On social and emotional aspects; spot, stop, talk and care.
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

Charles Dickens; A Tale of Two Cities

I sometimes think that the above quote could apply to a great deal of human experience. At times, we are in a state of happiness, the next can be plunged into indescribable sadness. I have a bipolar friend who exists in such a state, an exceptionally clever man, capable of amazing strategic planning, creating several projects at the same time. This then becomes his difficulty, in keeping so many plates spinning, that, when they start to fall, he falls with them. He’s at the very sharp end of mental health issues, occasionally requiring hospitalisation and medical intervention.

This week, in the TES, Tom Rogers wrote about his own situation. It’s a very open and honest first-hand account of how mental illness creeps up and takes hold, destabilising the person and everything around them.

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/we-owe-it-our-students-discuss-our-own-struggles-mental-health-one

From my own life, I would highlight two points of significant sadness, the first was when my mum walked out on us. As a child of twelve, this was devastating, even more so because it had been talked about for several weeks; it would happen on a specific day, when she had finished the summer season in a local hotel. Separation and divorce in the mid-1960s was messy, so the formal situations, meetings with magistrates who had to decide where we’d live, added to stress, rather than being supportive. It affected my sister far more than me. For some reason, my defence mechanism was to believe that mum had died, it was easier than feeling rejected. An unexpected meeting at my sister’s house, some ten years later, led to many tears in the car afterwards; more from opportunities lost. Fortunately, my first wife, Della, was with me and was my talking companion, creating an appropriate perspective.

After Della’s death, following twelve years of living with breast cancer was an equally devastating event, in some ways ameliorated by the time scale and being able to support her through the last couple of months. However, I did, for several weeks, take myself off into the woods, or other quiet spots, armed with a notebook, where I sat and “talked to myself”, as prose and poetry. I gradually talked myself back to a form of reality.

A kind friend, whom I eventually married, was my Samaritan and walked with me while I talked. Bereavement is an odd time for all concerned. Some people, for the right motives, manage to say the wrong things. It got easier.

 Is your school a listening school?

Feeling sad, to differing degrees, or just being out of sorts is a natural part of living. Getting things done can demand a bit of extra effort, which some seek to call grit and resilience. To me, that would depend on the nature of the challenge and whether the person seeking to accomplish it has a clear understanding of purpose, so that their efforts are focused. “Pulling yourself together” might just require a modicum of interactive therapeutic talk.

The problems can increase if there seems no end to the sadness or if there seem no options for your own efforts to get past obstacles. This can be made worse by having no-one to turn to or to talk with.

My personal Samaritan is also a Samaritan in her spare time, manning a local telephone, answering texts or emails or meeting with callers. This scheme offers a listening ear in different forms available throughout the day and well into the night.

A report in the Guardian, based on a Care Quality Commission report showing that there can be an 18-month wait for a referral to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) for those with potential mental health issues.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/20/children-waiting-up-to-18-months-for-mental-health-treatment-cqc

Long delays are leading to some children starting to self-harm or fall out of education, couples breaking up and parents having to stop working so they can look after their child, the charity Young Minds said. Statistics show that one in five children referred for treatment in England cannot be seen by overstretched child and adolescent mental health services, and some families end up seeking private care.

Or are you too busy?

A child in school can exhibit anxieties in a wide variety of ways; while some can talk and explain, seeking out their personal listening ear, others act out in some way, which inevitably causes a different level of school concern.

I want to encourage adults to be a STARR; stop, think, ask, respond and report. All adults in school are the eyes and ears of the organisation, any of whom should be able to interact with any child whom they suspect might be showing distress to some degree. In some schools there are specific staff with roles that involve taking the initial concern and seeking to understand the issues more fully. Their role is to allow the child to talk and develop their own story. This may need to be verified in some way, or, in extreme cases, might involve escalation to higher authority, or to external organisation such as Child Protection.

Developing the child narrative is an essential precursor to creating a case study to share with someone like an Educational Psychologist, if a developing concern, or with Child Protection if a sudden need. Collated via several sources, with evidence of antecedents, behaviours, consequences and decisions, the more evidence, the better.

While adults might begin to suspect a mental issue, teachers and school staff are not qualified to diagnose. Their role, in spotting and describing clearly the social and emotional elements in a child’s life could be the significant difference that leads to an appropriate intervention. Sometimes, it can be the spotting and chatting that offers insights and guidance, sufficient to provide the child with skills to support themselves. Sometimes, the spotting and chatting can open a can of worms that has to be addressed to safeguard the child. Despite some teachers thinking otherwise, spotting and caring have always been a part of the teacher role. Long may it remain so.

