Teachers vote for walkout over Durham academy plans

May 5 2009 by Neil McKay, The Journal

Boarding school bureaucracy

THOUSANDS of vulnerable children could have their lives transformed if they were given the chance to go to boarding school, a leading head teacher said yesterday.

Many are denied the opportunity because of a culture of "ignorance and prejudice", mainly in local councils, according to Melvyn Roffe, chairman of the Boarding Schools Association (BSA).

In his speech to the BSA’s annual conference in Thame, Oxfordshire yesterday, Mr Roffe called on ministers to ensure that local authorities take up boarding school places for vulnerable children.

He said: "We know that up and down the country there are hundreds, if not thousands, of children whose life chances would be transformed by having a place at boarding school."

Mr Roffe told delegates that despite good work by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and some local authorities, "there remain too many people in the system who reject on the basis of ignorance or prejudice the very idea that a child might thrive at a boarding school".

He added: "And too many others who mean well but find themselves incapable of doing the right thing for a child because of time served bureaucratic procedures which too often condemn them to an ever diminishing circle of failure."

Double penalty

BRIGHT pupils educated in England’s most deprived schools do worse in their GCSEs, education experts said yesterday.

A study by the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, found these students face a "double penalty" – they achieve half a grade less for each GCSE they take, and are entered for fewer of the exams.

It warns parents that their child could be less likely to achieve as highly if they attend a deprived school.

The researchers examined the results of 550,000 pupils who took GCSEs in England in 2006.

They found all pupils not eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) – a measure of poverty – attending the most deprived, or poorest, 10% of schools on average achieve two-and-a-half grades less in their best eight GCSEs, compared to non-FSM pupils in the most advantaged, or richest, 10% of schools.

The study concludes: "The attainment of otherwise similar pupils in deprived schools lags significantly behind those in the more advantaged schools."

As well as achieving half a grade less in their GCSEs, the brightest pupils in the poorest schools are ten times more likely to take an intermediate GNVQ, a vocational qualification, than bright pupils in the richest schools.

The study said: "Personal choice and aspiration should be the driving force for such decisions, not the preference of schools, preoccupied with maximising their position on published league tables."

Individual vocational qualifications often count as more than one GCSE grade in league tables.

The researchers also warn a "hidden poor" exists in schools among pupils who have at one point been eligible for FSM, but are not eligible in their GCSE year.

In 2006, the study says, 75,000 secondary school pupils in England (13.6%) were eligible for FSM in their GCSE year. But an extra 42,000 pupils (7.7%) were eligible earlier in their school career.