Fake Reporting

Bibliography

Script & Further Reading

Introduction

A journalist wrote an article in a national British newspaper, the Observer, a sister paper to the Guardian, and caused a bit of an uproar.

This video will discuss what happened, why people reacted the way they did, and larger consequences for this type of reporting

But if you're not in the education twitter space, you probably have no idea what I am talking about.

A quick preface - please be respectful of all parties mentioned in this video. The intention is to shine light on a discussion and related topics, not point fingers for people to go and pester.

This article by Anna tells the story of a school in London, focusing on the headteacher's journey.

Teachers, headteachers and anyone working in the education sector have a tough job.

Resources, money, child behaviour all rising stressors, so any person doing work in and around schools. Thank you.

And this article shares some of the things this headteacher has to wrestle with.

But, the headteachers story isn't what people are frustrated about.

It was the facts, or false facts.

Claims, or opinions.

and underlying assumptions made throughout the piece that frustrated a lot of educators.

I read this article before reading any of the surrounding criticism, and did some surface research because the claims seemed, bold. [1]

Most of my research is done with academic texts, and this piece is another example of why I prefer to avoid educational journalism.

What happened

the headteacher joins the school in 2018.

The article says there were around 300 suspensions in the year before.

An exclusion is when a student is told they have to leave the school permanently.

A temporary exclusion, was a few days where you can't go to school. Now that's called a suspension.

So this school had about 300 suspensions in 2017. [16]

What the article doesn't mention is there were just under 800 students in the school at this point.

Some students could get multiple suspensions so it's not a 1 to 1 rate but that still sounds very high.

Anna reports the school having 5 headteachers in 3 years. That's a lot.

And uses a quote

“Parents didn’t want their kids to be here.” [1]

Setting up the school in a, not so pleasant light.

Then saying

"Six years on, the school has an unexpected air of calm."

I assume there must have been improvement. What did the headteacher do?

Only 25 suspensions in 2024. That's much lower than 300.

Parents didn't want kids to be there, do they now?

Well, according to the government numbers [16],[17]

beacon high numbers.png

Headcount has gone from around 800 to 380 with somewhat expected drops in suspensions and exclusions.

There are less students. I would hope there would be less suspensions and exclusions.

If we look at the rates instead of numbers, there was a significant drop in the first couple of years.

Along with the student drop.

And then a rise, despite the headcount still going down.

After I made this graph I found out Andrew Old had done the same thing [7]

So it wasn't just me that was confused but this story.

This schools story about going from rags to riches seemed to be lacking context.

The shared numbers certainly don't tell the entire story.

And I don't want to speculate about what is going on in the school.

But this lack of context continues when the article starts to discuss student behaviour, and ideas around suspensions and exclusions in school.

Why people reacted

From what I can see, the London's Violence Reduction Unit. VRU.

Try and reduce rates of violence, and try to understand it's causes.

Early prevention being one of it's goals means schools obviously play a role in what they do.

Anna points out the headteacher said

his school was far less safe when suspensions were really high [1]

Suggesting high suspensions mean a school is unsafe.

Suspensions then linked with exclusions.

But correlation isn't causation.

A reminder the suspension number dropped in line with the drop of students.

And this school had a 14.49 suspension rate in 21/22 which as Andrew points out, was above the national average of 13.96. [7]

The exclusion rate of 0.47 above the national average of 0.16 [7]

Yeah, they improved.

But still have room to go, and limited explanation in the article about why those numbers have gone down.

The reasons being the important thing here.

Schools don't magically improve.

Anna discusses a softer approach to discipline.

Talking about refocus rooms. [1]

Fun less punitive rooms.

Punitive being intended as a punishment.

Walls filled with colourful artwork.

But that sounds like a isolation room.

A room, away from the mainstream classroom.

Something most schools with behaviour systems have.

The school I went to had them. With the colourful artwork.

The difference here being the approach to discipline. Not the room itself.

