According to a report today, paraphrased by Icing on the Cake aka @JackMarwood on Twitter as
To paraphrase a report today, "Since 2012 pupils from high-income families have made more progress year-on-year than poorer classmates".

If this is, indeed an accurate summary, I began to speculate why this may be the case.

We are in a very strange economic period, with many people working in low paid jobs, more than likely renting in a market where costs appear to be rising significantly annually.

Where people are working in reasonably well paid jobs and may well have started to purchase a house, their mortgage rate is significantly lower than at any point that I can remember. Unless this has led them to borrow too highly, the repayments could still be manageable. I may not be alone in remembering when mortgage interest was at 15%. even on a relatively small mortgage, it meant pulling back on unnecessary spending. It was the point where my wife and I became vegetarian; half a kilo of pulses cost significantly less than half a kilo of meat.

In both cases, additional personal debts, through bank loans or credit cards may also be a drain on finances.

To me, a significant factor will always be the amount of disposable income, for discretionary spending, after all bills have been paid, with consequent decisions that are made as to how it will be spent or saved. It’s whether other demands, like children needing shoes, or other clothes, or perhaps replacing a specific piece of household machinery need to be considered first.

How does this impact on social mobility? I’d pose the view that children from better off families have greater access to social activities that cost money and fall within discretionary spending; sports and other activities, in and out of school, visits to places of interest, museums and galleries, with entry and transport costs. They may well share more social gatherings. They may also have greater access to personal ownership of books and other elements that aid learning, such as wifi and computer links.

Each of these opportunities provides valuable opportunity to talk within a family or a social group, generating a greater social vocabulary and to develop social awareness and confidence. It broadens their view of the world, of possibility and aspiration. If you have never had sufficient money to make decisions that can appear to be frittering it on fripperies, you’re likely to hold back in some way, a form of self-limiting.

It is for all these reasons that schools need to be aware of their communities, to make appropriate decisions to offer opportunity to address some embedded deprivation. It is easy for schools to espouse a “high expectation” mantra, but it is also a case for having high expectations of the school and the teachers to broaden horizons, open eyes to the potential around them and to harness the community, including parents, to support the children for whom they have joint responsibility to educate, formally and informally.

Why does London appear to do better that other areas? I’d suggest that free transport for children and relatively easy access to free world class galleries, museums and other culturally rich experiences is likely to have a part to play; something that might be unthinkable in other areas. I recall a trip to a Redruth (Cornwall) school, where teachers were aware of children who had not visited the sea, four miles away, purely because of transport costs.

​I could see a strong argument for a part of Pupil Premium moneys being allocated to providing social learning opportunity outside of the school experience, to address elements of the inequality, providing experiences that enhance formal school situations.

Social inequality? We have inequality in disposable income, but possibly also inequality of awareness. It's not the children at fault for being born into poorer families. It might be argued that it is a state responsibility to address the issues arising.  

That plays a significant part in a child accessing social experience, which, in turn becomes debilitating socially. Poverty creates poverty of opportunity.
 

Much of my working life is spent working alongside developing teachers, at different stages in their careers. In 2012, the Teacher Standards changed, from 33 statements to 8 headings. It still surprises me that, after nearly four and a half years, many teachers still cannot identify all eight standards, even though they are supposedly working within them each day.

However, in my developmental roles, they can be very interesting, as it is possible to play with permutations of the standards that exemplify what it means to become a complete teacher, especially during university or School Direct (short) experiences. There is much to be learned and this often has to be learned and adapted in the context of the school experience, which can cause tensions, with performance needs as well as personal developmental needs.

For information, the eight standards are
1)      Expectations
2)      Progress and Outcomes
3)      Subject Knowledge
4)      Planning
5)      Adaptation
6)      Assessment
7)      Behaviour management
8)      Professionalism

Plus there’s a part 2, which describes further the professional standing of a teacher within the broader community.

Behind these headings are many lines of exemplary materials. Click to link to pdf download, with a shortened version.

However, the headings are quite useful, in themselves, as supports for a narrative that seeks to describe teachers in development.

