I took a quick stroll over to the Malcolm X Centre this evening for a presentation by the team hoping to create an Urban Village School in St Werburgh. They've recently been featured on the front page of the Bristol Evening Post, and today the headline act was former local secondary head James Wetz, introducing his recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme "The Children Left Behind".

The goal is to create a secondary school of around 350 peoples - a marked contrast to modern trends in the state sector to build schools with over a thousand pupils - using the principles of "Human-Scale Education",

Human Scale Education was set up in 1985 with the aim of promoting small, human scale learning communities within the state maintained and independent sectors of education. Human scale learning environments can foster the positive relationships that enable teachers to know their students well and make possible a more holistic approach to learning that engages the whole person.

A contention of proponents of Human-Scale Education is that UK primary schools offer a better standard of education because their small size allows teachers and pupils to form stronger relationships. James Wetz offered a compelling statistic to support this: of the children who leave secondary school with no qualifications, 40% of them exited primary school with marks that were average or above average. He reported the comments of a Primary Head teacher to a group of Secondary Head teachers: "So what do you do to them?".

For maximum ironic effect, this initiative is being launched just as Bristol Council are proposing plans to "super-size" many of the city's primary schools, allegedly because they "do not give the best value for money for council tax payers".

I hope this works out well for the St Werburgh's team. They've got a lot of obstacles to overcome, particularly since their stated goal is to create a school within the state sector through the "department for children, schools and families" [sic]. Two key problems they will face are the National Curriculum and the Teachers' Unions.

The National Curriculum has few champions outside Whitehall. For some the problem is that it constrains the creativity of teachers; for others the emphasis on tests and targets doesn't leave enough time for learning. Looking at the American examples given in James Wetz's film, many of the schools had negotiated independence from the equivalent US structure - typically a mandated curriculum approved by an elected school board.

The number that did shock me was the Pupil-Teacher Ratio in the UK. Would it surprise you to know it's around 16.1 pupils per teacher (Full Time Equivalent)? In fact, adding in all support staff excluding admit and clerical, on average in UK Secondary schools there are 1 staff members for every 11 pupils. And yet average class sizes are around 21-22 [anyone got the latest stats?]. So what are all the non-teaching teachers doing? A great many of them are in management roles; roles that would be unnecessary if large schools were replaced by numerous small schools. The loss of large numbers of Deputy-Head and SMT roles is unlikely to go down well with the teaching profession.

One thing that did occur to me was whether the project could work if the goal was just "build a school" rather than specifically a state school. I'm preparing an update to an old piece on Redland Green School, for which I've obtained some Quantity Surveyor's estimation sheets. The slightly out-of-date rule of thumb is that it costs around £1500 per square meter to build a new school, and another £1500 to fill it with furniture, carpets, white boards and those little pots of white glue that don't stick anything. If we go with a figure of about 8 square meters per pupil, a "human-scale" school for 350 pupils, would cost around £8,400,000.

A big wodge of cash, but not completely beyond the means of a motivated group of parents and a good fund raising operation. Dealing with the circa £1,500,000 per year in operating costs would be a challenge, but perhaps an opportunity to test-drive an education voucher scheme, and give local parents the chance to make real choices about their children's futures. Because one thing that is often forgotten is that it is to the parents that schools should be offering their services, not to the children and certainly not to the state.

P.S. Elected Ashley Councillor Jon Rogers was there, but no sign of his colleague Shirley Marshall. And now for a musical interlude...

Following on from my previous post, at our recent Association Management meeting, I proposed that the Bristol & South Gloucestershire Conservative Association should we petition the membership on removing Giles Chichester from our party list for the South West Region seat in the European Parliament, and that we collectively write to David Cameron urging him to request Ms Spelman's resignation from the role of Chairman of the Conservative Party

However I was unable to convince the rest of the team that now was the right time to take action; the consensus being that we should give both Mr Chichester and Ms Spelman the opportunity to discuss their financial arrangements with their respective ombudsman - the Quaestor's Office and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. However the Ladies' Committee has written to David Cameron to indicate their displeasure!

If you fancy getting involved in one of our local campaigns, now is a great time to start. We've got a Political Discussion Group taking place on June 19th (venue: 5 Westfield Park), and lots of canvassing to do in Bristol West and the other constituencies.

In other local news:

If you've got £195.00 to spare, you might be interested in a two-day pass to the Bristol Environmental
Technologies & Services Expo. I'm getting quite a lot of traffic to my blog article from people looking for their website. Looks like my Search-Engine Optimisation is better than theirs.

