British devaluation

I have always tended to agree with Samuel Johnson that, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" and I get itchy when we rush for our banners and flags. But I was depressed yesterday when in a conversation with one of my colleagues about Ofsted and British Values I recalled a short satirical email I wrote almost 10 years ago,

"We are committed to promoting the core values of Britishness which are clearly demonstrated by our current government

• Arrogance - everything good has happened because we made it happen and everything bad was someone else's fault (either foreigners or Marxists who are everywhere)
• Narcissism - we are brilliant and the best and if only everyone else was more like us the world would be a better place
• Xenophobia - there is no problem big or small that cannot be blamed upon bloody foreigners (see above arrogance)
• Self interest - we will pontificate about others not following our example whilst shamelessly filling our pockets when we think no one is looking
• Laziness - never do anything positive or productive when you could spend the time moaning and blaming someone else for the problem"

I wrote that before Brexit before Boris Johnson and Liz Truss...

It now looks prophetic. How sad that satire plus time becomes tragedy.

Keyboard warriors

Last week I was invited to comment on the rise of parental complaints by SchoolsWeek in an article published under the title “Trust hopes code of conduct will end abuse”

This is the entirety of my response which bears release given the limited quote included in the article.

“Dear xxx

Further to your text, I can confirm that we have seen a significant rise in parental complaints since the pandemic.  My Legal Director feels that we are running at about two to three times the 2019 volumes of complaints made direct to the Trust. 

In light of this, the first two hypotheses should be (1) that our schools are somehow worse than they were before the pandemic and/or (2) that parents are less happy with them. But neither stack up. Ofsted judgements maintain their upward trajectory with 86% good or better and SATs scores show a good recovery of the learning lost to Covid. Likewise, I have been running stakeholder satisfaction surveys since early 2021 and parental positivity has not declined significantly over the whole period (average of 81% positive or strongly positive)

So what is behind it?

I postulate three things. 

First, disadvantaged communities feel very disenfranchised. There is a lingering resentment towards the state about lockdown, about Brexit, about inflation and the cost of living crisis. They don't feel listened to or represented. This anger needs to come out somewhere and schools are the closest lightening conductor.

Second, as a society we have become more used to doing things online than we were before. Previously where a parent had a concern or was upset, they would have had a conversation with their child's teacher or headteacher. Now, because they are angry, they skip this step and send a strongly worded email to the Trust, to Ofsted, to their MP often all three at the same time. 

Third, we have become professional complainers. Where previously a parent might have been upset about another child's behaviour towards their child, now they have 'safeguarding concerns' or allege 'racist' or 'sexual abuse' in the deliberate knowledge that these are words which trigger processes (as they should). Often this verbal escalation comes from social media groups that share short-cuts on how to complain effectively.

Put all of this together and you have a pressure cooker that needs a serious release of steam. Because behind all this heat and noise will be genuine safeguarding issues that risk being missed. The only solution I see is for schools to do even more, to lean into their communities and make them feel more valued and heard. But this is exceptionally difficult when the school leaders we are asking more of are the ones who feel the most under direct attack from this army of keyboard warriors.

Ofsted and the ESFA must also get much better at redirecting parents back to the first step of the school's complaints policy when they have skipped to Level 3 ALL-CAPS OUTRAGE!”