Presenter

34 – Not necessarily the ultimate age for a teacher, but this could describe, say, a wildlife expert, or similar, who knows their stuff and can put it across in a clear narrative to an audience, using age appropriate vocabulary and language structures. The chances are that children in the audience are with parents taking control of behaviours. To some extent, it also describes some television presenter approaches, as they can take for granted that their core audience is watching. If they are also looking at a mobile phone, making a cup of tea, or are in any other way distracted, it’s not their problem.

873 – A person of professional standing, who has the skills to control an allocated group, for a period of time, who can be trusted to get across some subject knowledge in an ordered manner. This could be used to describe a teaching assistant, or other adult whom a head deems appropriate to lead an activity.
They can work within any prescribed approach to behaviour, dealing with issues that arise appropriately.

Structuralist approach; a trainee still making sense of the organisational needs.

8731 – Having appropriate expectations of behaviour and learning (TS1) raises the expectations of the adult, as the conduit through which some level of progress in a subject area might be accomplished.
It is often the case that these standards are the first and easiest to be evidenced for a trainee teacher, as, by and large, they describe the personal, professional persona of the adult, who knows their subject and can organise a classroom to get information across in a coherent form over time.

It is also likely to describe a teacher confident in their professionalism and ability to get what they know across to a range of school audiences, within an overall planning approach. See the diagram above.

​The limiting factor from this point is embedded in standard 2, progress and outcomes; in other words, how well are the children known and how well does the adult understand the learning outcomes appropriate to different year groups?

Holistic approach

432-65-2 - You’d want the person described above to have a wider range of skills, to include 432, being able to organise their subject over different timescales, so that the subject requirements were built up appropriately and checked on the way, with the intention that children should embark on a journey towards an expected point, with the teacher aware of the whole journey and the significant checkpoints on the way, as well as the final destination.

It can depend on how you define children making progress (TS2) and how you determine whether they have. If the definition is coverage leading to a test for memory, it might, in inexperienced hands, preclude analysis of the needs of specific individuals (TS6), leading to further engagement with them, undertaking adapted approaches (TS5).
 
Interaction with learners, engaging with the ongoing learning and making subtle or more significant alterations to the expectations of some, responding to evidence within the classroom, TS6&5, are probably the key to ultimate teacher success, in that it is the sum total of progress of each child (TS2) in a class or cohort, that ultimately is the signal that the school is doing well be every child, whatever their needs.

Teacher standard 2 also covers the full range of needs likely to be encountered. If, for example, a teacher has experience limited to one year group, as can happen in some organisations, knowledge of achievement in years above or below enhance and extend the outcome knowledge base, enabling the teacher to make more nuanced decisions about challenge and intervention needs. Mentoring and moderation are key elements in this area, to allow the less experienced teacher to benefit from the wisdom of more experienced colleagues.

Teacher standard 2 is also the area that is currently causing concern, in looking at assessment and tracking needs for teachers. It’s the one area where experience provides the basis for personal development, in making accurate judgements about children as learners, leading to better planning, interaction and adaptation; TS 465. The bottom line question; “How well, breadth and depth, can you show that you know your children?”

It takes time, and is a stage in a progressive development, based on analytical reflection, from reading and first-hand experiences on behalf of the developing teacher. Self-development is a constituent of teacher standard 8; developing yourself into the best possible professional, as a team player and a team leader, is key to long term success in teaching.

Teaching, in many ways, is an investigative role, based on an original hypothesis that the planning is pitched at the right level, with in-lesson evidence showing the need to alter course, or to provide additional scaffolds to support individuals.

Thinking takes time and that can be a rare commodity in a busy school room. So it is incumbent on each teacher, especially trainees, to make best use of available time to think and talk about the role. It is a job where it can be difficult to switch off, too.

Many will use holidays as time to catch up on thinking. As a head, I often thought of the job as 24/7/365. Perhaps that contributes to both success and burn-out?

That’s something else to think about… Be well.
 

There’s a regular “discussion” or “debate” about how to get children learning in school. I would like to offer a thought into the discussion, as a relatively simple premise.