Tommorrow (June 10th), is the full Council of the City of Bristol. I'll be watching it over the Internet to see if I can see Shirley Marshall making one of her infrequent visits to our city. The Conservative Group have got a few pointed questions to ask of the ruling cabinet:

MQ2 COUNCILLOR J GOULANDRIS TO ASK COUNCILLOR P HAMMOND, DEPUTY LEADER AND EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR COHESION AND RAISING ACHIEVEMENT PUBLICATION OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL REVIEW

• Q1. On reflection, does the Executive Member agree that the public consultation on the Primary School Review should not have been launched just before a one-week school holiday?
• Q3. The Executive Member is quoted as saying that the aim is 'to transform primary education in Bristol and continue (sic) to raise standards of achievements'. Why does he feel so little has been achieved in recent years in terms of improved results and achievements?

COUNCILLOR R EDDY TO ASK COUNCILLOR J PRICE, EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR HOMES AND STREETSCENE

• Q1. Please can the Executive Member confirm the current status of the urgent inquiry which was ordered after the distressing discovery of an 8-year old body in council accommodation at Mawdeley House, Bedminster, in early February 2008?

MQ18 COUNCILLOR B LEWIS TO ASK COUNCILLOR P HAMMOND, DEPUTY LEADER, AND EXECUTIVE MEMBER FOR COHESION AND RAISING ACHIEVEMENT PRIMARY SCHOOL REVIEW

• Q1 Please can the executive Member provide me with the evidential basis behind his presumption in favour of super size primary schools to give the best possible education?

Primary education is a hot topic in the city at the moment. The contention of the council is that schools "do not give the best value for money for council tax payers". And yet the parents say they prefer these close-knit institutions. The Primary Review Consultation is the justification for this policy, but there will be no school closures before 2010, so there's still time to fix things..

One development that I only found out about recently (via Mr Vowles)is a plan by a group of parents to form their own Urban Village School. Their next meeting is June 17th at at the Malcolm X Centre, Ashley Road, St. Pauls. One to watch, perhaps, particularly with the involvement of ex-Cotham Grammar School head James Wetz.

Carl and Oliver,* both 8-year-olds in our after-school program, huddled over piles of Legos. They carefully assembled them to add to a sprawling collection of Lego houses, grocery stores, fish-and-chips stands, fire stations, and coffee shops. They were particularly keen to find and use "cool pieces," the translucent bricks and specialty pieces that complement the standard-issue red, yellow, blue, and green Lego bricks.

"I'm making an airport and landing strip for my guy's house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.

"That's not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."

"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it's for public use."

Discussions like the one above led to children collaborating on a massive series of Lego structures we named Legotown. Children dug through hefty-sized bins of Legos, sought "cool pieces," and bartered and exchanged until they established a collection of homes, shops, public facilities, and community meeting places. We carefully protected Legotown from errant balls and jump ropes, and watched it grow day by day.

After nearly two months of observing the children's Legotown construction, we decided to ban the Legos.

Read the rest of this depressing story of over-zealous teachers sucking the joy out of childhood here. Fortunately we have no such problems in this country.

At times, one might think state schools are run for the benefit of teachers, not parents and children. Have a look at this video:

I've been getting some traffic from a Flickr group - BristolGraffiti - in relation to one of my previous posts. The discussion is avaiable at Flickr, but I thought I'd mirror a few excerpts:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bristolgraffiti/discuss/72157603881419556

[In response to a critique of my critique of a new educational DVD [plus follow-up] and some aspects of Graffiti, or Street Art, or Urban Art or Graff or whatever it's called these days.]

The difficulty with a response [to the Flickr comments] is that we're not necessarily using the same terms of reference. Looking down this list of comments, one can see various different phrases - Graffiti, Street Art, Tagging - that are not universally defined. We can certainly agree that not all vandalism is graffiti, and not all graffiti is vandalism. For an example of the former, here's the statue of King William III in Queens Square:

You use the word 'tagging' in a generic sense, to distinguish it from 'street art' also referred to in a generic sense. If or perhaps more specifically where it is illegal to put paint to wall, does this distinction make any difference in your view?

Aesthetics and Legality are two independent assessments, the first subjective and the latter objective.

How do you reconcile BCC's willingness to protect the Banksy' [sic] pieces around the city whilst at the same time blaming the 'scourge of graffiti' for making old people quake in their beds at night?

This statement is a non sequitur. Some elderly people do get intimidated by crowds of young people, or anti-social behaviour committed by people of all ages, but that's nothing to do with graffiti.

BCC chose not to overpaint the Banksy at the bottom of Park Street - I'm not sure who actually owns the wall, possibly the council have the freehold - due to public acceptance of the work. Most works, and most artists, do not have such public acceptance.

