I Love Jamie Oliver

I love Jamie Oliver.

There. I've said it.

It was his cooking that first hooked me in but more, I love that he chooses to use his popularity - his power and influence to educate and argue for reform. His crusade to connect people with the food they eat has included showing a lamb being slaughtered and last week he shot, then skinned an alligator. More famously he had a huge impact on school dinners. So much so that his school dinners campaign led the government to introduce higher, healthier standards for school food. The television images of parents handing parents fast food through railings will remain in the British psyche for years to come - a harsh reminder of what we have become.

The Academy has also felt the ripple of the Jamie revolution. Food cannot be brought in to the academy. Everyone must eat the food provided. At lunch time everyone - students and staff - sit down together to eat. Students must sit in an allocated seat. There are six jobs from laying the table to collecting the main meal and clearning up afterwards. We even have 5 seconds of reflection to remember how lucky we all are to have food in front of us when so many in the world have none. Some meals are really popular with everyone and are devoured whereas some - the leeks for example - are left uneaten.

Three nights a week we have after-school classes and there is a short break in between. The Principal asked the caterers to serve water and apples. Given a choice between an apple or no apple the fruit is proving a huge hit even at 45p a go.

So is this the utopia Jamie would want?

Everyone eating the same meal in school is not a new idea in Britain. Public schools throughout the land have been supervising meal times for centuries. However in the public schools of the '50s there was no accommodation for difference. Our meat is Halal and we serve vegetarian meals. Some students have doctor's certificates that they have to have a snack at a certain time.

There is an inherent contradiction in trying to impose conformity and it is these challenges that have led to some schools offering choice upon choice. I think we have got the balance right. My Dad used to say 'a family that eats together, stays together' - perhaps not always the case but for our school I think the sense of community generated by sharing the same meal at the same tables is powerful. Jamie would be proud.

Have We Never Had It So Good?

I cannot have been the only Assistant Principal who wondered this week. ‘Will there be a job still for me in the 2 billion pound cuts of the future?’Ed Balls has said that money will be saved by cutting bureaucracy and creating school federations - reducing the number of senior leaders. Jobs, he has said, will be lost through ‘natural wastage’. For the first time the recession that has been so real for architect and banker friends threatens to impact on us in the sheltered public sector. Eek.

As a historian I find it fascinating to think about how the present will be viewed in the future. Will the Naughties be the time ‘we never had it so good’. It is easy to forget the changes we have witnessed. Some are huge whilst others are little ideas that have made a big difference.

Going to school in Cardiff, the largest comprehensive in Wales, I remember the building was crumbling - the paint literally peeling off the walls. There were frequent teacher strikes and a boycott of school trips because of pay cuts. Since 1997, 4000 schools have been built, rebuilt or refurbished including four in the local area. It is now standard to have computers and interactive white boards in classrooms, smaller classes supported by teaching assistants and different activities provided in after school clubs. Have we already forgotten the days of buying our own coloured pencils and booking the TV and video for a special showing of History File?

When I started teaching I was inspired by the promise of investment in the profession both in terms of salary and status. I have been lucky enough to benefit from two professional development programmes Fast Track and now Future Leaders. Having the opportunity to visit schools in Boston as part of the programme was incredible and made me realise what was possible.

Then there are the little things. Booked Up is a scheme which gives all Year 7 students a free book which they can choose. There is a well established link between poverty and low literacy levels so this scheme is a simple idea that gets children talking about books as well as the joy of owning their own copy.

So will Future Leaders programme survive the cuts? Will there be jobs for us in the senior leadership teams of the future?What is most important is that when decisions are made about how money should be saved, the most important criteria should be - how does this impact on young people? Effective leadership is essential in good schools and though it may be tempting to save cash by cutting expensive senior positions, care needs to be taken that the gains that have been made in the last decade are not squandered because ‘management’ is not a popular way to spend money. People are the most important resource in our education system. People need to be the spending priority.

But then I would say that.

Grey Socks Won't Wash

‘No, those are grey. You’ll have to go home and change.’

‘Are you telling me that I’ve taken the day off work and you’re not going to let my daughter in on the first day of secondary school because she’s got the wrong colour socks?’

‘I’m sorry but they do have to be grey. Could you go home and get some others or buy some from the high street?’

‘So you’re not going to let her in?’

‘I’m sorry, no’

Being on the front gate of a The Academy on the first day,determined to set expectations high from the beginning was harder than I expected. Ten years in London schools has made me sympathetic, understanding and accommodating. It took some courage to take the stand which clearly put the parent and the child out.

Of course the principle does not just apply to socks. It applies to every aspect of school life. It means that every teacher has to follow up every small infringement of the rules. Consequences for not submitting homework, talking in corridors, getting out of a seat in class to retrieve a wayward pencil without permission, a late arrival or being late to line up in the playground at the end of lunch. It is of course by concentrating on the little things that the big picture remains calm, ordered and safe.

Two weeks ago Mossbourne Community Academy published their GCSE results. 85% of students achieved 5A* to C including English and Maths. An incredible achievement , giving 17 out of 20 students the freedom to choose their next step in education. This wasn’t achieved through negotiation and accommodation but through creating a safe environment for learning through rigorous structure that some have criticised for being too harsh. The results have silenced critics.

In the back of my mind all the time is a fear that without noticing at some point our culture could slowly slip and our The Academy could become like so many other London schools where rules change as children go from one member of staff to another. It is this fear as well as the certainty that children need structure and safety that I hope will keep us vigilant and that The Academy, like Mossbourne, will be a school of which parents are rightly proud.

Open House at The Academy

The first ever open evening at The Academy. Six hundred prospective parents flocked to the site of The Old Boys School (once dubbed the 'worst school in Britain') to see the shiny new building from the inside and find out what The Academy is really like.

Our hand-picked creative, committed staff were ready in their classes with volunteer students engaged in activities ranging from a crime scene to a choir. They were supported by over 50 students recruited and trained to take parents on tours of the building not only to point out the incredible facilities including the sports hall, library and ICT areas but also to talk about the values and ethos of the school.Parents heard the Principal talk about the strict rules such as lining up in the playground and walking the corridors in silence on the left. They also heard about the reasons why these rules and routines were so important in an area with high deprivation and twice the crime rate of the borough as a whole. They were told about the compulsory after school classes- three days a week. Children choose what they study unless they haven't done their homework in which case they have to attend homework detention. Guides also explained how the family service lunch works where everyone has a set seat and each person on the table has a role from collecting the food to clearing up afterwards.There were many questions asked. The hardest to answer however was always the same. Where can I find out if I stand a chance of getting in?

Ten years ago the choices of secondary school in the borough were limited. Too many failing schools and there was no choice. Now however one London academy, Mossbourne has just published exam results with almost 9 out 10 students leaving with 5 good GCSEs and a number of new start up schools in the area there is some choice for parents. However the more popular the school, the closer you have to live. Last year it was 0.6 miles from The Academy next year it may be an even shorter distance. The borough operates a banding system to prevent schools from only taking students from higher abilities. Nonetheless, for parents, just living in the area is not enough. You have to have got lucky and be living in a street minutes from the school you would like to go to.The real choice will come when all schools are well led, with excellent facilities and established routines. Rome was not built in a day but our borough is at least moving in the right direction.