Although we might hope that parents are aware and the first line of support, for a number of children, their teacher can also be their Samaritan; don’t walk by…
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It’s good to talk.
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​I recognise that much thinking has been done in the area of assessment, by a wide variety of experts in the field. My interest, working with developing teachers, is to instil some working methods that will enhance their ability to make appropriate judgements about children, their achievements and their learning needs. This, to me, has underpinned my thinking about assessment for the whole of my career. 
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​Assessment is thinking; about children and progress in learning and, if they’re not progressing, or progressing more rapidly than expected, doing something about the needs.

Think engaging and appropriate activity, think learning, think progress and outcomes, think on your feet and adapt for evident need, Think before, during and after the event. That is assessment; thinking, about each and every child’s response to the learning situation. Spotting those whose behaviours show lack of understanding or effort and those who may be finding the task easy.

High awareness, high surveillance and rapid and purposeful intervention; or in Dylan Wiliam's words "the reflective, reactive teacher".

​Make quality visible, so it can be discussed and evaluated openly and regularly.
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To me, assessment is just another way of saying “Know your children, well, and get to know them even better”; to define and constantly refine where they are academically, socially and personally, so that they can be challenged or supported through carefully planned activities and interventions. Assessment in one sense is about data, but, more importantly, it is about individual children and their life chances, developed through the best available teaching and learning opportunities.

To be effective, assessment has to be seen as informed, rational judgement, leading to specific adaptation of intention, through a variety of means. Most assessment is situational, being at one level a sense that something is not going as it should and seeking to make whole again. It can also mean that under-expectation means that the level of challenge (perhaps for a few) has to be recalibrated.

Looking for inspiration in the thesaurus, the following revealed itself. These are some of the synonyms for assessment. It is possible to argue that all assessment if formative, even a test, as it informs subsequent decisions about the direction and speed of learning.

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On my main blog, I have a number of posts on marking, looking to make it a realistic aspect of a teacher life, while ensuring that children can participate fully and utilise advice and feedback effectively.

Marking; keep it simple
Marking
Is marking moderation step 1
Back to marking

In “Marking; keep it simple”, the main premise is that the child targets should be on a fold out sheet that can be seen within a lesson, to guide teacher-child conversation, but also be a guide for marking later. It can incorporate non-negotiables, as they appear in earlier scripts.

In “Marking”, there is a discussion of marking as a dialogue between the teacher and the learner. I also question the place of homework where that generates marking load.

Homework can create additional marking need, but, if the activity is considered within the learning dynamics of the topic, does not necessarily need to do so.

Consider as home activity:-

• Draft from notes taken in a lesson, to be brought back as first draft, for editing in class.
• Summarise what has been learned into three key pieces of information. Boxed, it becomes a form of revision note.
• “Drawing and colouring” to save class time for discussion.
• Personal research which adds to the lesson.
• Reading a piece of text before the lesson.

None of the above needs detailed marking, as they are part of continuous effort.

As children mature as learners, they can begin to direct the teacher to areas for marking. If, say, adjectives have been the subject of learning, then the child can be asked to highlight the adjectives used, so they are easy to see.

In “is marking moderation step 1”, the teacher is acting as quality control, feeding back to the child where their work is ok and where there are areas for improvement. Teacher judgement is key to these stages.

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.

In “Back to Marking”, in addition to the above, I also suggest a number of key steps to consider.

• As an organisation, schools should set marking expectations that are clear, concise and achievable and have impact on learning.
• Plan mark loads over a known timescale, so that books are marked appropriately in timescales that enable feedback to be useful. If a whole week of devoted to “assessment activity” it is not surprising if workloads are heavy, especially as they usually back onto school holidays.

Learners should see themselves as active partners in work review. It should be done with and through, not always done to. Marking in a lesson is a very supportive strategy, especially for struggling learners, where immediacy of response is needed.

There are no easy solutions, as this area is often unique to the teacher and their interpretation of expectations. But it is worth significant consideration.
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Assessment is normally based on clearly articulated or published criteria, with a judgement of whether the outcome demonstrates certain abilities, so that the assessor can say with some definition that “x can do…”. Some assessment situations also require a judgement of pass or not, with a pass at merit or distinction. These are bottom line capabilities, seen, for example in driving tests, music exams and Initial Teacher Education, each of which requires a level of competence in order to progress, with further guidance available.

