Chris Chivers (Thinks)

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Running an After school club...

31/5/2015

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The idea of schools running from approximately 8am to 6pm is not new. It has seen several incarnations during my career. After school clubs were a regular occurrence in my early days, with teachers regularly running a number each week. Then came industrial action which showed a lack of goodwill from a number of governments and suddenly clubs diminished.

In visiting a large number of schools, it is clear that they have made a small recovery, thanks to teacher goodwill.

It is possible to develop a format for after school clubs that does not rely on the existing teaching staff. On becoming a head in 1990, after a settling period, I explored the potential of bringing in outside providers to run specific clubs. This got off to a good start, with several groups offering a range of mainly sporting clubs. However, this began to run into difficulty as these groups sought to extend themselves, without necessarily providing any contingency, so we might get a late call to say that someone was not available on an evening, so that club needed covering. As I had organised them, I’d often be the one to do so. This came to a head when one particular organisation began to, in our terms, take a few liberties. Despite us providing cover, they were still charging children their going rate.

So, I got to thinking and, with a supportive and very interested teaching assistant, came up with a business plan for an in-house club organisation which became the template for the next ten years.

We provided a breakfast crèche, with a TA aid from 8am to receive children into the school hall, where they could do any outstanding homework, read to each other and play a variety of board games, until 8.45am, when they went out onto the playground with other arrivals. This had a nominal cost, £1 from 8am and 50p from 8.30am, so it became a reasonably priced drop-of service. Numbers warranted two staff, whose pay was (easily) covered.

After school clubs were largely based on the availability of interested adults, both in-house and external, with expertise that could be effectively used, for example, a French national parent ran a language club. Some teachers offered to run a club. This time the difference was that they could claim some payment if they wished.

Clubs were charged at £1 for an hour, which later rose to £1.25; still a modest cost. In the latter incarnation, there were clubs from 3.30-4.30pm and 4.30-5.30pm, with the first for infants/lower juniors and the later clubs for years (4), 5 and 6. If children were staying for the 4.30pm club, an hour’s crèche was provided on the same basis as the breakfast crèche, supervised by a paid TA.

Additional clubs were provided through the use of A level students from the local college, working in a pair, each earning £3.50 an hour. As many of them were doing sports coach qualifications, or Duke of Edinburgh Award, they earned while they were undertaking aspects of their practical coaching or community needs. In this way, a range of sports were offered, as were art, drama and dance. After a while, the varied skills of the TA group came to the fore as well, so several volunteered their services. If you were near a university, the student population might be a source of well-educated and successful tutors.

All staff were CRB checked.

The clubs were restricted to a dozen attendees and most were full.

There were clubs running every evening. My supervising TA took overview charge, supported by colleagues willing to undertake extra, regular hours.

Some children preferred not to attend a formal club, but their parents asked that they could be looked after, so another layer was added with a generic after-school club organised by yet another TA, who took registers, organised activities and fed the children a snack. She was supported by one or more college student(s) acting as her gofer. This did incur an additional cost, but still ran at £3.50 a session.

The essential part was that the arrangement should pay it’s way, be regular and reliable and provide something of quality for the children. Quality Assurance was provided by the supervising TAs and me, doing an occasional wander, on an evening when I was not actively involved.

Along with a number of others, I didn’t claim payment.

Over time, the whole melded into a seamless organisation, under school control, providing a quality product that was the envy of other local schools. We were asked by a number to share the details of the organisation and, on one occasion, were asked by a local council to mentor schools in their area.

Everyone benefitted as a result; the school with extended offering; the children with a wide range of clubs; the staff (especially TAs) with additional hours; the students, with an opportunity to earn while developing something of quality for their CV.

Financially, too, the whole became self-funding, with any surplus put back into school in club-friendly resources. It was a self-sustaining business alongside the school, providing a much needed and valued resource.

It is well worth while considering taking charge yourself, as the demands of negotiating with other organisations can be disproportionate to the benefits.

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Don't set up Schools to fail

28/5/2015

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I can’t help feeling that the current political rhetoric is destabilising and disorienting the teaching profession at a time where the greater need is to analyse the issues that exist, properly, describe them fully, then come up with a range of solutions that might cover a broad spectrum of needs, with specific cases being subject to greater reflection.

The current drain on the system at the moment is the notion of the “coasting school”, which, in political terms means any school currently with Requires Improvement (RI) as inspection judgements.

Now, I am not, thankfully, an Ofsted inspector, but, for the past nine years since I stopped being a head, following a 32 year school career, I have undertaken a large number of school audits for a number of national quality assurance schemes, notably Inclusion Quality Mark (IQM) and Leading Parent Partnership Award (LPPA). These visits are based on school self-assessments against a range of criteria, with the assessment visit being a point where the visual has to match the school written submission. It should “do what it says on the tin” and if not, there is a discussion to clarify. Because the visits are not Ofsted, I have been able to deepen the discussion to a point where the staff with whom I have been working have a sound grasp of issues that remain to be demonstrated clearly. In other words, audit leads to an aspect of school improvement.

In a recent post, I wrote about schools being organic and changing over time. This can be for a variety of reasons, some of them due to sickness (another post on “In sickness and in health”); because the school is in an area of high housing cost, so cannot attract staff; the school is already deemed to be “RI” or has a long-standing local reputation that deters parents (often not the case, but rumour wins).

There are many factors that determine whether a school rises or falls or stays static. The latter case can be sometimes be a “holding operation”, with the staff working their socks off to make sure that any shortfalls, as a result of other background issues, do not affect the children, so that they get a good deal, but the outcomes can be often less secure. A single form entry school, in a challenging area, perhaps with 30%+ of SEN, EAL and high deprivation factors, might struggle to get to the point where even 70% of their children can securely get to the required standard at national tests. This puts them in a vulnerable position.

There are no quick fixes.

Schools need some level of stability, if they are to overcome localised issues, through well focused and dedicated team work. It took me nearly three years to establish the staffing stability that enabled significant long term improvements that then became the “tribal memory”, which, in turn, became the longer term story of the school. Periods of staff turnover did occasionally mean a restart or reframing of the practice, but the essence remained.

There is an articulated need to “do something” about schools that, somehow, the Ofsted inspection finds to be wanting. While the judgements are the same, the reasons for the judgement will be unique to the school, so that each will need a unique solution to the problem. The Ofsted “audit” should have the potential to go beyond making a judgement, when a school is either RI or Special Measures. Either has the potential to further destabilise the professionals and the parent body. A nominated member should stay with the school in some advisory capacity, to ensure that changes are appropriate. They should also be an advocate, should the school require capacity building.

Changing the management will not necessarily address the issue, as A.N. Other, parachuted into the school, will not have the local background, so might seek to impose systems that seemingly have a short term impact, but which fail after they have left to be parachuted into another school. A.N Other has to stay for at least four years, to see a cohort of children through to success. (S)he might need the support of a mentor (HMI?) to oversee the change and to maintain vigilance over that time.

Staffing issues are significant. As an ITE tutor, I’d advocate RI schools being linked to University ITE departments, with the potential for student teachers to undertake “study practices” within the schools, learning to cut their teeth in difficult situations, as well as in good and outstanding schools. (Actually, I think that one line in an Ofsted inspection should be that the school supports ITE in some form) Additional staffing, reflective practice, as teachers unpick their practice to share, ITE lecturers available to support all staff, as well as their students, would all increase the learning dynamic. Teachers keeping personal development blogs, to add to the school development narrative, would provide evidence of professional development.

Equally, pairing with another school to embed (supported) moderation activities would increase the expectations of the teaching staff, including the TAs.

Keeping an eye on the big picture is essential, as it is easy to get distracted into small scale change, perhaps with a single focus, which then distorts the whole. Provision of a rich curriculum (to me) is the key, with experiences that broaden outlooks, providing the vehicles for discussion, deepening vocabulary and interest. Personalising the approach enables each individual to participate as fully as possible, rather than seeing classes as homogenous with a one size fits all approach. As I have been party to this happening in a number of inner city schools, I am happy to assert this. It is not the easiest route, but the needs of all learners need to be addressed.

One size does not fit all, either in a classroom or across a range of schools. We should, with all the available expertise in this country, be capable of tailoring solutions to the unique needs of each school.