Less punitive.

Which is where she calls out Tom Bennett.

The attempt to drive down exclusions has some fierce detractors. They include the government’s own behaviour tsar for England, Tom Bennett, a vocal supporter of tough discipline and silent corridors.

A couple of points to note here.

Drive down exclusions. But how?

Tough discipline. Means what?

She then goes on to say the headteacher

describes Bennett’s comments as “the sort of unevidenced thing you hear from people who haven’t actually spent time teaching in schools”. [1]

But Anna didn't say anything else on that point.

This suggests Tom is 'unevidenced'.

Not a good look for an educational professional.

Understandably Tom reacted. He said he has

worked in tough inner city schools in London for over a decade. I’ve visited 950+ schools. I’m a Professor in School Behaviour, written four books on behaviour, and lead national programs of school improvement in school culture. None of which means I am right, but I think I’ve earned the right to claim some level of expertise.

I agree.

An article reaching thousands of readers, should include that sort of context, a base level research.

Especially after a quote that accuses a person of being unevidenced.

But that's my opinion at least.

Referring to the tough discipline Tom, like me, wasn't really sure what that was meant to mean.

He said.

 I suspect ‘tough’ in this context is intended to mean ‘highly punitive’. Which I am certainly not an advocate of. But you’d have to be familiar with my work to know that.

And as Anna doesn't report on Tom, or source Tom's work in any way.

Readers need to go do their own research.

I would argue that is the journalists job.

Of course mistakes can be made, improvements worked on, but for a national newspaper.

Maybe a peer review would have helped iron out some of these issues before going public.

Referring to driving down exclusion rates, schools could do that by just not excluding children.

But I imagine poor behaviour would become very difficult to manage.

Which is why the school still suspends and excludes children.

Tom Bennett has said, multiple times if you follow his work,

The way to reduce exclusions is by reducing the need to exclude, not by simply turning the tap off. [6]

However, turning off the tap is what the article seems to be promoting.

One quote saying:

“If they just kick you out of school, people carry on misbehaving. But here they give people a chance to fix their ways.” [1]

So how and why schools lower exclusion rates, is where this article is argued to be more activism than journalism.

Pushing a particular perspective rather than reporting a story.

What about the school

For context, the school discussed has a low student count.

It has also been reported to be lowering the count of year 7 students.

11 to 12 years olds.

from 180 to 120 [18]

Of the 381 pupils, 86 sat their GCSEs in 2023 [7]

and with a max intake of 120, the head count doesn't seem like it could rise much.

As Andrew mentions,

an ordinary, 11-16 secondary school in London with 381 pupils can probably be considered to be at risk of closure.” [7]

Anna also points out, 70% of the pupils are on free school meals, well above the 24% national average [19]

They set up crowd funding so pupils could afford school uniforms.

 Large numbers of families are refugees and asylum seekers crammed into temporary rooms in hotels. [1]

So this isn't a school I would have picked to discuss behaviour policy.

Grade performance was used to support the improving behaviour claims

But when you look at the numbers the school is below average. [20]

The school is lower on all of the metrics here and when we look at the progress 8 scores. They are in the 15% of mainstream schools, well below average [20]

Andrew again doing some great work went and found the previous Progress 8 scores. [7]

Sources/Images/image-5-x36-y232.png

He writes

As you can see, the school’s P8 results do not resemble the head’s story of atrocious results in 2017 and improvement after he arrived in 2018.

For those confused if you look here there is a range, you want the number to be bigger.

To me those progress 8 scores don't look like significant improvement.

However Ofsted did give an improvement on behaviour from 2019 to 2022 [21]

Ofsted testing education services in England. Not without their own issues as I discussed before.

But behaviour improvement. How?

A space to talk about emotions. Not unique to this school.

Programmes rewarding good behaviour. Not unique to this school.

Students feeling like someone was listening. Not unique to this school.

