not leading to improvement."
Academies
There's still a smell of new carpet in the special-needs block at Balcarras school in Cheltenham, and the staff look rather pleased with themselves. "Its hard to believe we fitted everything into the space we used to have," says Louise Young, the academy's deputy head of individual learning. "The kids love it, too."
But elsewhere in the newly converted academy, a "development plan" featuring extra post-16 classrooms and a dance studio is gathering dust. Some carpets may be new, but there's no doubt the shine has come off the academy dream at Balcarras.
From September, the school's budget will be cut by more than £400,000 – the equivalent of nine teachers. Its head, Chris Healy, admits he looks back wistfully on the halcyon early days of 2011, when the newly converted school was basking in the glow of a promise of around half a million pounds extra in the bank each year.
The potential financial benefits were a major incentive to convert, Healy says: "There was a ready-reckoner online where you could measure your existing funds against your funding if you were an academy. We couldn't work out why our figure was so high. We have significant problems with our accommodation and we did think, 'all this could be solved in the next four or five years'. So we had a premises development plan drawn up to use as the basis of our planning."
Balcarras is not alone. Many other academies are now experiencing financial shocks as local authorities – anxious not to lose too big a slice of their budgets to schools that are leaving their control – change the way they account for their central spending on education. Across-the-board cuts in schools' grants and changes to sixth-form funding have also taken their toll, particularly on schools like Balcarras, which is based in a leafy area of Gloucestershire and does not benefit greatly from the pupil premium, aimed at youngsters from poorer backgrounds.
In the early days of the coalition government, many schools took the plunge to academy status, telling parents and governors the move would mean more money. And for many, there was more money for a time, despite assurances from the education secretary, Michael Gove, that this would not be the case. In a survey of almost 1,500 schools carried out last year by the Association of School and College Leaders, seven out of 10 cited financial gain as a reason for converting.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the Nasuwt teaching union, says she predicted at the time that these rewards would not last. "We kept saying to schools: 'If that's your only reason for going, you're going on a false premise,'" she says. "They were getting all sorts of wild and wonderful calculations on how much money they would get. And we were saying, 'Hang on. You're being bribed out of the system. There are no guarantees. You're only going to get that money once – you can't keep getting it.' Now it's all coming back to haunt them."
The acronym on many lips in the world of academy funding is "Lacseg", or Local Authority Central Spend Equivalent Grant. The grant, which gives academies some of the money their local councils keep for central spending on schools, is based on financial returns made each year to central government.
But councils have quickly adapted to this new use of their existing data, and have started to make their calculations differently. Broadly, what they have done is to remove money from the central, catch-all pot and label it instead as being for a specific purpose, thereby reducing the total amount from which academies get their cut.
Read more...
But elsewhere in the newly converted academy, a "development plan" featuring extra post-16 classrooms and a dance studio is gathering dust. Some carpets may be new, but there's no doubt the shine has come off the academy dream at Balcarras.
From September, the school's budget will be cut by more than £400,000 – the equivalent of nine teachers. Its head, Chris Healy, admits he looks back wistfully on the halcyon early days of 2011, when the newly converted school was basking in the glow of a promise of around half a million pounds extra in the bank each year.
The potential financial benefits were a major incentive to convert, Healy says: "There was a ready-reckoner online where you could measure your existing funds against your funding if you were an academy. We couldn't work out why our figure was so high. We have significant problems with our accommodation and we did think, 'all this could be solved in the next four or five years'. So we had a premises development plan drawn up to use as the basis of our planning."
Balcarras is not alone. Many other academies are now experiencing financial shocks as local authorities – anxious not to lose too big a slice of their budgets to schools that are leaving their control – change the way they account for their central spending on education. Across-the-board cuts in schools' grants and changes to sixth-form funding have also taken their toll, particularly on schools like Balcarras, which is based in a leafy area of Gloucestershire and does not benefit greatly from the pupil premium, aimed at youngsters from poorer backgrounds.
In the early days of the coalition government, many schools took the plunge to academy status, telling parents and governors the move would mean more money. And for many, there was more money for a time, despite assurances from the education secretary, Michael Gove, that this would not be the case. In a survey of almost 1,500 schools carried out last year by the Association of School and College Leaders, seven out of 10 cited financial gain as a reason for converting.
Chris Keates, general secretary of the Nasuwt teaching union, says she predicted at the time that these rewards would not last. "We kept saying to schools: 'If that's your only reason for going, you're going on a false premise,'" she says. "They were getting all sorts of wild and wonderful calculations on how much money they would get. And we were saying, 'Hang on. You're being bribed out of the system. There are no guarantees. You're only going to get that money once – you can't keep getting it.' Now it's all coming back to haunt them."