The Government, as I understand it, is responsible for the overall quality of all schools. Some solutions will need extra money, some may need less, but a refocusing of professional effort may need to be engineered, as might a lifting of spirits and empowering staff to make decisions.

Teaching is, and always has been, a profession for thinkers. Over the past ten/fifteen years or so, the top down prescription and proscription of approaches has, in some situations, diminished the professionals to mechanics.

Trust teachers to do the job, they each want to do the best possible job. There is a need to invest in professional capital, which can be done relatively easily today with the ubiquitous internet. Online courses could be developed and added to, by successful practitioners. Online portfolios of outcomes could be made available to support discussion and decision making. Schools should be empowered to share internal expertise and to join together to share visiting expertise. Staffrooms should be "Colleges of Teachers", discussing current thinking.

There needs to be a rapid sense of uplift in the profession. If not, those in current employment will look to leave, while others will not wish to join. What is at stake is the education of children, in schools today, who will, with good health, see in the next century.

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I am not an expert

25/5/2015

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I have lived a reasonably long time, survived and enjoyed a full career in schools, have held all responsibility posts in Primary schools, both in terms of subject responsibilities over time, but also management responsibility up to headship, have undertaken a few post graduate levels of study, listened to a range of speakers, read a number of books, but,

I am not an “expert”.

Why not?

For a very simple reason. I have had “my experience”; have seen those experiences through my eyes and distilled my thinking through my own reflections. I’ve taught in particular schools, with their own ethos, so have derived my own through that lens. I cannot hope to have read “all” the books nor listened to “all” the speakers, but I also know that every experience I’ve had has left a mark on me in some way, some immediately, more often than not, later, as a result of further reflection. I am also aware that there is a litter trail of ideas that were considered and put to one side at the time, because they did not support the holistic direction of school development.

I am, and always have been, a “work in progress”, which I think sums up the idea of a life-long learner. I am aware that it will have had an impact on my decisions, throughout my life.

I have had my own personal life experiences, which I detailed in a blog post. Some of these experiences will have been shared by some readers, but not others. They have given me insights and empathy for those in similar situations. I know that, at times, life can be tough, but I am not living the life of those for whom it is toughest.

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I am not an expert.

We are asked to consider our biases, which we all carry. I’d prefer to consider them, tendencies or personal preferences. I am inevitably drawn to certain things rather than others. An example would be in art, where I enjoy the Impressionist style, but also developments such as Cubism. I like listening to, playing for and singing folk music, although that is within a more eclectic appreciation of music generally. I am an unashamed Francophile. J’habite en Angleterre, je vive en France.

All these (favourite) things make me the person that I am. An eclectic mix of life and learning experiences. Each has contributed to making me the person I am.

Je ne suis pas “expert”

But, I do have a lifetime of expertise, skills and knowledge that is the residue of the breadth of these experiences. After headship, I have had the chance to use this expertise to the advantage of a wide variety of schools, supporting them to think about certain areas where development was still needed. One of my skills is distilling information and reflecting back to a school where evidence might be weaker than they think, so could be a vulnerable area.

I can only ever give thought to that which I know, although I can articulate questions that arise and for which I try to seek answers. My thoughts at a particular moment may not chime with someone else’s, but that does not negate them. All ideas are food for thought, so are worthy of expression. To seek to do otherwise could be a form of censorship, which is a “very bad thing”, in a world where we still allow free speech.

I am not an expert, although I blog to explore and share ideas. Occasionally, my insights seem to resonate. They are insights, and like all insights can be developed further.

Others may be seen seen as experts, by virtue of their own publications and their very public pronouncements about the views of others. They have become de facto “experts”, so have joined the group that they seek to challenge. This can only lead to polarisation and self-limiting behaviours from those that feel more vulnerable.

The opportunities to share ideas have broadened considerably over the past ten years, with many, and a growing band of excellent members of the blogging and speaking community sharing high quality thinking regularly. It would be a great shame if this came to a standstill. The only casualty would be everyone’s education.

We are all, after all, works in progress, and I know I still have much to learn and I hope, a sufficiently long and active life in which to do so.

It might be worth considering the notion of a consultant as someone to talk to, to consult, who may have expertise that is useful. If experts rule the world, we might just end up with problems. Life is for human beings, with the tendency to have faults and make errors occasionally.


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Assessment, I'll be Watching you...

22/5/2015

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Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watching you. Police

This week, two conferences, both on Wednesday, floated past the eyes via the twittersphere, as different accounts and commentaries offered personal insights into presenter thoughts. It demonstrated that assessment is still, in teacher minds an indeterminate beast and is in danger of becoming even more so; a little like creating an animal by committee.

There are many schools of thought, but the poles, for want of a better term, can be summarised on the one hand as assessment being part every action within the learning process, while on the other the articulation suggests assessment as something you do at the end of the process. This latter is often then linked with marking, so that the value of doing so, in what depth and to what purpose assumes great prominence in discussion. Valuing drafting, as an approach to learning addresses both sets of need, as it gives a value to feedback.

Teaching is a complex art, whether a teacher is in the first or second camp. But teaching is the art of communicating ideas to a mixed ability group of learners, that will have, by definition, a number of members who are likely to misinterpret, so the clearer the teacher is about what they have to do, the clearer will be the direction of travel and the quality of learning as a result will be higher.

A one year overview plan might resemble aspects of the following diagram.

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There are still the projects to plan, deriving from the greater whole school curriculum, over a prescribed timescale. Different elements encapsulate the essential knowledge that it is decided that the children need at this point in their school life. The year group topics are adapted from the National Curriculum. This applies to any subject, whether called a scheme of work or a project.

It is also a truism that any project will grow to fit the assumed available space, with much more that could have been done, as alternatives or in addition. Every subject could be grown to fill the school day. “Will we get through the project?” could be one level of teacher judgement, affecting whether some activities continue in the SoW or not, depending on time.

Discrete projects (SoW) can assume a life of their own, as an incomplete project is not a pretty thing. You only have to read Allan Ahlberg’s Please Mrs Butler, to find a poem about “Never-ending Projects”. There is a set amount of work to be covered in that timescale. This can begin to dominate, and, in the worst cases over-ride, learning needs. So some children will be premanently playing a game of “catch up”, while others could, potentially, be marking time. To use Allan Ahlberg, some individuals may have incomplete projects and thereby become incomplete projects, as a result.

Understanding how a subject develops and what constitutes appropriate outcomes for the age and abilities of the children are also key to decision making. If, as a teacher, you don’t know what the next steps look like, how can you require it of a child and how will you know if they produce work of that quality? It is the understanding of the processes as well as the variation in product that enables insightful evaluation and reflection during and after the event. Teachers need to look at past years to see where they have come from and look to future years to see what is coming up. Moderation within a school and between Primary and Secondaries would provide a good basis for this understanding.

Progress was a word that caused some issue on Wednesday. This, in part, comes from the fact that the national scheme of assessment, based on level descriptors, was put into free-fall in 2014 when the new National Curriculum was introduced.

As a teacher when the original National Curriculum was introduced, I can say that, linked to an already creative curriculum, the level descriptors, used solely for that purpose gave guidelines to teacher expectations, which, over the next few years improved outcomes across the board. They described potential progress, in general terms, but all within creative contexts.

Over time, the numeric aspect of levelness, which was further compounded by the introduction of sub-levels, took over and the words assumed less importance, so aspects of levelling became almost a form of guesswork.

Progression in a subject needs to be well articulated, so that expectations are clear, plans can be effective in challenging children’s next steps, in-lesson guidance can be given to a purpose and outcomes can be properly evaluated against earlier baselines to help the child to clearly understand what they have achieved and what they need to do next. It should be a dialogue.

Sharing and showing the possible next steps provides the visual evidence for a child. Simply to rely on the teacher voice or the teacher words in marking, could allow for further misinterpretation. Given the nature of learning, assessment judgements are a guide, rather than firm indicators. Rather like an MOT, the assessment stands for that occasion. There might be some misfiring the next day, in a new context.

