Over the years I’ve used a number of pieces of software to help the writing process. Most of these have been the standard word processor (Open Office is a favourite) together with a storage system of folders and sub-folders within my computer to keep track of interesting resources. But recently, I’ve tried a new piece of software – Scrivener – to help me write. At the close of the last academic year, I downloaded the trial version and used it to write some short papers and newspaper articles. It was great.

So, today I’ve purchased the full version (around £20 for the educational license) and committed myself to using it for all writing projects this year (and, I suspect, for several years to come). Why? There are a number of reasons.

Firstly, it contains a beautiful and clutter-free writing environment. This is important. It contains no distractions and allows you to focus on the written word. It is highly customisable, of course, but I like the simplicity of the standard mode. Along with the beautiful keyboard of a MacBook Pro, it provides a great touch, feel and look to a writing environment within which I’ll spend many hours.

Secondly, it has a fantastic way of allowing you to organise the resources that you need to write. Everything you need can be easily imported into the ‘Research’ folder and from then you can view, organise and comment on other electronic resources from within Scrivener easily. There are various tagging systems for these resources (and your text) that I’ll learn how to use over the next few months. But, as a basic storage system, it works really well.

Thirdly, I like the way that Scrivener allows you to organise and structure your text. Whilst it may not be to everyone’s taste, the ability to create chunks of text, move them around quickly and easily within the software, create summaries of them on post-it notes on a virtual cork-board, etc are all helpful tools and fit support my writing process very helpfully.

Finally, Scrivener is coded and developed by a team down in Devon who seem thoroughly pleasant and supportive. There is a great online community too. This will prove really helpful over the next few months as I explore some of the software’s more detailed functionality. There are also a great selection of video tutorials on their website.

So, this is not an extensive review of Scrivener. You’ll find these here and here, and many other places too. Rather, I’m looking forward to making use of this excellent tool. I encourage you to have a look at it too. (Windows users – a new version for you poor souls is on the way very soon).

What an indictment on the huge number of schools across our country that are doing a fantastic job. My children, and those of many of my colleagues and friends, attend their local comprehensive school. We don’t have the money for a private education for children (and wouldn’t want that anyway); we haven’t had to move to play the system of catchment areas and admissions. This seems to me to be another example of attributing the problems of a small, mainly urban, part of the educational system to the whole and, in the process, seeking to frighten many parents unduly. For many of us, our local schools are doing a fantastic job and we should get behind and support them against some of this coalition’s damaging, rushed and poorly constructed educational policies.

This article was written by Warwick Mansell, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 28th June 2010 15.46 UTC

He is one of the most successful sports people in Britain, a multi-millionaire and a role model to millions.

But a less well-known fact about the racing driver Lewis Hamilton is that as a 16-year-old in 2001 he was mistakenly expelled from school, and only cleared after his father, Anthony, vigorously fought the headteacher’s decision at an independent appeals panel.

The panel concluded it was a case of mistaken identity, with Hamilton wrongly excluded alongside five other teenage boys after a fellow pupil was attacked.

“I knew I was innocent but [the head] did not appear to be interested,” Hamilton wrote in his autobiography. He added, of the situation before the panel heard the case: “No one appeared to listen – no one either wanted to or had the time. We were on our own and I was out of school.”

The case is being put forward as an example of the type of miscarriage of justice that could occur if the government goes ahead with plans, proposed by the Conservatives before the general election, to scrap independent appeals panels.

In the run-up to the election, David Cameron told London’s Evening Standard: “The headteacher should have absolute discretion over excluding pupils who are behaving badly. Right now, a headteacher can exclude a child who behaves appallingly and the appeals panel can put the kid straight back in school.”

Scrapping the panels, three- or five-person bodies that hear pupils’ and parents’ appeals against exclusion decisions, has been Conservative policy for several years. It is thought the move could commence in an education bill due to start going through parliament in the autumn.

However, a paper being published by the Runnymede Trust charity highlights the Lewis Hamilton case as an example of what could go wrong. The paper, by David Gillborn and David Drew, of London University’s Institute of Education, also presents some interesting statistics.

Of the 8,110 permanent exclusions in 2007-08, it says, only 710, fewer than one in 11, were contested in front of appeals panels. Of those, the panel found in favour of the pupil in one in four cases: a total of 180 times. This represents a headteacher’s decision being overturned at appeal in just 2% of all cases of permanent exclusion.

Even more strikingly, perhaps, government figures show, of the 180 times that the parent or pupil was successful, only in 60 cases overall, in 2007-08, did the child actually return to the school. In the remaining cases, a decision would have been taken to educate the child at another school or pupil referral unit.

