Proper Gander – Class struggle
Silent classrooms with students reading line-by-line in unison, wary that any wrong action will lead to a swift reprimand probably isn’t what we imagine secondary schools to be like. However, this approach has been taken in recent years, as Richard Bilton reports in Britain’s Strictest Schools for BBC1’s Panorama. The Athena Learning Trust runs six secondary schools in Devon and Cornwall with 6,500 pupils in total. On its website are syrupy phrases like ‘High support and high ownership are at the heart of our ethos. At Athena, we are resolute in our pursuit of support, kindness, and integrity’. Such words sound particularly hollow to the students, parents and ex-teachers who are concerned about its tough stance on discipline.
As the documentary tells us, Athena Learning Trust has a ‘two strikes’ policy for when its students break the rules: a warning for the first breach and then being sent to detention for the second, called ‘reflection’. Breaking the rules while in reflection leads to ‘suspension’: being barred from the school short-term. Such approaches are familiar, but in Athena schools, looking out of the window can be an infraction. One of the students tearfully explains the ‘321 focus’ catchphrase, heard dozens of times daily, which is a (clumsy) acronym for ‘face and observe the teacher in clearly upright silent attention’. There are strict expectations not just about students’ attention, but also for punctuality and their uniforms being ‘perfect’. We’re told that children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) are more likely to behave in ways which challenge the rules, although Government Adviser on behaviour in schools in England Tom Bennett says people with conditions such as ADHD need a ‘calm, safe, dignified environment’ and that tight discipline supports this.
Having a lot of regulations to breach has meant that a lot of punishments have been issued. The programme states that Athena’s Ilfracombe school has around 1,000 suspensions a year, almost five times higher than the average across England. One of the parents interviewed for the documentary describes how his daughter got into a cycle of going from reflection to suspension repeatedly, therefore missing out on what was being taught in the classroom. He and others attended a drop-in session to voice concerns, arranged by Panorama’s producers, which Bilton says attracted more people than anticipated. Those interviewed for the programme aren’t short of adjectives to describe Athena’s regime: ‘authoritarian’, ‘cruel’, ‘dystopian’, ‘robotic’, ‘abusive’, ‘almost militarian’ and ‘a bit like a dictatorship’. Athena’s management didn’t agree to be interviewed and instead issued a statement.
Athena is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom and handicrafts, both appropriate to schooling. She’s also associated with warfare, perhaps reflecting her namesake’s regimented methods. Schools with reputations for lax standards of behaviour and low exam results were taken over by Athena because it was acknowledged that changes were needed. The stringent policies covering discipline were introduced because the demographic of ‘white underprivileged people near the coast’ is hardest to teach, Independent Councillor James Ball says he was told by Athena staff.
Bilton asks whether Athena’s approach has been beneficial. Its schools mostly have good outcomes from Ofsted assessments and exam results have improved. But according to former Athena teacher Robin Johnson, the children have a ‘joyless education’, and students say they find the ethos ‘depressing’. As another ex-teacher says, when children have come to hate school, this ‘can’t be good, no matter what their GCSE results are’. Some parents have decided to educate their children at home instead.
This summer, hundreds of people attended public meetings protesting against the schools’ practices, and ‘parent power won’, says Bilton. Athena Learning Trust is being disbanded, as we’re told towards the end of the programme, its footage having been recorded before this was announced. CEO Ben Parnell has resigned and the Department For Education will monitor Athena to implement changes until its schools are transferred to other trusts.
Athena has operated in the academy system, as a not-for-profit charitable trust. While organisations which run academy schools are still funded and regulated by the government, they aren’t overseen by the local council, and so they can be run in different ways to state schools. More than 80% percent of secondary schools in England are academies, with other frameworks in the rest of Britain. One criticism of trusts which manage multiple academies (like Athena) is that decisions are made in some centralised head office distant from the schools, and therefore don’t fully consider local concerns. They are likely to take into account the interests of any financial backers, which could include businesses, other educational establishments, faith groups or voluntary groups. While the academy system isn’t a ‘privatisation’ of education, it has made schooling more corporate in how it is structured.
This system is an attempt to make education run within the constraints of capitalist society. While Athena’s methods may have been extreme, they were a response to the difficulties of the circumstances the schools found themselves in. One consideration not explored by the documentary is the number of students in each class. Large class sizes are a result of schools not being able to afford the staff or the room to have more classes which have fewer people. Smaller class sizes would mean that more time could be spent with each student, personalising their learning and reducing the likelihood of distracting behaviour. But as resources are rationed by money, large classes are the norm and discipline becomes a more pragmatic option. This doesn’t excuse Athena for the harm its approach caused to some of its students, although in a way it teaches them what to expect once they leave school for wider society which also stifles learning with unaccountable rules and the threat of punishment.
MIKE FOSTER