Jamie's Dream School

[Rig of Jarkness]

I would like to see the teaching community asking themselves what could they have done differently to have achieved a more successful result.  By contrast they seem more intent on congratulating themselves on a job well done and deluding themselves into thinking that the programme shows this.

Sorry, but where is your evidence for this?

From Wowbagger

I'd like to think that a programme like this would actually improve the viewing public's attitude towards teachers and the bloody difficult job that many of them do.

and from Mary Beard, quoted by Wowbagger

I am pretty confident that the series will be a great advertisement for the teaching profession and its skills

[Rig of Jarkness]

Spot the difference?

Fair enough - point taken.

[Wowbagger]

Let me remind you that the subject in question is the failure of the professional teaching community to educate these students to an acceptable standard over the past 11 years.

No it isn't. That's your agenda. I don't know why.

To simply blame the funding decisions of government/councils is to avoid taking responsibility.

Look at the evidence. The teaching profession takes more responsibility than almost any other I can think of - the responsibility of educating the next generation of adults.

I would like to see the banking community asking themselves what could they have done differently to have achieved a more successful result.  By contrast they seem more intent on taking enormous bonuses despite having fucked the world economy, and and having the brass neck to start the whole thing all over again.

A couple of small amendments to your original to increase its accuracy.

Most teachers I know do a bloody difficult job very well. Not all of them, it's true, but I can think of some teachers whose performance may well be below par but will never have the responsibility of dealing with kids like these. I'm thinking of some teachers I've come across in selective schools. It almost doesn't matter how they teach because the kids are so bright and generally well-geared to learning that they succeed, certainly at GCSE level, in spite of the teacher rather than because of them.

Having said that, some of the kids in that programme seem to be fairly well-adjusted. The one I mentioned above - Henry, the one whose three siblings had all been successful at something or other, was an exception to this. Were his parents failures as well? They had brought up three children quite successfully but the fourth not so, by their standards. How could any teacher have altered the way his life developed if his parents couldn't?

[Chris S]

I was a School Governor for eight years.

For a while, it was my job to get up close and personal with stats to do with Progress, Value Added (ugh...) and SATS (double Ugh... damn Labour gubbinsment).

Two things stood out in that time.

(1) The funding was generally adequate, but often wasted because we (Middle School) had no idea how much was coming, for what, and when. Admin was overly complex and provision piecemeal.

(2) The parental support was mixed at best, and in some years completely shameful.

We (Chris and Mrs S) brought our own children up to the best of our abilities. We read to them, listened to them when they talked about stuff, and treated them like people. We were lucky that we could give them opportunities, like learning musical instruments and stuff, that our beloved LEA had already largely pulled from schools.

In my years as a Governor, I was scared sh*tless by the number of kids who didn't have that secure grounding. That's not meant to beat my parental drum - I basically just followed what my parents did, but so many kids came through the school who:

1. Had multiple sets of parents
2. Had no access to parental time in the evenings
3. Treated school as an escape
4. Were essentially disfunctional - as in, at the age of 7, couldn't dress themselves or use a bathroom unattended.

It comes as no surprise to me that secondary schools have trouble making sense of that .

[clarion]

...SATS (double Ugh... damn Labour gubbinsment).

The tests were introduced for 7-year-olds for the academic year ending July 1991, and for 11-year-olds in the academic year ending July 1995.
Similar tests were introduced for 14-year-olds for the academic year ending July 1998 but were scrapped at the end of the academic year ending July 2009.

Labour introduced one out of three sets (which had been planned by the Tories), and removed it anyway.

It's important to remember things accurately.

[Chris S]

Labour introduced one out of three sets (which had been planned by the Tories), and removed it anyway.

It's important to remember things accurately.

FFS. Who cares what colour the government was? Forget the Cons Vs Coms pissing contest for a second. This is kids lives we're talking about.

My mistake I guess - for mentioning a colour. I'll revise my original statement, because it probably works better:

"SATS (double Ugh... damn interfering gubbinsment...)"