Anna says

In some of the strictest academy chains, as pupils scale what is known as the “behaviour ladder”, notching up detentions leads to time in an isolation room, where they sit in a booth facing the wall all day as they work or perform tasks such as copying out dictionary definitions in complete silence.

I left school over a decade ago now and my school didn't do that.

Reading and listening to conversations with other teachers, there doesn't seem to be many schools that do do that.

I could be wrong but this sounds like an outdated claim, or one about a small sample group of schools.

for clarity, this isn't what Tom Bennett promotes, to my understanding at least.

But the way the article is written, that was my first interpretation of what Anna was suggesting.

This school sounds like they have made changes.

But using this school as a role model for behaviour policy seems, questionable.

10:20

Larger consequences

Assault

Tom Rogers talks about teaching a lot and did a poll on twitter.

almost 4 and half thousands people responded and almost half said they had been assaulted.

These are likely teachers being assaulted by students or parents. [2]

teacher assault pole.png

That is high.

So when I read in Anna's article a student saying

“Teachers can be your friend here,” [1]

Why are these numbers so high?

Assault sounds serious. And it is.

It could be a consequence of poor behaviour management in schools.

Various reports discuss punishments, one from the BBC said

Instead of a detention, he says, a teacher or staff member will sit with the child and talk through what they did, why they did it, what emotions led to it, and what they could do differently. [15]

Anna reports something similar.

this morning they are sitting at a table in the middle discussing a book that Amanda O’Connor, the room’s coordinator, is reading to them. The book is Holes, a comic novel about a bleak children’s correctional boot camp in the Texas desert.

So a child mis behaves.

Gets sent to the isolation room. Or whatever you want to call it.

They then talk about it. Listen to someone read them a book.

And are expected to not misbehave again.

If that is it, I personally have my doubts this would work.

Anna reports the headteacher saying

“Often, poor behaviour is a child saying: ‘Notice me, help me,’” [1]

But it could be them messing around because is it fun.

Or because there aren't really serious consequences as reasons not to do, whatever they are doing.

Children testing the limits.

With my limited expertise I will leave it to people like Tom to discuss behaviour systems in school.

Much of my research aligns with what I have seen him suggest.

But this is where we get to facts about crime, and specifically, knife crime.

Crime facts

Some quotes from Anna's article.

There is a clear correlation between children with a history of suspension or exclusion and violence. [1]

There is also evidence that children excluded from school are more likely to commit crimes when they are adults. One in every two people in prison were excluded as children, according to research by the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank. [1]

A link or source to that research would have been nice.

Lib Peck, the VRU’s director, says kids out of school are twice as likely to carry a knife. “They might get caught up in a gang or exploitation. They might just think a knife will make them safer. We know it will put them more at risk.” [1]

But correlation is not causation. I want more context.

A running theme with this article. But there are 2 claimed facts here.

One in every two people in prison were excluded as children.

Then kids out of school are twice as likely to carry a knife.

What does the data say?

Again this is where transparency would be great when communicating online. I've spoken about this before for hours. Cite your sources please.

But off the government website I go. Again.

Wait. What does that say.

Knife possession offences rarely followed exclusions
 MoJ on Knife possesion.png [14]

Although it is not possible to identify from this analysis whether there is an association between exclusions and knife possession offending, the low volumes of knife possession offences following exclusions mean any such association could not be a significant driver of youth knife possession offending overall. [14]

Correlation not causation.

I did a little browsing of educator blogs and found Andrew had once again spoken about this before.

222 permanent exclusions, around 7% of permanent exclusions in the 22/23 academic year, were related to “Use or threat of use of an offensive weapon or prohibited item”. [8]

Likely a knife.

but less serious offenses could be put in the 4588 suspensions in the related category. [8]

The VRU published it's inclusion charter which says.

An Ofsted report on knife crime showed that children excluded from school are twice as likely to carry a knife, while data also highlights that almost one in two of the prison population were excluded as children [10]

Ok, a source to the facts.