What are “they” being given to “do”, after the teacher has shared essential information and when they are charged with follow up tasks? Is it “do an activity”, “follow the instructions” or “think and solve a problem”?

It is, in reality down to how the learners have been tasked, how engaging and challenging it is, the thinking that is generated, the energy they expend in undertaking the task and their involvement in seeking to make it the best possible outcome, so that their pride in their achievements spills over into the next piece of work.

One local inspector once started a day of CPD with staff by introducing the idea that if you give a level 1b child a 1b task, at the end of it, the child will still be 1b. This was a prompted by the fact that the photocopier had taken hold of some staff, who were reflecting less on the challenge in a task, just seeking interesting activities, from colleagues, books or the internet and making 30 copies. Fortunately, there were other colleagues who could articulate a more tailored view of challenge to their learners.

Differentiation used to be seen as match and challenge, much more useful than “differentiation” for reflection on the task and expectation within the task, which should be based on and match current needs, but also articulate specific challenge, within which children can extend themselves as learners. “Differentiation” at worst, can mean several layers of unchallenging activity, at best embedding appropriate challenge.

The best tasks make learners think, retrieve what they already know to bring to bear on the task in hand, to consider the framework and strategy for their investigation, the information and resources that they need, their personal and group organisation (as appropriate), how they will record their progress, the timescales available, so how they will use their time effectively.
​
This approach fits equally well in formal lessons as well as in more open situations. Learner awareness of task needs is a central element of success.

There is much talk of Learning Objectives, Success Criteria, sometimes of WALT and WILF, and how successful, or otherwise, the approach is in supporting learning.
There is a danger that all words used in education become stale through usage. The terms above can become the stereotype of a good start to a lesson. In reality, the Learning Objective, or the WALT, is the statement of what the lesson is about, whereas the Success Criteria or WILF is a series of statements which define successful task outcomes. Beyond these, there will be personalised challenges, known to the child and the teacher. They should be use to state the theme, the challenge and what constitutes an expected outcome.

Task Setting (What’s the challenge?)

Limitations can be embedded in the activities that are given to children. Task setting is, in my mind, the determinant of progress. Real learning, at least to me, requires embedding what is known into overcoming a challenge and solving problems. Much school learning is based on activities, doing, following a set of instructions, rather than applying knowledge and skills to appropriately challenging scenarios. This “recipe” approach to teaching can be effective in the right hands, as can all approaches. However in the wrong hands it embeds a limitation, created by the task. A level x task, given to a level x learner, will produce level x learning.
Creating challenge is therefore an essential teacher skill.

Unpicking the level of challenge, the need for learners to think, to plan, to organise, to select, to determine routes and ideas rather than just follow instructions, is an important aspect.
The process of learning has to be a dynamic interplay between the learner and the context, making active links between what is already known and what is being laid before them. To that end the interplay of the formal lessons, homework and time between lessons would also appear, to me, to be critical.
How much of current homework is an unrelated activity, just because homework has to be given? What if the challenge was continuous, so that homework became pre-thinking, preparation for the lesson, or a reflection on the learning outcomes of the current one, perhaps even developing a note form that supports future revision?

Boxing everything embeds potential limitations, in inexperienced hands, but sometimes in more experienced hands, as a result of internal system. From that point of view, the diagram at the header is limited as can imply boxes rather than a dynamic. The problem of models.

Knowledge and Skills

Learners need to know things in order to understand the world around them. Knowledge underpins all thinking, but the awakening by teaching or discovery through experience of new knowledge has to be explored in relation to what is already known. Making coherent links, and creating memorable chunks of knowledge, is essential.

The knowledge area provides the context for the learning, sometimes in discrete subject areas, sometimes in less discrete manner; the real world does not exist in subject boxes, especially for younger children. The discrete area allows specific concepts, (current) knowledge and subject specific skills to be explored and developed to hone the skills over time to provide capacity to explore for oneself, at different levels, each of which, I would argue has validity.
One does not have to reach a specific level of expertise before using what is known to explore. As a teenager, I was interested in entomology, not as an expert, but as a way to explore the natural world. It was a specific interest, but linked with GCE and A level studies, allowed deeper insights in a very specific area.