[clarion]

I agree with everything else you say.  I only mentioned it because you were blaming the wrong folk.

[Wowbagger]

A propos of Chris's post, I was vice chair of govs at the kids' primary school from about 1988 to 1997.  During that period the funding was consistently and woefully inadequate, with cuts coming year on year. During the final year, the head of an 800+ school had to teach because his budget didn't stretch to employing enough teachers. My younger daughter was in his class.

[Chris S]

It's worth noting at this juncture, the Middle School I was a governor at had "large school" status which, at the time, attracted more money - and we were in the enviable, and very very rare position of never having a problem with the amount of money available - it was all about the manner of the delivery.

[Rig of Jarkness]

Let me remind you that the subject in question is the failure of the professional teaching community to educate these students to an acceptable standard over the past 11 years.

No it isn't. That's your agenda. I don't know why.

No, that is the agenda of the programme.  Jamie Oliver asserts that these students have been let down by their schooling, as was he.  
It's you who is trying to switch the agenda of this thread to a different subject by your repeated references to banking.  

[Gandalf]

From the limited amount we saw on the screen, I taught much tougher kids than these between 1975 and 1981, and plenty of their younger siblings from 1981 to 1986. The criminally disruptive would not have been allowed on the programme. I had been teaching for 3 weeks when we had a kid taken to hospital for stitches because another had hit him on the head with a machete. Fortunately they were not in my care at the time!

The great thing about chess is that you have to do a minimum of explaining to do before getting them started, and as all of the "teachers" in that programme observed, one thing these kids aren't that good at as a group is listening. The Starkie-style lesson, which only works if you've got their attention, was doomed to failure in that context - even more so when being delivered by a pompous and unsympathetic twat like Starkie. You've got to get them doing stuff, once you've got them playing only so much as a game involving just pawns, the teacher is no longer the centre of attention. Chess also takes advantage of the competitive nature of pretty well all kids.

You might like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0mxz2-AQ64&feature=related

[Julian]

I've not seen this yet, but I'm looking forward to catching up with it on iplayer or something.

It's no surprise to me that brilliant academics don't make great teachers.  At university there were some academics who were also gifted teachers, and there were some who could write an internationally acclaimed research paper but couldn't impart knowledge to others to save their lives - and then got frustrated by what they perceived as the student's inability to understand.  And that was at university; I'd imagine that the same thing at GCSE level would make it worse. 

[Wowbagger]

Let me remind you that the subject in question is the failure of the professional teaching community to educate these students to an acceptable standard over the past 11 years.

No it isn't. That's your agenda. I don't know why.

No, that is the agenda of the programme.  Jamie Oliver asserts that these students have been let down by their schooling, as was he.  
It's you who is trying to switch the agenda of this thread to a different subject by your repeated references to banking.  

The system let me down.

That's from the intro to the first programme.

The system does not equal the teachers. You've chosen to interpret that so that you can have a pop at teachers.

As an aside, teachers can find themselves the subject of disciplinary hearings if they criticise government education policy, as happened to a colleague of my daughter's when he had a letter published in The Times.

[Rig of Jarkness]

I've now watched episode 2 and I can't see where this programme is going, it doesn't seem to be doing anyone any favours. 
It's showing most of the guest experts in a bad light because they are inadequately prepared and given insufficient support (perhaps none at all as far as I can see).
It's showing most of the students as thoroughly deserving of the life in the gutter that most of them are headed for
It's showing the 11 years of professional teaching effort previously administered to these students as being about as ineffective as that delivered by the guest experts

I'm sure Jamie Oliver has a valid point but this programme seems a hugely flawed means of exploring it.

[Wowbagger]

I was most surprised how Starkey managed to make sufficient peace with the group that his second lesson went quite well.