The introduction of sub-levels and an over-zealous application of these, did, to my mind, take teachers away from the big picture. Too much concentration on the minutiae of movement from c to b or b to a, with associated worksheets that might have supported that move, meant that children often made less progress than if they were given more open, challenging tasks, especially if those task allowed peer learning, so that they learned from each other and identified what they needed to learn to be successful.

Like a number of concepts in education, over-prescriptive interpretations further limited the view.

It may also be the case that a large number of classroom teachers grew up with the prescriptive approach as their educational journey, may have had that instilled during ITE training, so cannot see an alternative approach, but may feel instinctively that there must be better ways.

The simple rule of thumb, for me would be to know your children really well and to use assessment as a means to refine your knowledge of them, so that learning challenges became ever more refined. What’s the wrst that can happen? A lesson might misfire a little and need an in-lesson adjustment. That’s learning.

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However, the significant factor is the need of each and every learner, whose start points should be known to the teacher and other adults working with them. These known start points may be realised in adapted plans, expectations, deployment of support or necessary additional input to ensure that the learner(s) can fully participate in the broader learning. This occurs at both ends of the achievement/ability spectrum. Ensuring that all children are appropriately challenged is an essential factor in teaching and learning. Challenge within groups can then be adapted to the needs of individuals within the group, thereby moving closer to personalised approaches.

A simple approach that supports the process, without the teachr having to remember every child’s personal learning needs can be seen in this post.

The language structures and the vocabulary choice in delivering information is altered by knowledge of the “audience”. I use that term, because, in presenting information, the teacher is acting more as an actor improvising in front of an audience, reacting to audience participation, deviating slightly, then coming back to the main “script”. It is a salutary experience for a teacher to either see themselves teach, via video, or to have feedback from a valued colleague, especially to note the different approaches wih different children, where there may even be a form of interpretation, from a harder word to an easier form or vice versa. It is all based on judgement, which is assessment.

Having worked very closely with the Teaching Standards over the past ten years as an ITE Link Tutor, and even more closely since the 2012 changes, when I developed a dartboard tracker for Winchester University. It has become clearer to me that the subtext of the standards describes the teaching process very effectively, as described in the diagram below. To me, it also describes the teacher thought process clearly, where I would argue that assessment is embedded. In other articles on assessment, (scroll down the contents list) I have argued that AfL is just teacher-think, while summative assessment is capable of being instant assessment, either in response to a parent or with a colleague, wanting to know how x is getting on.


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There are a number of (crude) questions that seem to count in teaching. Where are they now? Where do they need to be? How will they get there? How are they doing? And have they got there? Can we move on, or go back over some things?

These questions gain answers by linking together the standards 2,4,6,5,2 in a cycle.

Standard 2; know the children, enabling progress and outcomes.

Standard 4; Planning, for challenge, in appropriate contexts.

Standard 6; Assessment. Interpreted as thinking about children’s learning, it can be further interpreted to thinking on your feet, while they are working. This guideline, when ITE students “get it”, forces them to look closely at their classes for the tell-tale signs that the children are “getting it, or not”. This enables action in the form of:-

Standard 5; adapting to need. In lessons, this enables tweaking up or down to evident needs, providing appropriate feedback to the children at a point where the advice or extension can be enacted.

Standard 2; reflection after the lesson enables adjustment to subsequent lessons, based on the evidence arising. This is a new “baseline” from which progress can be judged.

Providing a rich diet of learning opportunities, which open children’s eyes to the wonders of learning, coupled with a “forensic attention to individual detail”**, personalised approaches to learning, reflections on the process as well as the product, enables children to make progress in their learning.

That does require the teacher to prepare the journeys as thoroughly as possible, to anticipate possible diversions and have contingency plans, to engage with the “team” en route, ensuring the wellbeing of each member, adjusting apropriately to identifiable needs, celebrating with each of them and making them feel positive about their place as learners. This would seem to be the bottom line to support the possibility of them putting maximum energy into their learning.

This approach does make a link between differentiation and assessment, as both are premised on knowing the learners. What were you expecting? Did they get there?  

 

 

** Edison David, HT of Vauxhall Primary School, London.

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Take a look at Yourself

18/5/2015

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Why auditing, record keeping and the whole school community being able to tell a clear, coherent story might help schools in challenging times.

For the past nine years, I have spent significant periods of time working within schools, seeking to identify, to myself as well as to the school, what really makes them “tick”, so that an informed discussion can support progress. It’s not my school, so conversation has to be tailored to need.  

Inevitably, a large part of that journey is controlled by the school in the form of the narrative that it is able to share, about the journey to date, the current situation and the forward plans. A central feature is the quality of communication in all forms and the evident relationships across all aspects of the partnership that makes up the school. Who is the voice of the school, the head, teachers, children, parents, community? Is the school an active-listening organisation? Do you take external views fully into account?

When triangulated across a number of audiences, this story either holds together or it frays a little, hopefully not too much. Although the auditing that I have done has not been Ofsted, I have often had feedback that the security of the processes have underpinned the narrative to be shared in a more stressful situation. For that reason, I’d argue that all schools should take a very close look at themselves.

The holistic nature of an organisation ensures a closely-linking narrative.

An organisation is more than the sum of the parts; it is more about how they fit together and enable the dynamic elements (the teachers in the classroom) to be effective.

The quality of evidence seeking and evaluation is likely to be a key indicator of the system health.

So, how closely do you look at yourself, or invite developmental commentary and what is the outcome?

Do you have a “You said, we considered, we did…” approach?

There are only so many discrete elements which go together to make up a school, each of which can contribute to the successful running of the organisation as a whole. Of course, each can be subdivided to personal need.

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is a sound starting point, for all aspects.

What do you say that you stand for? What are the guiding principles for the school and what you want to achieve for all the children who attend, or who might choose to do so.

The setting for the school. Begin by describing unemotionally, the background to the organisation, with special emphasis on the demographic, as it is known of the families. This can be both qualitative and quantitative. Entry profiles and feeder school/nursery descriptions aid the story. What’s been the story in the community? I have often found that schools who keep press cuttings begin to reflect on their image. Education is a very public act these days.

What’s your building like and the environment, both within the fence and the local area? How does each support, or hinder, aspects of teaching and learning? Where have you been with each and where are you going with plans?  What’s the resource base and how effectively are the resources put to use to support learning. Are “cost-effectiveness” audits carried out, especially after expensive equipment is bought? What are the (hidden) messages given to outsiders and occasional visitors (prospective parents) through the displays and general organisation?

 

Describe outcomes for your children; how well are they doing? Identify the checks that are made on progress and analysis of outcomes across all groups of children. Describe the information collation, the internal written or oral dialogue and feedback mechanisms within the school that assists professional decision-making, as a result of deep knowledge of children. Describe also the steps taken to address training needs of individual staff who take on specific challenges. 

Do you know what your children think of the school? How often do you ask their opinions and what happens as a result? Do they value their school? What is offered as extended opportunities beyond the classroom and beyond the school day? Simply to use WWW and EBI (what worked well and even better if) as starters can elicit very interesting points for discussion.

Teaching and Learning, the core of the school offering, is based upon a very well-articulated and understood model of practice that has common elements across all staff. Staff are encouraged to create appropriately challenging learning opportunities for children, including opportunities for them to demonstrate independent thinking and decision-making. The curriculum is logically ordered and organised, well-resourced and relevant to the needs of the learners. Individual needs are catered for appropriately. Teaching and learning are based on good relationships and learning dialogue, with children fully aware of what they need to do to improve. Reports allow parents access to progress reports and also areas where they can further support their children appropriately.

Describe the story of recruitment and retention of staff, perhaps along with evidence of recent CPD opportunities, at organisational and personal level and the impact of these on teaching and learning.

Parents and carers are significant partners. Ensuring positive relations with parents is a significant the dynamic. Positive parents send positive children to school. Ease of access and good communication is essential. As a shorthand, here’s what parents have told me that they want, distilled from many meetings.

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Governors, are a significant part of school management. Do they have a clear view of their role, have the necessary information, interpretation and guidance to make sense of the plethora of data that descends on a school? Can they use this to take action as needed to quality assure decision making? How well do they know the school and how do they know this? Is it from first-hand experience or is it always via communications? Do they see themselves as a part of the management scheme and is their strategic oversight role well-articulated?