The skills of the subject provide the essential process skills, and it is this area that needs careful consideration. Evaluation of outcomes allows the reflective teacher and learner to unpick the application of knowledge within process skills to determine where any gaps occur.

Active Processing- Making Sense of Things

While a teacher might present knowledge in contexts in ways that they think are suitable for the children in their classes, there is never a guarantee that the message gets across to the learner.

• The teacher language style, and the vocabulary being used might preclude a learner from picking up the essential information that they need to make progress. Not all learners are active listeners and even those who are can miss parts of information as they reflect on an earlier snippet of knowledge.
• Even if the message does get across there is no guarantee that the learner will have the capacity to process the knowledge, in some cases because they do not have prior experiences which allow them to link the new information to a known position. They already have a deficit, which, if undetected, embeds and deepens the deficit, by adding another layer of deficit.
• And, even if they have the capacity to take the information in and to process it, there are some learners who have difficulty in expressing what they know in ways that are acceptable as outcomes.

The teacher role is to place learning opportunities in front of children, it is also to walk along beside the learners, especially identified vulnerable groups. Engaging and investigating their progressive understanding supports fine tuning of interactions, the feedback, the guidance in a lesson, the alteration of learning expectations and the written feedback.

It is a cyclic event, with each successive outcome creating a new baseline of expectation, based on learning outcomes.

So to simplify the diagram at the header of this post.

• Teaching and Learning is a series of interlocking expectations over time; long, medium and short term.
• Analysis underpins the detail of planning, which in turn describes what will happen in the lesson, during and after which the reflective teacher adjusts expectations to evident outcomes, with appropriate records kept as aides memoire.
• Tasks set embed the expectations of the learning, which should be challenging to thinking rather than activity based.
• The product, the outcome and the process are important, with the latter capable of investigation to discover the aspects which a child finds difficult, receptive, processing or expressive difficulty. The former can be compared to aspirational outcomes and investigated for future learning steps.
• You don’t really know what they know unless they can communicate it to you and there are many routes to communication. It’s not just spoken or written.

Is the outcome good enough?

That is for the teacher and the learner to determine. If outcomes are discussed with the learner, the learner joins the evaluative journey, with an agreed descriptor of next steps shared.
If there is a “bottom line” expectation, as there is in current Age Related Expectations, this can be explored with learners to establish the personalised route necessary to achieve it.

Plotting and monitoring are key teacher skills.

Showing progress can be challenging for an individual child. Specific support and guidance may be needed. For specific individuals the journey descriptor becomes more of a case study, with greater note made of specific interventions that put outcomes in a clearer light.

Target setting.

This might suffer from being an adult concept, especially for younger learners. Perhaps it would be more useful to talk in terms of what learners are trying to get better at.

Target setting often becomes a hidden agenda, with (teacher-set) targets stuck inside book covers, in another booklet, or in a teacher’s planner, in “teacher speak”. It also suffers in some places from lacking a dynamic; three targets set for a half term review. If not achieved, then reset. It sucks the life out of learners putting effort into their learning.

An alternative approach is to

• Put personalised targets on a fold out slip, at the edge of the exercise book, so that during the lesson, the child and the teacher can be aware of the specific targets.
• This can prompt conversations specific to that child, support the learner’s self-evaluations and also support teacher oral and written feedback, as the slips can be folded out during marking.
• Targets can be achieved, then become non-negotiable in future work, with new ones added.
• This approach also supports record keeping, as the slip forms an on-going record of achievement.

And so the cycle starts again, new tailored challenges, regular, purposeful engagement, reflection, adjustment, feedback, reflection and improvement, ad infinitum.