Critique is what I think I do when I go to an art gallery or listen to music, usually starting from appreciation of what I like, through areas which make me less comfortable, to aspects that I don’t like. This is coupled with a rationale, so my critique is a descriptor, linked to personal insights. There has to be a “because”. As a reflective person, sometimes this is an insular activity, but, when in company, a shared reaction can become the stuff of dialogue, comparative and nuanced, and that’s the part that interests me in terms of classroom practice.

I think children and their teachers should engage in discussion of quality in work, in all subjects. With visualisers becoming a part of classroom practice, it is very easy to share outcomes and explore and diagnose aspects of the work, together, with children being enabled to explore the language and parameters of critique. Description, followed by speculation, enables the questioner to raise issues in the mind of the producer, to enable answers which might, in themselves, highlight the specific areas for improvement. I’d also expect classroom spaces to be awash with examples of quality work, on display, or in portfolios, which set the benchmark for expectation and reflection within the class. It is a holistic approach.

I am now beginning to view success criteria as surrogate mark schemes for a specific context. If they embed statements which clarify the steps that need to be taken in order to produce a piece of work of quality, they can be checked at the end to see if they have been followed.

However, on top of that, there needs to be the capacity to advise individuals about the quality within the finished work. These personalised targets, attached to the edge of the book, can summarise the qualities being sought from that learner adding to the potential for both critique and assessment. Assessment, in this scenario, becomes a “signing off” activity, with the critique proving a qualitative set of statements.

Learners can engage with success criteria and I have visited a number of schools that embed systems where learners have to highlight areas of their work which, in their opinion, demonstrate a specific success criterion or personal target, which focuses marking. Self-diagnosis of outcomes is an essential skill of editing, drafting and redrafting activities.

The TES on 19.09.2017, reported the outcomes of a report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust which argued that the subject was not being given enough priority or time by most of the nation's primaries.

They found that on average, across all primary year groups, more than half of classes (58%) did not get two hours of science a week. Figures based on two surveys of teachers. Wellcome also identified a fear among teachers that children would ask a question they would not know the answer to, and a belief that science is messy, expensive, time-consuming. The study was published to mark the launch of Explorify, a new free digital resource for school science.

The history of science for children before the age of 11 has been a chequered one. Being old enough to have started at school in the 1950s, I don’t remember science apart from the occasional nature table. However, it was the age of chemistry sets and, receiving one for my 6th birthday, my bedroom was soon infiltrated by test-tube filled solutions of different colours. The brown stain from spilling some potassium permanganate on the mantelpiece was the end of that and I was banished to the shed. I did write an illustrated story of doing chemistry at home which was published in the school magazine.

Secondary, grammar school, meant an introduction to “real” science, with separate chemistry, physics and biology throughout. My early interest in all things scientific inevitably led to a spell as a lab assistant for a year before starting teacher training; again with science, but later changing to environmental education.

Primary science, by the early 1970s, had become a practical part of school life, and in the context of the integrated day, was facilitated as a group activity, with perhaps eight children working in this way, seeking solutions to challenges. The Nuffield Science 5-13 books provided both the hooks and the challenges, but also the necessary scientific background that was easily available to teachers. Local teacher centres also put on extended courses to support developing teachers. There was significant collective sharing of ideas and challenges.

This way of working continued, in my experiences in Hampshire, through to around 1997, when various strategies appeared, these included QCA guidance on teaching science. While I can accept that, in some authorities, science may not have been a strength, these QCA schemes were a form of recipe science, or science by numbers. As a headteacher, I was determined that we would never use the QCA schemes, as they would downgrade what we were offering.

​Working with successive science coordinators and an inspector visit every two years to upskill the coordinator, we developed topic specifications as the basis for each area. Some now call such documents knowledge organisers, but ours were extended documents, with expectations beyond just the knowledge.

​If you were to believe EduTwitter, everything in the past, especially for Primary children, was based on play and skills, with nary a mention of knowledge stuff. Everyone was too busy having fun.

Today, I went into the loft and found a couple of files, from way back in the dark ages of education and another life for me. I found some work that I did back in 1986/7, in preparation for the soon-to-be National Curriculum. As a recently appointed Deputy Head, with my curriculum responsibility being science, I had the task of taking stock of what was already in existence and then what needed to be added, removed, or adjusted, to fit with the new requirements. In the event, this was actually a very small series of tweaks, to the knowledge base and to the methodologies.