What does the local community think of the school? How do you know? What and where is the evidence for your views? How does the community link with the school and vice versa? What use does the community make of the school as a community resource and the school of the local area and community as a resource for learning?

When the pieces are identified, to put them together in understandable formats, which enable the complexities to be easily visualised, allows further reflection and analysis, especially at points where changes are being considered, as change in one area may have consequences elsewhere. If the holistic structure is to be maintained, the knock-on effects need to be articulated and addressed.

There’s nothing worse than the law of unintended consequences; seen most often when change is made without thinking beyond the present.

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Schools are organic

17/5/2015

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They grow and change over time...

As readers will know, I have a long career upon which to reflect when considering education issues. This career was across a range of schools, with varying philosophies and under very different styles of management. Some were empowering, some were disabling; the former because teachers were encouraged to think, the latter because the school was the opposite, you had to think alike.


I became a head in 1990, taking over a small village Primary which had shrunk because of local Private schools and being close to a County boundary where the neighbour took children at the end of year 6 into Secondary, where we still had a Middle School system. This school was always thought of as a “good” school. The head was regularly given the role of trainer to other colleagues and LEA training. The reality when I arrived was different, with a number of staffing issues to be resolved very quickly.

As a result, I had almost a complete staff turnover within two years, at which point, I felt that I could start building properly, based around a core of dynamic staff prepared to develop as a team, ensuring that any wavering was mopped up and all moved forward together.

The act of creation is a very special dynamic, in that you can think openly, discuss widely, bring in the available external expertise and synthesise processes that everyone can buy into and make work. If you are “in on the ground floor”, you have a purpose in making sure that it does. It’s “your baby”.

Four years later we had our first Ofsted, which was excellent in all aspects; everything held together very tightly.

Then we had staff turnover. Deputy to headship, senior teacher to deputy headship, NQT to second post and, as a result of 35% turnover there was a need to induct new people into the systems. Induction is a very interesting process, in that there is the potential to over-simplify aspects of practice as it has become everyday practice, whereas we were doing things that were being noticed in the area as very good practice. The normality for us could be retold, but needed the underpinning, developmental thinking to interpret fully. This may have been a weakness. It needed mentoring to be embedded. New teachers had to play “catch-up”.

Inevitably there was a wish from new staff to make a mark and subtle hints were introduced. As they were in the correct forum they could be discussed and where they constituted an improvement, they were incorporated. Over the next few years, the school changed slightly, but was still judged very well at Ofsted as results were consistently high, across all areas.

Further change followed, as lives altered, and aspirations meant further promotion. I realised at this stage that I was staying for two reasons. I was providing a level of continuity that was needed and my first wife, having been diagnosed with cancer, had relapsed and family needed continuity too.

Having rebuilt once, it was possible a second time, especially as it coincided with alterations to the National Curriculum, which provided a base for auditing school provision. Change was evolutionary, rather than complete change, growing from earlier strength, supported by opportunities for in-school research.

My last year as a head was tough. If you want to read the full story, I have been candid; suffice to say that it included the death of one teacher from cancer and the death of my first wife, with a d=side order of other long-term staff physical illness, which resulted in my teaching full time for the autumn term.

I realised that I had become the weakest link and decided to step away from the school so that it could continue to develop and move forward. A hard, but necessary decision. I could have gone back, but that would have meant the school carrying me, when the larger aspect of headship is to support others to do their job well.

Schools are organisms, beyond the individuals who make up the body. They grow and change with loss and new additions, eventually to become different organisms over time. They learn to adapt to situations, to evolve and grow new members from within.

They are rarely, if ever, once and for all organisations. Someone once advised me “expect the unexpected”. That still stands.

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Displaying ideas

17/5/2015

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There is a very divided school of thought on the value of display. It’s a real “Marmite” situation, which I’d almost see as a Primary/ (some) Secondary divide. While I have visited schools for ASD children where the walls are blank in order not to cause sensory disruption and aggravation, most children can cope with a variety of media being present. They live in a very busy world, so have to develop the skills to unpick the range of stimuli and interpret what they need to find.

Love them or hate them; people do for a range of reasons, not good at display, so argue against, arguing that they are distracting, that they serve a passing need, so lose their value quickly, that they take time that could be spent elsewhere. During my career, I have heard all these and more, but, as a life-long Primary practitioner, I am convinced that the value of display outweighs the negatives. Children who know their work might be displayed in some form will put more effort into their work, as there is a defined, visible end product. If all work is in exercise books, they become secretive efforts, with only the classteacher to respond. Interestingly, there are simultaneous arguments against marking. One or the other serves a purpose in providing a response to effort.

Displays serve a variety of purposes within a school classroom. They should allow individual interpretation, not be part of corporate working.

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For the past nine years, as an IQM and LPPA assessor and ITT Link Tutor with two universities, I have visited many classrooms. Some are awash with displays, in Primaries especially, where there’s  usually a large word list wall, some kind of number-line, behaviour chart, timetable for the day, WALT and WILF or LO/SC and posters with useful “facts” supporting writing, such as ISPACED or RUCSAC, always presented on colourful backgrounds, ensuring a very vibrant feel to the work space.  I am often aware that it can be overwhelming to the senses and occasionally offer that view. Quite often, children’s work is often displayed in corridors, so the classteacher may not be making use of the potential for modelling expectations, although that can be part of working walls.

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As a classroom teacher, I felt it was my role to create the best possible working environment to support children in their learning. We decorate our homes and choose art work or ornaments that are pleasing (display), organise things for ease of movement and access (space and resources) and adopt similar ideas in classrooms, especially if they are “our own”, as in Primaries. Children deserve a pleasant, well organised and well-resourced environment within which they spend several hours of their day. Working with a number of very talented teachers, I learned the craft of display, by imitation, copying their short-cuts, learning colour coordination, arrangements that caught the eye and encouraged engagement, to avoid the problem of displays becoming just wallpaper. Throughout my school lifetime, displays were seen as needing to be changed regularly, to ensure continuing interest, but also to avoid them becoming decoration. They had to serve a learning purpose.

Regular turnover of displays, linked with the current topic allowed flexibility to ensure that every child had a chance of having some aspect of work shared with the others. I found it a very pleasant end to a school day to put up a display that would be noticed the next day. A good display can enhance the wellbeing aspects of a classroom, especially if incorporating children’s work.

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Celebration and valuing effort. There is a great feeling in having something displayed publicly, whether a child or an adult. This can be in print, a Twitter retweet, or a child’s efforts, mounted with care and within a display. The act of display is a celebration. I still remember my seven year old writing printed in the school portfolio, or the colourful fish painting after catching my first perch. The dynamics of learning are enhanced by such celebration. I wrote about this further after a school assessment, where a local hall had been the venue for a display of children’s work, visited by wider family and the local population. The feedback being positive, the children were galvanised to greater effort.

 Sharing good work and Modelling thinking. It is almost self-evident that displaying work allows for sharing, but it can have a very positive impact on an individual and can also offer opportunities for evaluative interactions with an outcome, leading to further improvement. If the process is also displayed, for example, with the earlier drafts leading to the final product, this allows insights into the personal thought processes involved. Learning how people think is as valuable as passing by a nice piece of work. Encouraging engagement with post-it evaluation comments creates an interactive element.

Teacher modelling should be incorporated within displays, with hand-written rather than computer printed headings to model the school approach to writing and writing expectation; if a teacher writes badly, why should children be different? Careful questions embedded within the display which encourages further thought, together with post-its to enable responses, makes the display interactive and, in some case, evaluative. Mind maps of ideas or carefully selected images provide useful visuals from which discussion can be generated.

I wouldn’t have a general word wall, or large, bought charts. If words are important, they should be beside the child, for ease of access, a one side of A4 essential word list. Topic words could be written on a chart. Charts for memory jogging should also be with the child, filtered as personalised targets, not generalised statements. As “fold-out” sheets attached to the edge of an exercise book, they serve a closer purpose. The bought charts are usually very easily replicated by a teacher or TA, modelling school writing expectations.

Technology allows for temporary display to a purpose, through the IWB, for example. Images are really important, especially for children who may experience working memory issues.