Tasks (should) embed a wide range of challenges for learners, including:-

• Some will be investigative, some problem-solving, some using and applying what is known into new areas. All should be challenging to thinking and have an impact on learner progress. The context for a practice task needs to be considered carefully.
• There will be the intellectual challenge; do they understand the task and the nature of the challenge? Can they perceive the strategies that they will need to fulfil the task?  Some of this will be determined by the teacher explanation of the task criteria, and what needs to be done to be successful, ie the success criteria, or what the teacher will be looking for.
• For some there will be the social challenge, such as the ability to cooperate with others in sharing available resources, organising, or being organised by, others.
• Some tasks will challenge independence. This, for the adults, is sometimes a difficult judgement call. Some tasks will need direct adult support, supervision and guidance to be successful. The amount and the detail of the adult support needs to be considered when reflecting on outcomes. What could the learners do for themselves?

Some tasks will challenge learners to take what they know, to address the challenge with that baseline understanding, then to tackle new issues, identifying what they now need to know in order to make progress in the task.

For interest these are tasks, extracted from work planning diaries that I have used with young children.

Set up a fair test to find the best colour to wear when walking along the road.

Design and make a device that will project a ping pong ball 4 metres into a container.  

Using newspaper, build a framework strong enough to… hold a 100g mass 50cm above a table.. hold a cup of water… hold a cream egg… span a 50cm gap between tables and hold 100/200/500g

Consider how to find out of a full balloon weighs more than an empty one.

How much stretch does an elastic band have?

Using squared paper, always the same size, fold a series of rafts with different area bases and different height sides. Which design holds the greater mass?
Other ideas are embedded in subject related blogs.

We are all, or should be, life-long learners, more often without a teacher. Life offers challenges. We need to create solution finders.

Continuing my thinking about improving teaching through moderation and mentoring.

Teaching is all about people not just data. Maybe we need a system where everyone in education becomes a mentor and everyone benefits from the understandings of others?

The education system has become hooked on data. It’s seemed to grow exponentially since the mid-90s, getting supposedly more and more refined, telling whatever story the interpreter wishes to tell; “x% of children can’t…” rather than”100-x% of children can…”

​"It's the way you tell 'em." Frank Carson-comedian...

In many ways the ubiquity of data has supported politicians who wish to argue for more structural change, to be able to be seen to be doing something. In an “evidence-informed” world, the ability to interpret data from “evidence” to satisfy a particular end begins to validate the “post-truth” and “alternative facts” phenomena that have recently taken hold of political narratives. Since education is completely controlled by the state of politics, the rise of alternative facts is concerning. The demise of UTCs and the rise in calls for Grammar Schools would fall under the “busy politician” mantra.

On 10th February, in Schools Week, Dr Becky Allen asked “How can we know which schools are good if inspectors are inconsistent and biased and the data is wrong?” She talks of a range of biases to which we are all, as humans fallible. It is an excellent article, which raises many questions. She also shows how Ofsted can be flawed. as this is probably the single greatest current fear for any head and teachers, it's worth considering how the system could be improved to everyone's benefit.

Teaching is, and always has been, a very human activity. It is occasionally flawed, because people forget or focus on specific details. Teachers develop through self-reflection and occasionally beat themselves up when things don’t go as they anticipated. It takes time, discussion and much thought, to grow into a fully-fledged teacher. There are no short cuts, which is what education seems to be constantly seeking. Broad principles are distilled to single words. An example might be Growth Mindset, where Carol Dweck’s ideas are often reduced to the single word “yet”, instead of being seen as a constituent of a process.
​

Each school exists in it’s community setting, with variability in inherent wealth or poverty, which impacts on the children, in a wide variety of ways, such as expectation, aspiration and participation in broader life experiences, visits to galleries, or museums or other cultural events. Children, therefore, arrive at school with a wide range of start points. Locally, we are lucky enough that the County has maintained Sure Start facilities and supported in-school nurseries. Children arriving in these start environments are assessed and supported to make up some of the ground needed before formal schooling starts.

Progress through school may be variable, from the differing start points, even if they are in well-appointed schools, with excellent teachers and outstanding resources, so that data at test points still show variability in outcomes. The data would be capable of sharing information about the value the school has added to the children as they pass through their education. Schools are organic, they grow and change over time. If they can attract and retain staff, they have the capacity to embed change, moving the school forward. The opposite is also true. Constant change requires a constant return to beginnings, with a year of hard work sometimes repaid by a teacher moving.