With a strong earlier science background and many significant publications available, close working with the LA inspectorate soon drew out considerable strengths. What needed to be done was to record for every member of current staff and, with potential for change, future appointments, the baseline expectations of the curriculum and the approach to developing practical science approaches.

The original NC science documentation had 16 attainment targets, one described practical exploration approaches, the other fourteen covered the knowledge areas. To make them manageable, I ordered them into themes, such as “Ourselves and other living things”; “Our environment”; “Make it move; how does it move?”; then we had the others, electricity and magnetism, sound and music, light, microelectronics… There was a lot to be fitted in, but, as themes over a timescale, it was possible to work out how to fit it all together.

The Level Descriptors of AT15, light, make interesting reading;

L1) Light comes from different sources. Discriminate between and match colours. Colour in the environment.
L2) Light passes through materials in different ways. Shadows.
L3) Light can change direction and shiny surfaces reflect images.
L4) We see objects because of light. Light travels in straight lines; shape and size of shadows.

I also found a set of enquiries that I had created, to provide some guidance; this was in relation to exploring light, through mirrors. With pre-school children often entranced by light and its properties, mirrors and reflections can be a great way into science investigations.

With a flat mirror; look in the mirror, what can you see? Draw a picture of what you think you look like in a mirror.
If it’s a plastic mirror, bend it and try to describe what you can see happening.

Other shiny surfaces are important, such as spoons. What do you look like on the front or the back of a spoon? Is it the same on both sides?

Hinge two mirrors with sticky tape. What happens if you start with them in a straight line, then gradually move them towards each other? Older children can start to record angles and images.

If you put a picture underneath the mirrors and do the same, what happens to the image as the mirrors get closer together? Kaleidoscope-art potential? Rangoli or other patterns?

Put two mirrors facing each other and an object in between. What can you see?

How does a periscope work? Make a working model and try it out. Link with DT
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Hinge three mirrors, open to explore images, then closed into a triangle. Describe what you can see.

Giving an account of the activities, with developing scientific detail on an investigation was seen as a Level 3 challenge, but would depend on quality of expression, vocabulary and writing style.

​Shadows were a great source of potential, with silhouette potential, sun dials and eclipses, temperature gradients, especially on frosty days, shadow puppetry... exploring dark could be supported by a heavy curtain draped over a desk, to make a large light box that children could get under.

The discussion that this approach engendered enabled further detailed knowledge to be shared at the point of need, as well as during introductions and summaries within the lesson or at the end.

It was certainly not play, as perceived by some, but purposeful investigative activity, always with the outcome of being able to share the outcomes of the investigation in some form, oral sharing, written or drawn recording, whichever was most appropriate to the needs of the learners.

Primary science is purposeful, focused thinking around a problem or a challenge, to seek patterns, stimulate further questions and develop a coherent train of thought.

​All of which can be enjoyable, or in child speak, fun…  

What makes a teacher?
Thinking a little more about teacher thinking.

Teachers need to know the subject at hand, which may be different for a graduate specialist in a Secondary school compared to a Primary generalist, responsible for a range of subjects, where some areas of knowledge will be stronger than others. However, for both, the need to know is key. Where any teacher reaches a point where it is their own knowledge that is a barrier to children’s progress, this must be addressed urgently. In the first years, this is likely to be a constant need, especially if there is a change of year-group, or perhaps school, where the new context has different schemes. This puts inevitable pressures on new teachers, so high quality mentoring and in-school documentation should be available for everyone.

Teachers get to know their children, to varying degrees, depending on their contact through the week, but they are trained to understand learner development through the age range. Primary teachers spend 25 hours a week with their classes; a secondary teacher may see each class for two hours a week. The difference in interaction time embeds different levels of nuance of knowledge of the children. Both phases of teacher should be aware of the whole achievement range of their age range. One tweet today, reporting on Singapore education called this “horizon thinking” … what came before and what comes afterwards…

They ensure that behaviour ensures learning can take place. Working within agreed and clearly articulated school approaches, maintenance of behaviours that allow learning is fundamental.

They will have ordered the agreed curriculum into discrete themes, topics or programmes of study. Order and organisation are essential to progression in learning. Some topic areas “feed forward” into successive topics. Therefore, what is now often being called “interleaving” can be planned, although often it is recall through circumstance and a spiral curriculum.
They order and organise the coherence of their plans over a known timescale, ensure that classroom and the resources for learning support the learning proposed. The use of space and resources are in teacher control. How furniture is arranged to suit teaching, and resources are available for easy access and return, embeds an element of control, reducing some potential causes of behaviour issues.