To critics, it seems a lot of political fuss about the disruption potentially caused by 60 pupils, out of a total pupil population in England of 8.1 million (or one pupil in 135,000), returning to classrooms from which the head wanted to expel them.

“[This] hardly constitutes a huge disruption to the flow of exclusions. However, panels are highly significant to the people who hope to find justice,” says the paper.

When a head takes a decision to exclude a pupil permanently, the case must be heard by a committee of the school’s governors. If pupil and parents are unhappy, they can appeal to the appeals panel. This must consist of at least one person who has been a headteacher in another school. It is chaired by a “lay” person, who has never worked in a school, but could be legally qualified. The panels were set up in 1986 by the Conservatives but have come under fire for overruling heads’ decisions. Teacher unions have sometimes threatened strike action if pupils are reinstated.

Government guidance published in 2008 says the panels “should not reinstate the pupil without good reasons”: cases of mistaken identity, or the punishment being disproportionate, or when there have been “procedural irregularities” in the school’s handling of the exclusion.

Sam Murray, head of policy and information at the Advisory Centre for Education, which works with families affected by exclusion decisions, is concerned. She is particularly worried that the move could take away safeguards for those families with children with special needs, those who are eligible for free school meals and ethnic minorities including black Caribbean pupils over-represented in exclusions statistics. She says: “As an adult at work, I would expect to have the right to make my case to an independent body. Why should pupils not have that right?”

Concerns have also been raised that the move could force parents into expensive challenges through the courts, although the Conservatives were quoted in 2007 as saying they would take legal steps to stop this happening. Even the Association of School and College Leaders, which represents secondary heads, has been among those opposed for this reason. An ASCL spokeswoman says: “We would rather keep the appeals panels. If they did not exist, there would be more parents taking schools to court.”

Carl Parsons, an expert on exclusions, visiting professor at the University of Greenwich and sometime appeals panel member himself, says that the panels are imperfect, in that the process of fighting a quasi-legal battle can be intimidating for parents. He advocates a system whereby schools and local authorities work to make exclusions unnecessary. He adds: “I would not want to stick up too strongly for the system that we have. But there has to be that right of appeal.”

The paper to be published in the Runnymede Trust’s magazine also presents new figures showing that pupils from black Caribbean and from “any other black” backgrounds were more likely to be excluded from academies than those of all other ethnic categories.

Some 0.72% and 0.74% of pupils in these two ethnic groups were permanently excluded from academies in the academic year 2007-08, the figures show, compared to 0.62% and 0.59% in conventional state schools. The permanent exclusion rate for white pupils from academies that year was 0.44%, more than double the figure of 0.2 % for non-academies.

The paper argues that ministers, who are now promising academy status for all schools, should monitor this situation very carefully.

A Department for Education spokesman says: “Ministers are currently considering the future of independent appeals panels, as part of a wider reform of school discipline. The education and children’s bill in the autumn will put heads and teachers back in control, giving them a range of tough new powers to deal with bullies and the most disruptive pupils. We will set out full details in due course.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