That is it possible to overcome deprivation is evidenced by a number of schools that I have visited for audit purposes. Unpicking the approaches that led to the high outcomes showed that personalisation of expectation, challenge, intervention and support, within a quality teaching environment was having significant impact; joined up thinking and processes. These approaches were put in place by analytical heads developing “forensic processes” that guided teachers to make clear decisions.

The audit was an opportunity for the school to take a look at an aspect of practice, with an external eye opening up areas for dialogue and continued internal reflection. Revisits showed the impact of the changed practices and the improvements in teaching and learning. For this reason, I have always seen Ofsted as an expensive audit tool. If it became less about deciding on four layers of judgement and instead was able to focus on a qualitative decision and allow for deeper exploration of the areas that needed development or that seemed to be having impact, the system, as a whole could be seen as mutually developmental.

I wrote an earlier blog on moderation and this has been a feature of the past couple of years as I have been training the mentors for a Teaching Schools Alliance. It is also possible to see monitoring and moderation as constituent of mentoring.

I’d quite like to see the ideas of monitoring and moderation leading to a mentoring dialogue, widely used across all aspects of school life, not just when each might be required by a specific process.

To some, the term moderation implies a greyness, somewhere between the polarised views of extremes. However, as a moderate person, I reserve the right to draw from the extremes and occasionally to do something to excess if that serve the purposes of the moment. Moderate does not necessarily mean grey, even if the hair has long changed colour.

Moderation implies to me a search for common understanding. Applied to different aspects of the teacher role, it has huge potential to be a development tool.

Whatever the school’s development framework, it is likely to have aspects akin to levels, even if these are “yearness” based.

Let’s say that two teachers work side by side with the same age group. If they bring together work outcomes, talk about them and agree a common view on the merits of the work, they will be sure that the two class expectations are common to both, at the same time deepening their understanding of their children and their needs. If this is extended through year groups, the process can also support consideration of the needs of lower and higher achievers. I'd almost see this as an informal, in-house form of "comparative judgement", which seems to be a term gaining traction.

• If mentoring occurs across a school, there is common assent to decisions regarding achievement and progress expectations.
• If mentoring occurs across schools, an area wide understanding occurs.
• If outcomes of National testing were seen as an aspect of moderation, the outcomes could provide exemplar material to support internal mentoring needs.
• If mentoring became a common tool across all schools, supported by external expertise as necessary, there could be an improvement in teacher judgement and a reduced need for formal testing, so we could save money on SATs testing.
• If in-house teachers became trained mentors, for internal and external use, the use of such people would provide opportunities for mass CPD and lead to higher expectations, based on a common understanding.
• If lesson observations became a mentoring exercise, based on the common agenda of the teaching standards, then feedback would be developmental. Nobody is perfect all the time.
• If Ofsted and other assessment/inspection visits were mentoring visits, to validate the judgements of the internal moderation team, we could establish expectations common to every school in the country.
• If Ofsted inspectors and HMI mentored each other, the judgements across every establishment would be more consistent.
• If Ofsted and HMI regularly produced reflective pamphlets about their distilled experiences, across all subjects, the system could benefit from such collated reflection. (Remember the "raspberry ripple" series?
  

If judgements across every classroom in every school in the country were improved, as a national educational establishment we would make progress. It is a case of giving teachers space to think and something of worth to think about.

It is a case of all things in moderation. I’ll drink to that- in moderation, of course.

Melanie, my librarian wife, has been busy.
​Enjoy.

With thanks, as always to Melanie, my librarian wife, for lists of recent books.
​

This post follows on from a blog on preparation for the second experience.

Going into their second experience, trainees have already demonstrated a high degree of professionalism, as team players and future team leaders. They are able to make good relationships with their class teachers and support staff, as well as with the children. They tend to be allocated to classrooms that are well ordered and organised, with good, positive behaviour management strategies enabling the teacher to teach and learning to occur.