Their plans seek to match the needs of the subject with the needs of the children, providing appropriate challenge to all abilities. This is the first stage of “differentiation”, which used to be termed “match and challenge”, with challenge being the most significant aspect. What are children being challenged to think about, talk about and attempt to do?

They plan learning over a timescale to ensure a dynamic is established which fully engages learners, in and out of school, and assures the imparting of a body of knowledge derive from the wealth of local and wider information and experiences. Spiral curricula, interleaving, home tasks, “flipped learning”, working memory, long term memory, practice, rehearsal all have a part to play over time.
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An example…

They create tasks appropriate to the challenge, with an understanding of the subsequent developmental stages of the learning, so that by engaging with the learners while on task, they can guide and support their developing understanding. Task challenge can embed independence of thought, planning and action, grit and resilience through reflection/evaluation, revision as a group(team) or individually. An engaged teacher spots needs, coaching and teaching to need. Compare with a PE lesson elements; apply in other subjects.

They ensure that any input gets across the essential information on which the lesson is to be founded, through a variety of means, which are enhanced by the availability of in-class ICT facilities. Exposition has always been a significant part of all teaching. The teacher at the front, speaking clearly and articulately, directly, explicitly, using a variety of imagery to support, video, modelling with concrete resources or through diagrams, engaging with evident audience need in timely manner. That technologies are available, e.g. visualisers, to make this exposition and modelling even more overt, should mean knowledge sharing of a higher quality.

Teachers are reflective storytellers, have a broad subject vocabulary that enables subtle retelling with appropriate links made at different levels of need, with a high degree of audience awareness.

They interact with outcomes, orally in class and in writing after the lesson, while marking books. They are constantly making judgements or assessments, on an individual, group or class level. Within lessons, teachers are audience aware, looking for signs that imply lack of understanding. They ask questions, closed to elicit discrete knowledge, but also open ended to allow broader thinking, explanation or articulation of thoughts.

They use the outcomes as new reference points against which to plan the next steps. Outcomes offer another layer of reflection on assimilation of learning, with two layers of response, teacher, what needs to be further addressed, child, what do I need to do to improve? The one potentially impacts on the next lesson, the other might simply be feed forward notes for consideration in subsequent work. Teachers talk now of whole class feedback. If a teacher notices, because of a lesson, that a large proportion of the class don’t “get it”, the next step has to be a revision to secure that learning. ‘Twas ever thus. Equally, by identifying a group with need, to offer challenge to the secure group, enabling detailed remodelling to another, bringing them up to speed, would appear sensible.

Teachers add broader value to schools in many, many ways. Working in teams, subject, year group, whole school, thinking, working and occasionally playing together, the team ethic has an impact on daily school life through personal interactions, setting a positive tone among the adults. Some offer specialist clubs or other interests, including subject expertise to the benefit of the whole.

They undertake personal CPD that enhances their practice. Starting as high-quality thinkers, most teachers are life-long learners, so engage with each other to share expertise, formally or more often, informally. Many attend local events, through subject groups and cluster initiatives, perhaps travelling to specialist conferences, in school time, or, as is currently the case, to a plethora of volunteer organised conferences, Teachmeets, TLT, Pedagoo, ResearchEd, Northern (southern) Rocks, Primary Rocks, Reading/Writing Rocks…  Equally, a number also interact via social media, such as Twitter, which then acts as a conduit into conferences.
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Teaching requires a collegiate approach to thinking and self-development. One starts as a novice and assimilates information from many sources, creating a sense of self that contributes to professional confidence. Expertise develops over time, but, as in all learning, there is always a little more that can be found.

​Teaching requires life-long learners.

Top image by Gaz Needle, as part of an earlier project, seeking to collect 1000 years of reflected experience. It got to around 700 years, so if you’d like to add something, on a cold autumn evening…
NB. Everyone mentioned is on Twitter.
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Teaching and Learning Takeover, at Southampton University, organised by Jenn Ludd and David Fawcett, is always an opportunity to catch up with friends and Twitter links. This, 5th birthday event, was no exception. Over cups of coffee and pastries, the day started with the inevitable melee of hello’s and how are things; a chance to put faces to names or sometimes unknown avatars.