I've never heard anyone refer to the "scourge of graffiti" - what's the source for that statement, as the use of quotation marks implies it is a direct quotation?

Conversely, many people do dislike graffiti, whether you choose to define that as "all painted works on publicly visible surfaces regardless of permission given" or "all painted works on publicly visible surfaces where made without permission" or "painted works made without permission and displaying artistic merit", or another definition of similar character.

A person's reason for disliking such work may vary: a local business in Cotham contacted me to report random tagging made to their overnight shutters because it was the owner's preference that the shutters be of uniform colour; a local housholder contacted me because they had had tags applied to their car, which they did not like.

What other more complex factors might make people feel insecure and frightened, yet 'target' streetart in their mind as the root cause of their fears/concerns/problems?

Lot's of factors - many of them not at all complex - do make people feel insecure and frightened. Yet street art isn't particularly targeted. In Bristol, each council tax payer spends about fifty pence on graffiti removal, versus about £147.00 on general policing.

What's the definition of 'kids' and why do you think they are the 'origin' of the tags/graff/art you see?

I make no attribution of particular pieces of art to particular age groups. See above for definition of "kids" which is consistent with the original topic - the council's DVD aimed at schools.

Do you think that street artists are somehow a static population? That they always live in the areas that their work proliferates? Sure it might start off that way but does it stay the same?

I presume that - like any other hobby - people stop and start creating street art as the mood takes them. But, if we choose to define tagging as a form of street art, it is generally an activity associated with those in the lower demographics; there aren't aren't many pensioners doing "Graff".

At what point was it deemed OK to have Banksy art dotted around the city?

I don't think it ever was centrally planned. Individuals who have had Banksy stencils applied to their property have - over the years - probably taken a range of positions from anger and irritation to the more modern approach of cutting it out and putting it on eBay.

As an aside, If Banksy were to reveal his identity, he may face civil claims from those whose property defaced, but he may also lose his following. It's interesting to me that those taking part in the Street Art scene wish to identify as youth-oriented, anti-authority and counter-cultural. And yet a quick look at this thread demonstrates that many of us here are certainly not kids, and are well into our middle years.

The council's stated goal in releasing the DVD - according to their press release - was to create debate/discussion. I would prefer it if they had said their goal was to tell school-children that they shouldn't paint other peoples' property without permission as it is unambiguously wrong, rather than suggest that there exists a "grey area". In this case the use of the word "debate" is unhelpful.

If you - adults, and consequently voters - wish to debate a motion along the lines of: "We believe that a self-identified street artist should be allowed to use any public surface as their canvas" then go for it. I will happily take the counter position, and not for "party political" reasons but because I disagree with the motion.

Walt - in regard to the debates you have with your kids: If you were to say "It's bedtime" and they refused to go to bed, would you debate them on the motion "There should be a set time at which children should go to bed"? You might perhaps negotiate - "ten more minutes, then" - which is not debate. But at some point, your duty as a parent is to dictate (your word) the rules and expectations of your family. What about if next door's kids keyed your car? Would you debate "Cars look better when unvandalised" with them, or complain to their parents and expect them to cover the cost of repairs.

"if people feel like they aren't being listened to how else can they make them selfs [sic] heard? oh yeah....graffiti..."

Will - if you have something to say, start a blog. Or write letters to the newspaper. Or start a political party. Or stand on a street corner with a megaphone. Or seek permission from a property owner to create art on their wall. Whatever...

But if your response is to apply paint to someone else's property without their permission, then it's impolite. And against the law, which is in many ways the same thing.

I'm feeling confident that an independent reader would regard me as carrying this debate, such as it is. To prove me wrong you must engage - the purpose of debate is to persuade, and while some of the people reading this will dismiss what I'm saying "ad hominem" - because of who I am - others will disagree because they think my argument is wrong. And some will think I'm right.

I'm not involved with the DVD project, nor am I a councillor; my view is that the money used could have been better spent. What's your view?

Article from the Bristol Evening Post 

Teachers given the freedom to teach? Next thing the government will be proposing that poilice constables be given the freedom to patrol the streets; dentists the freedom to fix peoples' teeth; doctors the freedom to diagnose illnesses; nurses the freedom to bandage wounds.

Where will it all end? Imagine the sort of chaos that will ensue if everyone were given the freedom to get on with their professions, their businesses and their lives without targets, policies and plans handed down from Westminster. God help us all.

Courtesy of Wellington Grey.

The New Physics Exam

Notes to the candidate: no mathematics are necessary for this exam. Try as hard as you can to get the answers correct. You will be marked on effort.

The Exam Paper.