I would have a drawer or paper trolley with pre-cut coloured sugar paper ready for display. There is a debate whether to have these cut just larger than A4/A3 or to cut down the A4/A3 writing/drawing paper. Either way, there’s some preparatory cutting to be done.

But, I wouldn’t double or triple mount. In the words of one mentor, the venerable Peter Dixon, 
Single mount= I really like this piece of work,
Double= I really, really like this piece of work,
Triple mount= I like this piece of work, but I have time on my hands.

Children, including infants, can be trained to mount their work for you, or at least find the right paper and put them together. As a classteacher, I did not have the facility of a class Teaching Assistant. I met my first one when I became a head, and that lady was largely helping in the office, rather than the classrooms.

I would have an interactive/working wall, based on a current topic, with some essential starter images and questions, but which, over the timescale of the topic, changes to the needs of the class and allows celebration of different aspects of working. It might from time to time be a little scruffy, as on-going mind maps, or post-it notes are incorporated, but it should be about learning.

I would have time lines, either as story boards for literacy, or within a history context, to embed concepts of time and associated vocabulary.

I would have displays, not too fussy, but each to a purpose, supporting a specific aspect of learning, so changeable daily if necessary, but always seeking to celebrate children’s work enhancing their self-esteem, so encouraging further effort.






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Investigation or research?  

13/5/2015

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Is “big” research the only way forward as the means to improving practice?

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The main tools of the teacher’s role have always been subject knowledge, child development, behaviour management and learning/teaching approaches. Teaching is a craft, learned over time and honed by the individual, sometimes with coaching and support, to create a toolkit or repertoire of approaches within which a wide variety of lessons can be developed. The breadth and depth of this craft will be the most significant determinant of learning outcomes.

Teachers, as a general rule, are continually seeking to improve their practice. Ideas are sourced from colleagues in school or through Inset activities, visits to another school or, for some, Teachmeets and Twitter or other social media.

Some teachers, in my experience, have called this a magpie approach. I’d use the jackdaw, largely because the spelling of magpie-ing can be tricky, whereas jackdawing follows conventional spelling rules, and, to me jackdaws are more sociable birds! Personal preference?

Teachers tend to pick up ideas that complement the generality of their approach, seeking to refine and improve specific aspects. There are polarised stereotypes of education, child centred and traditional, with adherents at both ends of the spectrum, both able to find research evidence that backs up their approach, and by extension, that shows they are right. Most teachers would probably see themselves as oscillating between the poles, choosing the methodology which best suits the learning needs of the topic and the learners.

If one is seeking coherence in approach across a school, it is right that the school should be able to describe the parameters within which teachers are expected to teach, to avoid a free for all of individual approaches creating learning hiccups between teachers. The school approach is likely to embed the headteacher/SLT vision for the school and may reflect the classroom approach which was their own style. This can become a limiting factor at some stage, so the act of seeking and acting on collected ideas is important if schools and teachers are to continually develop.

Just copying an idea is likely to result in failure. Just because it works in one classroom, doesn’t mean that it will work in another. The creativity of one teacher can’t rub off on another, unless the developmental thought processes and preparation are followed. Even then the copied approach will be an interpretation of the original.

If, however, as a result of reflecting on an idea, a teacher makes a change to their class approach, whether in terms of space, resources, organisation of time, or incorporating a particular approach within a lesson, keeping a track of the impact of the change will be an essential ingredient in supporting the next stage of reflection. In a school which encourages this approach, peer to peer conversation is a useful constituent in refining approaches and ensuring the success of change. A log book approach can be a useful dialogue tool, talking with oneself. Some very committed colleagues are using similar approaches in MA studies or in NPQML/SLT. The teacher researcher model is a powerful stimulus to school development.

Sharing this with colleagues can be very powerful CPD, for the presenter, who has to unpick their own journey of thinking, but also the colleagues who may benefit from the knowledge.

Education is littered with discarded or overlooked research, as personal preference isolates one approach above others. An example would be the Leverhulme project, run by Ted Wragg and Neville Bennett form Exeter University (1987-93), which resulted in a series of books describing different aspects of the teaching craft. This project would have had resonance in both the Rose review outcomes (2009) and the Cambridge Review (2009), as well as with a number of other researchers, eg Wiliam and Pollard.


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It is probable that some teachers will be promoting aspects of practice from reports such as those above, depending on when they were trained and the influence of the university lecturers whom they met. Others will have different influences. Honed, refined and personalised, these influences will contribute to good or outstanding teaching, wherever they sit on the teaching spectrum.

It is the evolution of practice which has longer term impact, rather than a revolving door of speculative approaches. Reflective teachers make better teachers. Equally, the teacher standards 2012 have two standards which, to me, hold the potential to empower this approach, namely 6&5, assessment and adaptation, which can be interpreted as thinking on your feet and doing something about issues spotted. The spotting is often due to learning behaviours which demonstrate concern, or perhaps that the challenge is too easy. Adapting or tweaking the task demand is a reasonable response, but then provides food for thought.

Teaching is a thoughtful, reflective interaction between teacher, learner and context. The teacher role, to interpret the context to the needs of the learner is fundamental and develops with a range of experiences.

Even then, every new class is a voyage of discovery, which made a very long career very interesting.

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Dependence interdependence independence

13/5/2015

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Preamble?

The most important skill that we can ever give to developing children is the confidence that they can think and do things and take responsibility for themselves.

During a visit to Winchester a few months ago, a strange structure was being built in the grounds, at the same time as scaffolding was being put up around one end of the building. The size and shape of the structure made it look like an alternative for services during the summer months, while work was being done. In reality, it was the topping for the scaffolding structure, to go over the roof, to enable that to be completely renovated. The complete scaffolding was enabling a safe and close examination of problems in the roof. Of course, when the original building was put up, scaffolding was timber. Health and Safety were not of concern. Scaffolding holds nothing up, other structures, like buttresses do that.

An interesting reflection, perhaps, that the erection of the scaffolding within the work programme would have been subject to a detailed project plan, scaffolding the elements so that everything was done on time. The link between project planning and planning for learning, has always, to me, been self-evident.

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Amble?

In the beginning was the baby, dependent on surrounding adults and older siblings for survival, for food, for warmth and the comforts of a safe, dry home.

Gradually, with these basic needs available, the baby grows, begins to move about, to become aware of their surroundings, to take an interest, to find and develop muscles that one day will enable them to stand and to walk and to begin a broader exploration of the world. It is with encouragement, praise, demonstrations of pleasure, from the adults to the baby/toddler that encourages them to repeat things, to get a little better, so that the praise and pleasures are repeated. It is a mutual process. Parents notice the small and sometimes larger changes, especially with the first born, as each milestone is ticked off, which is comforting. For the parents of children whose development is not in line with expectation, worry may well replace positivity, anxiety sometimes leading to negativity.

With guidance and support, being shown how to do things, “coached” along the way to get better the child begins to do things for themselves, by developing a self-awareness, so that they begin to talk and explain simply their needs and effective toilet training enables the child to independently take on that task. Before starting school, to undress and dress is important, especially for the teacher, who does not want to have to undress and dress thirty under-fives in order to do physical activity.

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Entry to school can enable some regression, across all areas. An insecure teacher can start to cover any shortfall by assuming parental roles, providing unnecessary supports which gradually become the norm. This has been called “learned helplessness”. The articulation of “I can’t do that”, followed by someone else doing it, allows the child to learn to manipulate through their perceived helplessness. If this is not noticed and rectified, the continued support becomes disempowering.

The first half of my teaching career was with large classes and no teaching assistant. I am not going to bang the drum for the past, but, as teachers, the lack of additional adult meant that we had to be self-sufficient and find methodologies for challenging and supporting all the children, across all subjects. The use of the integrated day supported that need, as children were often taught in small groups within the class. The development of independence was encouraged, within challenging tasks tailored to the needs of each group, some of which were collaborative, so that discussion underpinned decision making.

“Scaffolding” was provided largely by selecting appropriate models, for example using Dienes’ multibase for exemplifying and solving mathematical problems. Storyboarding supported writing. Sharing good outcomes, with displays of children’s work, both showed the possibilities and also created a pleasant working environment. It was my workshop for the year too.