The acronym on many lips in the world of academy funding is "Lacseg", or Local Authority Central Spend Equivalent Grant. The grant, which gives academies some of the money their local councils keep for central spending on schools, is based on financial returns made each year to central government.
But councils have quickly adapted to this new use of their existing data, and have started to make their calculations differently. Broadly, what they have done is to remove money from the central, catch-all pot and label it instead as being for a specific purpose, thereby reducing the total amount from which academies get their cut.
Read more...
Independent schools and charity
Independent schools are enjoying a fundraising boom, with the number raising more than £1 million in a year reaching an all-time high, a study has revealed.
Experts say schools are ploughing efforts into fundraising as they come under pressure to limit fee increases during the economic downturn, provide more bursaries to poorer children and keep up in the facilities "arms race". Schools are increasingly adopting US-style fundraising techniques, where dedicated officers build relationships with parents and alumni to ensure a steady stream of income on top of fees.
The latest study from accountancy firm Crowe Clark Whitehill showed that the 522 participating independent schools raised £92.9 million in donations in 2011, up from £77 million in 2009 and £89.3 million in 2010. Of the top fundraisers in 2010-11, Eton College raised £5.2 million and Harrow School more than £7 million. In total, the number of schools raising more than £1 million each rose to a record 24 last year, recovering from a low of just 12 in 2009, at the height of the banking crisis. A further 69 schools raised more than £200,000 each in 2011.
The findings come after the Independent Schools Council announced last month that pupil numbers in its schools had risen for the first time since the credit crunch in 2008.
Tim Baines, author of the study, said schools had done well to boost fundraising levels. "It is down to an increasing professionalism in their approach and the employment of dedicated staff," he said. "Gone are the days when you would just get a teacher to go and raise the old boys' network."
Ian McLean, director of development at Millfield School in Somerset and a former chair of the Institute for Development Professionals in Education, which supports school fundraisers, said membership of the organisation had grown from just 10 to about 300 in a decade.
"There's now a plethora of development officers, with schools much more aware of building closer relationships with the school community, with parents and former students," said Mr McLean. "As well as wanting to increase their ability to fund more scholarships and bursaries, schools are constantly looking to improve their facilities even in tough economic times."
Read more...
Experts say schools are ploughing efforts into fundraising as they come under pressure to limit fee increases during the economic downturn, provide more bursaries to poorer children and keep up in the facilities "arms race". Schools are increasingly adopting US-style fundraising techniques, where dedicated officers build relationships with parents and alumni to ensure a steady stream of income on top of fees.
The latest study from accountancy firm Crowe Clark Whitehill showed that the 522 participating independent schools raised £92.9 million in donations in 2011, up from £77 million in 2009 and £89.3 million in 2010. Of the top fundraisers in 2010-11, Eton College raised £5.2 million and Harrow School more than £7 million. In total, the number of schools raising more than £1 million each rose to a record 24 last year, recovering from a low of just 12 in 2009, at the height of the banking crisis. A further 69 schools raised more than £200,000 each in 2011.
The findings come after the Independent Schools Council announced last month that pupil numbers in its schools had risen for the first time since the credit crunch in 2008.
Tim Baines, author of the study, said schools had done well to boost fundraising levels. "It is down to an increasing professionalism in their approach and the employment of dedicated staff," he said. "Gone are the days when you would just get a teacher to go and raise the old boys' network."
Ian McLean, director of development at Millfield School in Somerset and a former chair of the Institute for Development Professionals in Education, which supports school fundraisers, said membership of the organisation had grown from just 10 to about 300 in a decade.
"There's now a plethora of development officers, with schools much more aware of building closer relationships with the school community, with parents and former students," said Mr McLean. "As well as wanting to increase their ability to fund more scholarships and bursaries, schools are constantly looking to improve their facilities even in tough economic times."
Read more...
Teacher bullying
Have you ever been bullied by your management at school? Around 90 per cent of respondents to our GTN survey last autumn had been and this Tuesday Education Guardian has a disturbing story about NQTs being bullied out of their jobs after getting insufficient support to develop during their induction year. We will run a special blog on Tuesday too so that you can add your own thoughts if you'd like to.
On a cheerier note, the Diamond Jubilee celebrations may be over but for many of you tomorrow will mean the start of the final countdown for this school year - and chance to look forward to more celebrations in the form of the Olympics, Wimbledon and of course the summer holidays.
So now is an ideal time to be sourcing some lovely resources ready for the next term and a whole raft of new pupils - and we have got some corkers for you!
Read more...
On a cheerier note, the Diamond Jubilee celebrations may be over but for many of you tomorrow will mean the start of the final countdown for this school year - and chance to look forward to more celebrations in the form of the Olympics, Wimbledon and of course the summer holidays.
So now is an ideal time to be sourcing some lovely resources ready for the next term and a whole raft of new pupils - and we have got some corkers for you!
Read more...
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