CASEnotes

Press Officer Michael Pyke offered the following contribution to The Guardian Letters on the 4th May 2025 The scathing comments of Professor Julia Waters on the government's proposed minor tweaks to the way OFSTED inspects and reports on schools are entirely justified and everything she says is completely true.  In the last 25 years stress caused by OFSTED inspections has been cited in no less than 10 coroner's reports into the deaths of headteachers and there is clear evidence that many more school leaders have seriously considered suicide following an inspection.  It is quite astonishing that the current "consultation" makes no reference to this shocking fact while appearing to be based upon the premise that a system which aims to "improve" things by the deliberate use of public humiliation is fundamentally sound and just needs some minor and largely cosmetic improvements.

The system is far from sound: not only does OFSTED…

Press Officer Michael Pyke contributed the following letter to The New Statesman (19/03/2025): Dear Sir,

I regularly enjoy Andrew Marr's insights into Westminster politics but his knowledge of state education seems rather limited - as is often the case with the privately educated.  He asserts that the Children's Well-being and Schools Bill is a product of a "union-driven agenda", without providing any evidence for this view or any explanation of what it is supposed to mean; he implies that the briefing against Bridget Phillipson, that she has listened "to all the wrong people" in "rolling back...academy reforms," is justified but again provides no evidence, while snobbishly referring to "comprehensive-school thinking" without, apparently, realising that the great majority of secondary academies are themselves comprehensive schools.

In fact, as Alasdair Macdonald wrote in the NS of February 28th, there is no evidence whatsoever that academy schools are any better at raising attainment than…

Press Officer Michael Pyke's letter was published in The New World on the 19th March 2025. The edited, published version of his contribution can be found here: https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/letters-look-at-the-bigger-numbers-rachel/ Dear Sir,

David Handley describes Peter Hyman's proposals for education reform as "impressive and radical" (letters, March 13th).  It would be more correct to describe them as necessary but seriously insufficient.  Everything Hyman says is true but he fails to address the underlying problem that our education system - both public and private - is based upon ideas developed in the 1860s, especially about the nature and purpose of education and who should receive it, from which we have never really moved on.  Among the many problems that urgently need addressing (but won't be) are:

1.  For all the pious talk of "social mobility", the social structure of the system both reflects and reinforces existing patterns of hierarchy, as it always has done. …

03/02/3035 Press Officer Michael Pyke wrote the following letter to the Guardian: The criticisms being directed against the government's proposals to restrict the "freedoms" of academy schools might carry more weight if they were accompanied by any actual evidence that these "freedoms" have helped to raise standards but, needless to say, there is no such evidence (Education bill: Who is criticising Labour policy and what have they said? - January 30th).  Indeed, there is a mountain of research findings which contradict what your report rightly terms the "apocalyptic" claims being made by the government's critics.  For example, research published earlier this month by Professor Stephen Gorard at the University of Durham concludes that "academy schools are no better at raising attainment than the (Local Authority) schools they replaced" and in 2023 The Guardian, reporting on research by the Local Government Association, stated that "Council-maintained schools in England continue to outperform academies in OFSTED…

This is a copy of the letter written by Michael Pyke and published by The New European on the 19th of March, 2025: https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/letters-look-at-the-bigger-numbers-rachel/#

David Handley describes Peter Hyman's proposals for education reform as "impressive and radical" (letters, March 13th).  It would be more correct to describe them as necessary but seriously insufficient.  Everything Hyman says is true but he fails to address the underlying problem that our education system - both public and private - is based upon ideas developed in the 1860s.  Among the many problems that urgently need addressing are:

1. The social structure of the system both reflects and reinforces existing patterns of hierarchy, as it always has done.  This results in vast resources being narrowly focussed upon the education of the children of the rich, who continue to form a ruling caste within society, while the children of everyone else are obliged to attend schools all…

Below is the original version of Michael's letter, which was edited and published by The New Statesmen on the 19th of March, 2025: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/03/letter-of-the-week-the-state-of-education

The State of Education

I regularly enjoy Andrew Marr's insights into Westminster politics but his knowledge of state education seems rather limited - as is often the case with the privately educated.  He asserts that the Children's Well-being and Schools Bill is a product of a "union-driven agenda", without providing any evidence for this view or any explanation of what it is supposed to mean; he implies that the briefing against Bridget Phillipson, that she has listened "to all the wrong people" in "rolling back...academy reforms," is justified but again provides no evidence, while snobbishly referring to "comprehensive-school thinking" without, apparently, realising that the great majority of secondary academies are themselves comprehensive schools.

In fact, as Alasdair Macdonald wrote in the NS of February 28th, there…

By John Galloway With minor edits by Louise Vincent

Despite the assertions of both front benches in the House of Commons recently, any improvement in school standards is not as a direct result of the broadening of the academy schools system since Michael Gove gave it a fresh remit and impetus in 2012. This experiment in Neo-liberalism, bringing quasi-commercial principles into public services has had an impact on the state funded education system in England, but it’s not in the way our politicians would have us believe.

Had the Tory party remained in power they would have pushed for a 100% academised school system. As it is, just under 50% of English state schools are academies (although this varies by sector) of which 75% are secondary, and 40% are primary schools. If it were such a boost to outcomes, you would expect the sector to have expressed its confidence in…

Founded in 2004, The Mossbourne Community Academy (its current title) in Hackney was one of the first of Andrew Adonis's brainchild "City Academies". Under the leadership of Michael Wilshaw, its swashbuckling and very much "hands on" Headteacher, the school thrived and took just one generation of pupils to achieve "flagship" status by demonstrating the wrongheadedness of the (commonly held) idea that "nothing much" could be expected of inner-city pupils, when its sixth-formers obtained a startling number of places at leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. The incoming Conservative government soon began to put forward Mossbourne as justification for a large expansion of the academy movement and Wilshaw was rewarded in 2012 by being made OFSTED's Chief Inspector and by being given a knighthood. The success of the school led to the expansion of its academy trust into the Mossbourne Federation. A new academy, Mossbourne Victoria Park Academy, was opened…

"Hard Times", written by Dickens in 1854, is a patchy novel whose overall quality falls far short of such masterpieces as "Bleak House", "Great Expectations" and "Little Dorrit". Dickens was always at his best when writing instinctively and at his worst when writing didactively and "Hard Times" contains far too much of the latter. Nevertheless the novel is deservedly famous for its opening scene in a local charity school maintained by industrial magnate, Thomas Gradgrind, who is exercising his power to inspect the work of the school.

As the novel begins, Gradgrind is expounding his educational philosophy to a class of largely uncomprehending children: the point of going to school is to learn nothing but facts. His eye falls on a child who has learnt from birth how to manage and look after horses, because her parents earn their living giving riding displays in a local circus. He addresses h…