1. Genuinely independent state schools. Done – Academies Bill on its way through Parliament.
2. Curriculum autonomy. Schools should be free to decide their own curriculum, and the way that it is taught. Done – key plank of academies and free school reform.
3. Intellectual rigour. Not sure – Seldon thinks that ‘intellectual depth is lacking in too many schools’. I disagree.
4. Active learning not rote learning. Not sure – again, Seldon states that ‘in too many schools there are insufficient opportunities for students to think and learn independently’. This is not my experience.
5. Holistic development. Not sure – Seldon believes that ‘few state schools offer the same opportunities for holistic education as independent schools’. Not sure where he’s been recently.
6. Behaviour and wellbeing. Fine – difficult to argue that this is not important for all schools.
7. Service. Not sure – is the provision of ‘combined cadet forces’ really the answer? Other outdoor challenges, adventures, expditions would be great though.
8. Pupil responsibility. Fine – but many schools give students position of responsibility and leadership already.
9. Diversify public examinations. Being done – QCDA to be abolished; OfQual will be wondering; lots of encouragement for schools to diversify here but little thought about consequences on a National Curriculum and what we might loose in the process.
10. League Tables. Seldon’s key message here is to simplify. In the case of academies, it will be simplification to the point of not having to publish data. So – done!
11. Inspection. Done – several of Seldon’s points here are adopted in the revised role of OfSTED and the targeting of schools that are, apparently, not doing well.
12. Facilitating teacher recruitment. Seldon states that ‘pathways into teaching must be made easier for able and highly committed graduates. There should be less emphasis on theory for postgraduates, and easier entry into teaching for those who have already built careers outside the profession’. Done – very worried about developments in this area.
13. Make schools more congenial for teachers. Not many teachers would argue that bureaucracy should be slashed, etc.
14. Discipline. Who is going to argue that all schools shouldn’t be safe and secure for all pupils?
15. Teaching professionalism. Seldon wants the General Teaching Council (GTC) abolished. Done. What will replace it? Seldon has some ideas here about what he calls a more ‘rigorous, self-funded professional body’.
16. More leadership by heads. Will quote at length here. Seldon says ‘Heads should have more freedom to run their schools without constant oversight and reference back to governors and local authorities. But when heads show themselves to be unworthy of this autonomy because they are failing to give clear and visible leadership, governing bodies need to intervene, and either help the
heads stand on their own feet, or promptly replace them if they are not going to make the grade. The aim of a good governing body is to appoint the head and to oversee the finances efficiently’. In respect of headteachers – done. I am very worried about Seldon’s views about school governors who remain the only group with the power to challenge headteachers.
17. School size. Seldon believes that schools over 600 should be broken down into houses. Not done. His general points about every pupil needing to feel valued are important for all schools.
18. Active parents and the community. This includes schools being more proactive about their community involvement and open for longer hours. Extended schools? Partially done.
19. ICT. Seldon argues for greater use, but ‘schools should be free to choose to use IT’. BECTA – abolished. Harnessing Technology Fund – cut significantly to fund free school agenda. The jury is out on this Government’s commitment (or lack of commitment) to ICT within education.
20. The education ‘establishment’. Again, worth an extended quote. Seldon writes that ‘the DCSF, QCDA, Ofqual, Ofsted, the TDA, SSAT, GTC and ISC should all undergo radical restructuring before 2015. They need to decentralise power, to facilitate rather than drive change and to work collaboratively rather than dictatorially. They should be far slimmer. They need to trust schools more and let creativity and individuality blossom, rather than be stifled by central blueprint’. Done – and watch out for further cuts in the autumn.

So, by my reckoning Seldon scores 9/20 in terms of his recommendations that have been adopted already by this coalition (either completely or partially). Of the remainder, it seems that at least 7 or 8 are aspirations that the majority of schools would either aspire to anyway or are, in my experience at least, doing. There are a few aspects of his recommendations (e.g. the role of school governors) which haven’t been take up yet. But who knows that the future holds!

On that basis, I’d recommend that you read his study. It may wind you up but you’ll probably end up better informed about what, to my mind, seems like the sheer lunacy of some of these educational polices.

… he could be even more effective in his advocacy of music education in general if he understood the work that has been happening in Scotland and the rest of Britain for decades – so much of it unheralded, unpromoted, unpublicised – and if he put his weight behind promoting the whole sector, not just one tiny part of it.

1. QCDA gone – no challenge regarding choice and composition of the curriculum (beyond a basic nod to a slimmed down National Curriculum);
2. BECTA gone – no challenge to poor ICT procurement or usage by schools;
3. OFSTED – their role is waning. There will be no challenge to many school’s approaches to management, teaching and learning (and probably no visits to schools that are ‘oustanding’ anyway, despite the part that OFSTED might have played in raising their attainment and achievement perhaps?);
4. GTCE gone – no challenge regarding teachers’ pay, terms, conditions (and, as we all know, the power of the teaching unions are also waning); if your school becomes an academy, then democratically elected bodies have no voice and provide no challenge, instead you get Trustees (unelected and who knows what level of challenge they’ll provide);
5. The role of HE institutions in initial teacher education – going, and likely to be significantly reduced given Gove’s comments this morning. Headteachers will have a much more active role in teacher education, with larger numbers of trainees and less ‘interference’ from outside agencies. So, no challenge to what might be poor and incestuous teaching practices.

All in all, these reforms seem to suggest one thing: Headteachers know best and will not be challenged. This is not a healthy situation in my view. What do you think? Please tell me that I’m wrong.

I want to ensure our national curriculum is a properly international curriculum – that it reflects the best collective wisdom we have about how children learn, what they should know and how quickly they can grow in knowledge. I want to use the evidence from those jurisdictions with the best-structured and most successful curricula – from Massachusetts to the Pacific Rim – to inform our curriculum development here. I want to remove everything unnecessary from a curriculum that has been bent out of shape by the weight of material dumped there for political purposes. I want to prune the curriculum of over-prescriptive notions of how to teach and how to timetable. Instead I want to arrive at a simple core, informed by the best international practice, which can act as a benchmark against which schools can measure themselves and parents ask meaningful and informed questions about progress.

There was also a lot of stuff about academies and accountability, etc, which I’m just too depressed to write about again.