Robert Winstone was superb again - what was the quote from the girl who got into the fight and was almost suspended as a result of Alistair Campbell's lesson? "I hate science but I never had a teacher like you" or words to that effect. Winstone made it clear to the kids, when doing the DNA experiment with 3 other leading scientists in tow, that only a very few schools would be able to afford to resource that lesson.

Callow is out of his depth.

The point of the programme? To improve ratings and to get people like us nattering about it.

[Rig of Jarkness]

The point of the programme? To improve ratings and to get people like us nattering about it.

I take it you mean viewing ratings rather than school ratings ?

[Wowbagger]

The point of the programme? To improve ratings and to get people like us nattering about it.

I take it you mean viewing ratings rather than school ratings ?

Of course.

[hellymedic]

I am no educationist.
I know I lack the people skills to engage with a group of kids.

As I see it school education has large incremental components: fail to 'get' literacy and book-based learning is inaccessible etc.

Have a teacher you dislike (or who dislikes you) for a year and child becomes disengaged.

Once a kid has fallen off the conveyor belt that is class-based teaching, it is very hard to get back on, probably impossible if you have any special educational needs.

The larger the class size, the higher the chance of falling (possibly undetected). from the belt.

Many kids will have had 11 years 'in formal education' but nobody addressed their disengagement and the schooling will have passed them by. Those teachers with large classes just don't have the time for the few minutes of individual attention that could have prevented several years wasted at school.

[hellymedic]

Sorry, I meant that disengagement had not been addressed successfully...

Jamie's pupils all seemed to show evidence of disengagement IMO.

[Wowbagger]

Charlie Brooker: Jamie's Dream School – a youth club with David Starkey instead of a pool table | Comment is free | The Guardian

Charlie Brooker on form as usual. 

[Tigerrr]

Why are people discussing this TV programme as if it was real life?
It is a reality TV celebrity builder. The celebs have all negotiated their involvement with agents, in pursuit of their own celebrity brand positioning goals.  Everyone involved has an angle and a is working an agenda - with the possible exception of the kids. The director/producers are creating an opera story in the editing - there will be early heroes unveiled as villains, villains who are redeemed, characters who go on a journey, lovable rogues etc etc.  There are plotlines that will be developed.
It is creepy.
Jamie O is a celeb worried his brand is being eclipsed by Fearnley - that is the real story.

[Biggsy]

Nevertheless, it gets you thinking about how education, and communication with kids in general, can be improved.  It's worth watching for that alone.

Actually, I avoided the programme because I thought it would be too much of a load of rowing and crap, but the clips I've seen on YouTube are genuinely interesting.

[Wowbagger]

Whereas much of what Tigerrrr says is true, I've still enjoyed watching the different styles of the teacher-celebs. It hasn't surprised me in the slightest that Rolf Harris and Robert Winstone have created a rapport with the students where other less empathetic characters have not.

Winstone's comments about the lesson he gave on DNA being beyond the budgets of the vast majority of school was also a very valid point, and one which answers one post early on in this thread, although I am sure that particular poster would never accept that state schools are chronically underfunded.

[Rig of Jarkness]

Why are people discussing this TV programme as if it was real life?
It is a reality TV celebrity builder. The celebs have all negotiated their involvement with agents, in pursuit of their own celebrity brand positioning goals.  Everyone involved has an angle and a is working an agenda - with the possible exception of the kids. The director/producers are creating an opera story in the editing - there will be early heroes unveiled as villains, villains who are redeemed, characters who go on a journey, lovable rogues etc etc.  There are plotlines that will be developed.
It is creepy.
Jamie O is a celeb worried his brand is being eclipsed by Fearnley - that is the real story.

I agree with some of what you say but I think the quality of the guest teachers affords them a status far higher than mere celebs - these are seriously well respected individuals and I'm quite sure that they signed up for this with considerably more altruistic intent than furthering any celebrity status. 

[clarion]

I am prepared to believe that, alongside the continued exposure their ego desires, the participants mainly have a view to helping.  In their own ways.