I went to look at the referenced Ofsted report before I carried on reading Andrews blog.

There it was, at the bottom, after I zoomed in a lot.

It seems it took Andrew a little longer to notice, but it's there.

However, it doesn't support the fact.

This is the best I could find.

Research also shows that pupils who self report as being a victim of knife crime are twice as likely to carry a knife themselves compared with non-victims [11]

Andrew suggested a different part of the report may have been misread.

Children who are excluded from school to PRUs (pupil referal units) have self-reported higher instances of knife-carrying than children who are not excluded. [11]

But Andrew and I are thinking the same things here.

Excluded children, 7% of which almost certainly caught carrying a knife at school, are only twice a likely to carry a knife.

Take 100 excluded students. 7 likely already known for carrying a knife.

and only 43 of the other 93 that were excluded, are likely carrying a knife

Considering

that excluded pupils are mostly teenage boys and disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds, makes the statistic seem low [8]

I am not sure this stat supports kids out of school are twice as likely to carry a knife.

If you look for a percentage

‘When looking at PRU attendees, 47% (92 of 196) say they know someone who has carried a knife with them, compared with 25% of non PRU attendees (1188 of 4673). [11]

But attending a PRU isn't being out of school.

Going to a PRU isn't the same as being excluded.

Not all students in PRU's are excluded.

Not all students their are for their behaviour.

But it is where many students displaying violent or criminal behaviour go, so you would expect the numbers to be higher than average.

196 as sample size is also just so small.

This fact or stat is so poorly supported.

What about the prison stat?

Back to the VRU footnotes and we see a prison report. [10]

which is actually a blog post that says

One in two prison inmates were excluded when at school [23]

but references the report. With a broken link.

But after some searching you can find the report where it says

The majority of UK prisoners were excluded from school. A longitudinal study of prisoners found that 63 per cent of prisoners reported being temporarily excluded when at school (MoJ 2012). [11]

Temporary exclusions are now suspensions so using 63% would be very misleading.

and continues.

Forty-two per cent had been permanently excluded, and these excluded prisoners were more likely to be repeat offenders than other prisoners (ibid). [11]

so 42 percent, not quite one in two prisoners.

but the 2012 study referenced, asked prisoners what they remembered so reliability might not be great.

And what exclusion means to them might be different to the meaning as those researching.

MoJ data.png [12]

If we look at a 2022 report on young offenders, yes a narrow category, but we should see around 50%

Overall, 10% of children who had been cautioned or sentenced for an offence had been permanently excluded, compared with 15% of children who had been cautioned or sentenced for a serious violence offence. [24]

But that is just violent offences.

What about any offences.

Looking at this graph it hovers around 20%, and you may notice the slow drop with suspension numbers over time. Reaching 24 months.

Exclusion and offences.png

Although there is a relationship between being permanently excluded and being cautioned or sentenced for a serious violence offence, there is often a significant time lag between those two events [24]

This to me makes me question how closely related an permanent exclusion is, with prisoner offences.

Just scrolling through the document, this figure caught my attention.

Persistent absence being very high there. Yes repeated suspension could contribute but with the attendance crisis right now, that is worrying figure.

Pasted image 20240308155651.png

So looking at those 2 facts.

One in every two people in prison were excluded as children, is misleading at best.

Kids out of school are twice as likely to carry a knife, fake.

Unless I am misunderstanding something.

Teacher assault is a serious problem, suspensions and exclusions are parts of a behaviour system that can help.

Publishing an article about the school that stopped excluding pupils and restored calm

is first not true as they still exclude children.

but also dangerously misleading by using false facts to support a narrative.

and as policies are impacted by the stories told in and around an area like educaiton.

This has serious consequences for those involved which is why this article received such a reaction.

But that is my opinion.

Faulty journalism is something I see all over the internet.

This video uses a case study to explore some of the themes I see which I am not a fan off.

Feel free to correct me, or disagree with me in the comment section below.