Scaffolding, as a notion, appeared on my professional compass around 1986, with the arrival of the National Writing Project. This took off locally and the majority of schools joined the project, to good effect, as the writing process was stripped apart and put back together, within the already existing creative contexts. It enables structures to be created that sought to emphasise certain aspects of writing and to break away from the beginning, middle, end that had become the norm. Used across all subjects, scaffolds allowed drafting and redrafting to a purpose, always with an intended audience in mind. It was ok to stop at the first draft for some writing, to avoid overload.

The Overhead Projector (OHP), with the advent of the school photocopier, was useful to share and scaffold next learning steps.

Class and personal books were regularly created, to showcase outcomes.  

The employment of Teaching Assistants has created interesting new dynamics within classrooms, in that, apart from the needs of the children, the additional adult(s) has/have to be allocated to tasks that are worthwhile for them as well as the children. This relatively new dynamic has the potential to debilitate the teacher, in that an over-reliance on additional adults can cause a form of panic if they are not present. I know that it is an area where schools are conscious of the need to explore TA deployment. It is important to be able to show the added value as a result of having additional adults at extra cost. Some teachers see the deployment of the TA as their approach to differentiation. If the tasking is not appropriate, this is unlikely to be the case.

It is essential to ensure that tasks accomplished with the support of the teacher, a teaching assistant, or through following a set scheme of instructions, can be checked through independent challenge. Without independence, the child can get to performance with ill-formed skills, so cannot fulfil the new task.

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The most important skill that we can ever give to developing children is the confidence that they can think and do things for themselves. To do otherwise is to disable them as future adults, or at least to delay their development. Don’t build scaffolding onto scaffolding.

Let them stand and get strong. What they can do for themselves, let them do for themselves.                                                                                   

Learning to let go can be a hard decision for a parent or a teacher.

Post script

If you have an interest in trees, as I have, you will know that there have been several schools of thought about whether and how to stake young trees. There is a school of thought that trees grow stronger without stakes to hold the trunks; that the swaying in the wind actually enables the tree to ensure it develops its strength. Tall and thin may not enable long term survival.

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Trust

11/5/2015

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As a headteacher, I always believed that any ideas I may have had needed to be enacted by others, as my role was not in the front line, although I did teach, for both extended and shorter periods. In order to do that, the school “vision”, for want of a better word, had to be very clear, both orally and on paper. It was developed and moulded through discussion, exploration and refinement of practice. The teachers had to be trusted to get on with the job in hand, to do the best they could for each child. They needed the best available working space, the resources to do the job and the time to both do the role and to reflect, individually and collectively, so that the whole could grow and move forward together.

Having been fortunate to spend the past few years visiting a range of schools, across the country, in very different circumstances, I have seen a similar ethos supporting schools to achieve even in the most challenging of circumstances. Trust and collaborative practice creates security. Security enables sometimes difficult decisions to be taken, in the knowledge that any fall out can be accommodated, without compromising the organisation as a whole.


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Trust and grow the ones you are with. Trust underpins professional capital. The stronger the capital base, the stronger the system. This is, in my opinion, formed over a 40 year career, the best read, the most articulate (blogs, twitter, and authoring books), clearly collaborative (eg teachmeets and pedagoo) potentially the most challenging generation of teachers and leaders. The ideas are there to be enacted, explored and refined, in the knowledge that they can be shared. Thinking aloud, as a blog, is important, in the same way that a child sharing an idea enables an external person to interact with the ideas and offer further insights from a different perspective. Reflective e-journals, as blogs, can form part of CPD if senior managers encourage it, but only if there is security and trust internally.

An organisation that relies on creative partnerships and goodwill in order to develop requires a high level of trust. Trust costs nothing, but buys a great deal.

TRUST TEACHERS                                                                                                                     

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Synonyms for trust; responsibility, personal or for another or another’s property or wellbeing.

                                Believing reliability, conferred to another (trust with), safekeeping

                                Hope (polite) and reliance (trust in luck)

                                Predictability (trust them to…)

Derives from Old Norse, traust, traustr meaning strong.

Isaac Newton; I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I trust that life is being kind to you and that you may have a few very pleasant and interesting diversions to look forward to at the end of the working week. The chances are that for many people the word hope will now replace the word trust in such a sentence, as the word trust in such use seems to have fallen out of favour. In many ways the word verity meaning truth, derived from French, has also fallen out of fashion. Where words fall out of use, perhaps it is possible for them also to lose some of their original meaning, as one person uses it, but another interprets it in a different form.

Yet trust, as an idea, and in reality, underpins all relationships, between close friends, work colleagues and very often passing relationships. You trust that you will receive the correct change from a shop.

Trust is the bedrock of reliability, security and stability.

Anton Chekhov; You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.

There is a trusting relationship between parents and children. In the first instance, the process is largely the child trusting the adults, but, gradually over time, the child has to be more entrusted with tasks whereby they prove their trustworthiness, building up a reserve which enables them to undertake task requiring greater trust. This might involve greater liberty, in distance or time away from home.

Of course there are many situations where children can’t, or don’t trust adults, based on the adult behaviour. Acts of cruelty, feeling let down in some way or insecurity is the easiest way to destroy trust.

It can be a bit chicken and egg at times, especially with younger children, who, often inadvertently, step over the supposed lines of trust and do things that need to be addressed. By discussion, rather than telling off, with the child being enabled to understand the adult concern, as well as the opportunity to tell their own story, can strengthen relationships. Trust is the essence of mutuality, the two sides of the relationship.

Ernest Hemingway; The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them

Trust is a constituent part of more distant relationships too. The Government and society puts its trust in the people who daily have the role of securing high quality education for children, or those who look after the sick. Without getting too political, it can often seem, with politician rhetoric, that public servants are not trusted. The problem with this message is that it can undermine the public trust in the system, and with it the individuals involved, leading to small, but sometimes significant levels of mistrust, with unintended consequences, such as parents giving their children negative messages about individual teacher or education as a whole.

Trust is embedded in teacher contracts and across the 2012 teaching standards, starting with professionalism (standard 8) and part 2, but is also implied across the others, with standard 2 based on progress and outcomes for all learners.

Outcomes are never quite good enough. There is always a call for doing better with less. We are entering a new phase in public life, where, embedded in current thinking is the belief that making expectations higher, and tests harder, will raise standards across the board. While this might have a marginal impact, there will still be a substantial group who will not reach the prescribed standard. If the system gets 80% of year 6 children to “above national standard”, the human system will have done well. To achieve the Government target of 85% will be exceptional achievement, but still leaves the lowest 15% “below standard”. Embedding such language, to my mind, undermines the need of education to maintain learner momentum at a very critical time, namely transfer to Secondary education. It will serve to diminish trust in the system.

I’d like to see the ideal of trust embedded in the next phase of education development, with clear indications that the system, as a whole as well as the individuals who do the day to day activities, is seen as capable of carrying out the duties prescribed to a quality that is high.

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If there is a need to raise expectations, that this should be done through continuous professional development, which need not cost the earth.

Dissemination of information has never been easier with electronic mail. Sharing high quality case studies (courtesy of HMI?) across the whole system would take no time and a national debate, based on the same information could be undertaken, through social media, blogging, teachmeets, collegiate staffrooms, local area discussions, all informed by the same material.

I trust the Government will do its best to secure the best interests of each and every child for whom it is responsible, by enabling teachers to do the best job that they can on a day to day basis.

At least I can hope…

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A question of timing? 

6/5/2015

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Time is a significant factor in education, if learning is to operate like clockwork....

There are years, with terms and half terms, usually predetermined by an authority, then there is the timetable, which, in Primary will dictate when the classes have to decamp to another space, perhaps for PE or games, Music or assembly.

Topics grow to fill the available space, so they are made to last the half term or term. Lessons have been made to last the sessions between playtimes. In both case there is a stop start element, which can have a significant impact on the dynamics of the learning. If learning is effectively closed down at the end of a lesson or before a holiday, there is the potential for it to become discontinuous, with an impact on outcome quality. It potentially removes the right of a teacher to determine that an extra fifteen minutes, taken from the next session, would mean a more positive outcome, for all children. It also means that transition between learning sessions is under teacher supervision, rather than needing a kick start after each playtime. If, in the course of a lesson, it becomes obvious that ground needs to be recovered, or areas need addressing, to see the time disappear means a delay in addressing the issue, potentially leading to further loss before the next lesson. In class intervention, at a point where it makes most sense would seem to be the most effective route.