The trainees themselves, are well ordered and organised. They plan effectively and make sure that they have high quality resources available to enhance their lessons. The IWB is usually used to good effect and there is evidence of other technology being used to enhance learning, eg visualisers, cameras and iPads.

They all work hard to make sure that they have appropriate subject knowledge and appropriate resources for each lesson, either through discussion with colleague professionals or personal research. This can be discrete knowledge and would benefit from broader understanding of how the discrete fits into the holistic model of learning for the children, thus allowing some deeper interrogation of in-lesson outcomes.

The following diagram seeks to describe the dynamics being explored, as a result of the second round of visits. The trainees are at a transition point, where they are moving from absorbing structural knowledge, linked with discrete subject knowledge, to being able to embed these as procedural and interactive understandings within an active classroom environment; ie timely decision making.

In the second experience, standards 8 professionalism, 7 behaviour management, 1 expectations, 4 planning (order and organisation) and 3 subject knowledge, are generally secure, across all the trainees, as they are personal attributes that are enhanced with experience and application of personal capabilities.

There is some variation in standard 7, within classes where specific behaviour issues required individualised responses, which the class teachers acknowledged were significant.

Although teaching standards 2, 5 and 6 can therefore be argued as less secure, it is perhaps important to reflect why this is the case, as they appear across all types of trainee going in a second experience.

·         With standard 2 being progress and outcomes, the trainees are at a disadvantage in going into their second school, as they just don’t know the children in that class. Neither will they have an understanding of children of that age group, so may not have mental “baselines” from which to extract appropriate learning expectations.

·         Standards 6&5; Learning to develop tasks for a new age range is challenging in itself, to match and challenge appropriately over time. In the absence of good subject knowledge that embeds an understanding of how the subject develops, lessons can become activities that may or may not lead to secure learning and, in addition, appropriate interventions may be missed. The ability to think on their feet and adjust a task demand to evident needs of the learners might be compromised. Assessment can be further undermined, as each school is seeking to develop their own internal systems in the absence of national descriptors. The meeting with mentors showed that there were seven systems within nine mentors, including four variations of the local County system.

·         An early meeting with the teacher mentors leading the second experience enabled discussion of issues that arose in earlier cohorts, seeking to pre-empt some of the issues that might simply be a constituent part of the second experience.

·         As a result, these areas were a focus for mentor-trainee discussion.

·         Trainees were charged with monitoring progress and interventions over their five weeks of experience. They had to unpick the detail of learning from interactions and outcomes to understand ideas behind progress.

Reflections

Trainee reflection time. With the inevitable pressures of such a route, built in (collaborative peer) reflection/ weekly review time would seem a necessary element to consider, when reviewing the programme as a whole. These trainees don’t often have the luxury of non-timetabled time with peers, as a traditional undergrad or post-grad might have. Where two trainees are together in a school, they have this opportunity, which is much valued.

The breadth of teaching standard 2, as progress and outcomes, covering year 1 to year 6, is one that would repay some developmental thought, to create exemplar material that demonstrates the development from EYFS (year 1) to year 6, within the current curriculum, especially in English and Maths.

To exemplify TS2 further, regular moderation activities between the trainee and the class teacher could result in a portfolio unpicking progress in different subjects, but also introduce the trainees to the need for regular evaluation to inform teaching practice.

In the main, the trainees are on track to achieve at a good or better level at the end of their training year. They would all benefit from considerable additional reflection time looking at the 2, 6, 5 dynamic, working to fine tune their approaches, including personalisation to evident needs. This will need to be an action on the mentors in their second half year experience.

Their specific need in returning to their substantive experience, is
·         to develop (with support) their own medium term plans,
·         to unpick the detail of  learning from outline intention through their own actions,
·         understanding subject development over time,
·         creating challenging tasks appropriate to the children’s needs,
·         interacting with learning giving appropriate supportive feedback and guidance,
·         making rational decisions based on outcome,
·         interacting with anomalies
·         and evaluating outcomes.

​In other words, refining, or recalibrating themselves as whole class teachers, taking ever greater responsibility for progress, preparing for their own classes in September.