It’s not a case of “mastery”, it’s a case of “getting it”.

What stops the teacher addressing the issue in the relevant lesson, adjusting the timings of the next lesson start accordingly? The answer, in some cases, is setting for subjects, so that there is a need to move from space to space to another teacher.

If homework is woven into the fabric of the learning, perhaps as “talk homework”, it supports the learning dynamic, rather than being a stand-alone activity.

Where topics are designed to fit the half term, there is the potential for fill-in activities, rather than substantive challenges, so why not ask how much time is actually needed for the topic? If time can be released in this way, then more can be covered.


With children changing teachers each year, there is an inevitable gap while teachers get to know the children well, enabling refined decisions.

However, if teachers are timetabled on a two year rotation, this can be a very effective means to avoid the inevitable half term of loss. If this is across years 4-5, then substantial progress can be made, with year 6 available for “polishing”. In a Primary, a 2-3 rotation can avoid cross phase loss too.

For interest, establishing a two week year-start topic of the teacher’s own choosing, with a brief to get to know the children well in that time, coupled with a closure on the second Friday, given to reflection, discussion and planning in detail, enabled the year to start, then progress based on evidence rather than assumptions.

Timing is everything.

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Is marking moderation step 1

5/5/2015

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In two other blog posts; 1) “marking, utility and futility” and 2) “marking, keep it simple”, I explore marking in the broad (1) and suggest a methodology whereby marking can become ongoing record-keeping for both the learner and the teacher (2).

Marking has, for the whole of my career, been an issue for teachers. I’d have to say that the move from integrated approaches, where a smaller part of the class might be involved in a task requiring deeper marking, to whole class approaches, where thirty plus books will then require marking have added significantly to the overall work load, especially if accompanied by school expectations that demand specific, over-complicated approaches and marking codes.

Marking is an extension of the dialogue between the teacher and the learner. So, being specific about areas that were to be celebrated and those that needed further attention would seem to underpin all marking. Children need to know what is good enough, in the same way that it applies to teachers. If you’ve not achieved the “good enough” level, then you are not in a position to repeat the formula. The old adage of “know how with show how” is important. The sharing of WAGOLLs, “what a good one looks like”, through use of IWB, visualiser, photocopy or display, is important, so that learners bet to know what it really looks like, as well as being told.

I, personally, have no issue with any of the more formulaic approaches, such as two stars and a wish, or WWW/EBI, if they are used to good effect on impact on learner progress. Both can support progress, through awareness raising. Both can be specific to a child and each is far better than general comments like good, very good, see me... as it use to be in the "good old days" of the 1950/60s.

In the second of the linked blogs, I propose a fold-out slip with improvement targets written, shared and understood, to be linked to examples in the outcome. As long as the deeper marking is linked to drafting and redrafting, the mutuality of the editing process can exist to some extent.


Linking marking to moderation could be a useful mindset shift, in that the messages, guidance, support, given to learners is akin to the conversations between two (or more) colleagues looking at a piece of work, with moderation identifying the strengths of the piece and the areas where additional evidence is needed.

Moderation stage 1; teacher child conversation.

Moderation stage 2; teacher-teacher conversation.

Moderation stage 3; school-area conversation.

Moderation stage 4; school-national outcomes conversation.

As an afterthought; I’d expect collective issues to become the basis for next steps teaching, rather than individual responses to marking. It is a case of best use of time, a limited commodity.

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#Twitteratichallenge

5/5/2015

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For a while I have been seeing people whom I follow on Twitter putting up a post marked #Twitteratichallenge, with names attached and, from time to time, I’ve clicked into the link, to find a celebration of a group of five tweeters who have influenced the writer.

Now, as a latecomer, somewhat bullied into joining with a list by @Chocotzar and @betsysalt, despite my protestation about needing to be nominated, which was countered by Stephen Tierney, aka @LeadingLearner, I have spent time thinking around the topic.

It’s been a couple of years since I joined Twitter and started blogging, first as a freelancer for Inclusion Quality Mark, in which incarnation I was able to “meet” digitally and then in person at events like TLT14/15 and Northern Rocks, a range of people with mutual interests. This, I gather, is now known as a PLN, a personal learning network, which is a grand way of saying that we “talk” together from time to time and share ideas. This, in my mind, is an essential good of social media, when teachers, despite working in what should be a team environment can feel isolated. Branching out definitively on my own in October has enabled further personal discoveries, in that I have been able to do some work with @JulieLilly and @AlisonPeacock, with @BeyondLevels ideas, as well as being asked by other providers to undertake projects. Twitter and blogging does have significant advantages.

The past two years have shown me that we are blessed in this country with very deep thinking, highly articulate and exceptionally motivated teachers and school leaders, who, on a day by day basis work their socks off to make schools the best places that they can be, then spend their spare time writing blogs or books or travelling to speak to teacher gatherings, often for free.

@johntomsett @headguruteacher @LeadingLearner @rlj1981 @DavidDidau @HeyMissSmith @DisappointedIdealist @IcingOnTheCake @Pekabelo @ICTevangelist would be among that group.  

Working with ITE students in another disguise, I see, every year, a new stock of incredibly committed young teachers, now prepared to spend £30K+ in order to be able to take up a teaching job somewhere. For those who doubt it, based on their own experience, the bar is set high and these students jump higher.

So teaching, to me, should be in a good state, but it isn’t all over the country. I have, on file, many visits to exceptional schools, often in difficult circumstances, which achieve despite the odds, down to vision and sheer hard graft from all concerned.

Those teachers who are less well read and those with less time to think and act effectively, as a result of multiple distractions, which can be building, staffing, children, families, community, looking over their shoulder in an accountability heavy environment, can revert to simplicities in an attempt to provide the essentials of a “good” education. But a good education is holistic and all the elements have to cohere if they are to be effective over a lifetime. It takes reflective time and a group with whom to discuss in some form.

Those people who blog should be celebrated for sharing their thoughtful insights, often developing ideas which are then added to by interested colleagues. Some go further and share or run #Teachmeets. @davidfawcett @davidrogers @martynreah for example.

Many of the successful bloggers are Secondary and have an English language background, which is evident in their articulacy and cultural references. This group gets lauded regularly, so I want to celebrate a few people whose voice might seem small in comparison, but whose contributions I look forward to, or I’d just like to thank for their own Twitter and/or blogging efforts and their supportive comments from time to time.

By choosing five, I have tried to stick to the rules, but it was exceptionally hard to choose. Sorry if, inadvertently, I have offended anyone. Everyone on Twitter is a special teacher, just by spending their time sharing and supporting.

Di Leedham; for coherence, cogent arguments, and cultural references, especially in the area of EAL, BEM, inclusion.

Tim Taylor; in many ways for being a great human being. Tim, on occasion agonises over a topic, after first well researching his background.

Jules Daulby; a lady on a mission, to embed equality of opportunity and inclusion into life. Beyond that, she’s a great go to person for current educational apps for SEND.

Andy Day; a kind humane teacher, whose length of teaching experience almost matches mine. Can be relied on to be a voice of wisdom and moderation in an argument.

Jo Baker; for regularly brightening up the end of a week with exceptional examples of children’s art work, produced through personal development of processes, under her guidance and support.

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Rules

There are only 3 rules.

  1. You cannot knowingly include someone you work with in real life.
  2. You cannot list somebody that has already been named if you are already made aware of them being listed on #TwitteratiChallenge.  I realise this will get more complex over time.
  3. You will need to copy and paste the title of this blogpost, the rules and what to do information into your own blog post.
What To Do?

If you would like to nominate your own list of colleagues, here’s how:

Within 7 days of being nominated by somebody else, you need to identify colleagues that you rely on or go to for support and challenge.  It might be a good idea to check that they are happy to be challenged so that the #TwitterChallenge chain doesn’t break down.

Record a video announcing your acceptance of the challenge, followed by a pouring of your (chosen) drink over a glass of ice.  Then, the drink is to be lifted with a ‘cheers’ before nominating your five educators to participate in the challenge.  (This is optional for the technically challenged).

Write your own #TwitteratiChallenge blog post within 7 days nominating your chosen participants who then become part of #TwitteratiChallenge.  If you do not have your own blog, try @Staffrm.

The educator that is now newly nominated has 7 days to compose their own #TwitteratiChallenge blog post and identify who their top 5 go to educators are.


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Assess and track

1/5/2015

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How well do you know your children? That is a key question for every teacher. In September, the regular move around in schools means that teachers will be faced with thirty new faces, multiplied by the number of classes in Secondary, ensuring that a good amount of time will be spent getting to know the children. It won’t be just the newly qualified, although experienced teachers may take a little less time to get to know their charges. Getting to know your children better is, to me, the essence of good teaching, supported by assessment and tracking.

There is one key question that teacher need to ask of learners as they work through a range of issues.

“Can you do this?” ie, a judgement of capability.

There will be a range of answers, from yes to no, passing through possibly, or not quite, or, to use the Growth Mindset, not yet, which, to all intents and purposes has to be no, for now. The outcome of this assessment question decides the next steps for the teacher, whose role is to reflect on the context and the challenge within which the next steps can occur.

Of course, if the teacher chooses then to write down the answer to the question, against some kind of proforma, against the child’s name, this becomes tracking of performance, which becomes cumulative over time. Inevitably, like an MOT on a car, the assessment stands for that moment in time. There can be no guarantee of perfect retention. This applies from EYFS to degree level study. It is useful at the time, to support decisions.

Assessment and tracking are intertwined in my mind, and have been throughout my career.

Phonics is regularly in the news. Starting my career in 1974, surprising to some perhaps, but phonics did happen. One of the key things that I did as a classteacher was to keep a record of the phonic skills of each child, as well as their basic sight vocabulary, all 39 of them, which supported decisions about spellings or words to be sent home. At the same time, each child was heard to read, at least once a week, with notes made after each session, about fluency and accuracy, with specifics noted as aides memoire, which to me is a main purpose of tracking; keeping the teacher on track to ensure quality challenge throughout, rather than assumption and guesswork. This was supported at a simple level by the colour coded reading system widely used in schools. So judgements could be along the lines of “Can you read this level of books fluently and with a good degree of accuracy?” If yes, then move on to higher challenge. If not yet, then stay on the same colour, there’s lots of choice.

The same happened for maths and other subjects too, all before the National Curriculum and the Strategies, although, as I have argued in other posts, the NC level descriptors were useful in supporting this decision making, by articulating aspects of progression in subjects. They made a difference to expectation among teachers and gave a common language for discussion and decision making, based on capability.

And that’s the essence of my current concern. Is there (in each school) a framework against which to make judgements of capability in the first instance? If not, both assessment and tracking could be compromised, especially for newly qualified teachers.

I don’t want to go back to the days of very good, good, satisfactory and unsatisfactory. We made significant progress over the 27 years of the former NC. We should be able to build on that practice, through reflection and discussion.

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On getting older

1/5/2015

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You are old, Father William,” the young man said,
And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head –
Do you think, at your age, it is right?


I must admit that looking in the mirror these days I see rather too many white hairs and wrinkles. I like to think of the latter as smile lines, rather than worry lines. If you have read my extended bio, you’ll know that, at times, there have been one or two significant worries. However, if I have learned anything in life, it is that life has a lot to offer, so better to make the best of what is on offer.

However, getting older also means that one looks forward with a little more trepidation. I am now the elder member of my direct family, at least with whom I have contact. My parents’ divorce meant a rift with extended family members and limited news from my Welsh side. Getting older also means children grow up and have children of their own, so I now have six grandchildren from 4 months to 10 years and, having remarried, to someone also with three children, one of them is also expecting, next month, so the very young are getting more numerous.

I have to say that, in the current political and economic climate I have concerns for the children and the grandchildren, for a number of reasons, the main one being that they will not have the chance to dream about futures in ways that my generation enjoyed. That could become a serious issue over time, as I think that to dream, to aspire, to work towards a future that can be envisaged, gives people the chance to take positive steps towards that end point, and even if they cannot reach the ultimate goal, the striving can, in itself, become the positive action. Taking decisions for yourself is empowering. Having to wait for others to make decisions, or to give permission on your behalf is disempowering.

Power derives, in some part, from Anglo Norman French (poeir) and Latin (posse) meaning to be able. Therefore power means effectively that I can do something. I am empowered. I have the ability to do something. I can take action.

It seems to me that the legacy to the next generation is possibly less than generous. Where my generation had grants to go to university or teacher training college, the current £9000 a year fees, apart from living, could be a disincentive to someone like me, who came from a modest background, hating debt.

Where, with a little help, and a mortgage based on twice two teacher incomes, we were able to buy a modest house, that same house today would require six times joint teacher incomes and a significantly larger deposit.

Having paid into the teacher pension, I am fortunate to look forward to a regular income from a reasonable age.

Ok, I was born at the right time, that’s fate, but the downside means that I am older and have a shorter time to look forward.

Politics, as in life is about choices. Politicians have the power, are empowered by our votes, to make decisions on our behalf. Sadly, some allow the power to go to their heads and they begin to dictate to the rest of us how things will be. They stop being representatives of the people and start to be autocratic, because they know best. The arrogance of some long serving politicians is quite breathtaking at times.  I digress.

It was the case when I went to teacher training college that earlier generations paid for the future generations to be trained effectively, especially in areas of great public need, such as education and health. The need is still there, but the generosity isn’t. At the same time, the pressures, real and ongoing, on the public services means that working as a teacher, doctor and nurse has become less attractive. With a generation of teachers and other public servants in the process of retiring, the need gets greater. We need teachers, doctors and nurses, as well as social workers and so on, if society is to continue.

The gamesmanship of politicians never ceases to amaze me.

To me, university fees and loans are essentially an endowment mortgage, to be repaid over a long period, attracting interest from the beginning. If the student doesn’t earn sufficient to repay the loan, after a period the loan is “wiped out”; in other words, paid for by the taxpayer. It is a deferred public debt, which has an impact, perhaps in twenty years’ time, when a new generation will have to pick up the tab.

At the same time, it is a generation of politicians, who, like me, went to uni etc free or at very low cost, came out at a time when house prices were still within reach and will enjoy a reasonable pension at the end of their working careers. These people, afraid to talk about realities, that it costs a certain amount to run the country as we want, so it needs taxes to be paid and so on, who decided not to ask older people to stump up an extra few pence on income tax to pay for continuing education, but to put this as a debt on future generations.

These things are possible if politicians start to look beyond this week, this year and the next general election and start to look at the longer term, to start to enable people to look forward for themselves, rather than thinking they have to make all the decisions.

This country, to some extent, is becoming disempowered and disabled, as a result of top down politics.

Decisions are all taken at the top and these are then cascaded down through layers of apparatchiks who interpret through their own thinking. It creates a narrow base of ideas, and, if they don’t work, there can appear to be few alternatives.

Public services try to second guess the wishes of Ofsted, who inspect on behalf of the government and even if they feel that they are impartial, the evidence of the past few years has suggested otherwise.

The politics of education has become about control and compliance as it is played with as a political football. It becomes about systems, rather than about people, and the current incarnation with a heavy base of schools controlled beyond local control, enables the top down system to flourish.

Public services are a public good, dealing with individuals as their core business. If decisions affecting people’s lives cannot be made at that level, then individuals suffer, with knock on to broader society. If one suffers, potentially we all suffer. You only have to look at news stories to feel that regularly.

Perhaps it is time for more honesty in politics, not just the smoke and mirrors to get elected, having a clear picture which can be shared, rather than guessed at. Guessing allows rumours to gather pace, for bogus stories to take hold, none of which helps societal harmony.

If you can see it, you can plan it, then try to reach it. Not too bad a mantra.

And yes, it is also ok to make mistakes, if they are admitted, then rectified. That’s life.

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    Chris Chivers

    Long career in education, classroom and leadership; always a learner.
    University tutor and education consultant; Teaching and Learning, Inclusion and parent partnership.
    Francophile, gardener, sometime bodhran player.

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