I could have entitled this blog “a tale of two Moys”, as, after Chris Moyse’ excellent introduction and reflections on the learning process, especially considering issues deriving from sporting excellence, passing through the experiences of Gaz Needle, Kev Bartle, Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby, concluding with Daniel Muijs; I’m sure he pronounced this as “Moys”. Apologies if not, but it spoils the introduction if not…

To some extent, it was Professor Daniel Muijs session that enabled my thinking throughout the day to become crystallised, in that his theme was directly metacognition, with reference to work that he is doing for the Education Endowment Foundation in this area. Daniel made us think of what we mean by metacognition; a definition is often a useful start point, especially when engaging with an unknown, mixed audience. His interest, to some extent appears to be in the area of the effectiveness of interventions in the learning process. Self-regulation is a component, with learner awareness of personal achievements and further needs underpinning learner engagement. Daniel unpicked cognition as information gathering, memory, understanding and use/application in practice, with metacognition being the self-knowledge, of need to seek additional information from valid sources, skills of ordering and organisation, in-task checking behaviour and post-task evaluation. It is somehow embedded firmly in the process, with the known used and applied.

This took me back to classroom teaching and approaches, where task challenges that embedded all these elements were the norm, both at infants and junior level and I would hazard a guess that the loss of quality use and application of the known in appropriately challenging situations might be a contributory factor in concerns for a lack of metacognitive awareness. If everything is recipe based or teacher-led, children have limited space and time to think for themselves.

Taken from an earlier blog on task design this describes one activity that took place at that time.

One day the teacher challenged the children to design and make a crazy golf hole, as part of a geography topic. They could use whatever they wished, as long as they wrote on their plan what they wanted, so that it could be checked before they started. Julie and Jim were in the same group.

During their discussion time, Julie tried to tell the others what they should do, Jim was quieter, thinking about the problem, while some of the others started to argue with Julie. The teacher noticed the argument and the fact that Jim had been quiet, so joined the group and asked him what he was thinking about. At this point, Jim articulated clearly and thoughtfully what he thought that the group should do, while the rest of the group listened respectfully. They had not heard Jim speak as much before. When he had finished, the group decided to use Jim’s ideas and drew careful plans based on them.

By the end of the short topic, not only had the group designed and made an effective golf hole, but they had measured it, drawn it to scale, tallied and collated a list to show the number of hits each member of their class had taken on the hole, from least to most, created a bar chart to show the frequency of the hits, as well as writing a report on what they had done and how they had done it.

My own contribution to the discussion with Daniel Muijs was on the topic of task challenge and the experiences that flow from engaging with the process. This was emphasised by Candida (Gould), from her experiences with Primary learners.  

Honesty and humanity were the themes that flowed through the talks by both Kev Bartle and Gaz Needle. Keven talked of trust underpinning high quality relationships, based on interpersonal skills that will be the product of self-awareness; self-regulation to accommodate others, or real-life team skills. Gaz took us through the somewhat tortuous journey to his becoming almost an accidental headteacher. To some extent, there may well be similarities for Keven, as an internal candidate for a role that had been part of day to day life. Retaining the team ethic can sometimes be challenging as a head, in that there is a degree of separation that can be bridged, but sometimes becomes a separation. I’ve always articulated my belief that all leaders achieve through the efforts of others, in any form of life. If leaders assume special status, they are ripe for criticism when things go wrong. Politicians take note…

Time to think can be at a premium as a head. Gaz gave the example of the knock on the door and the request for “five minutes”. We all know that this is likely to be much more than that. As a head, I felt that I had cracked things when the “five-minute” requests diminished in quantity and in significant need. Thinking time, as a teacher can also be a premium commodity. Busyness is often the order of the day and making time to order time more effectively can be rare, ensuring that busyness remains the status quo. This was why, as a head, I incorporated thinking time into training days, by perhaps having a concentrated morning session, with time to talk and reflect with colleagues after lunch. On one occasion, the day started with a long walk to an area of interest to discuss the potential of such an activity for classroom learning across the curriculum. This significantly enhanced the use of the locality by every year group.

Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby spoke of their journey to “Make Every Lesson Count”, now a series of books covering a wider remit. They brought the word autonomy into my frame of reference, which linked with Kev’s earlier trust. Autonomy is the hallmark of trust in a working environment; people knowing what they had to do and the parameters within which they were able to make significant decisions, or perhaps make decisions for themselves. In each classroom, the class teacher should reign supreme, as long as they are making rational decisions that progress learning and the aims of the school.

Shaun and Andy have a diagram that describes the parameters clearly, to both teacher and learners; note the "so that", which is the area for having a rationale.

Chris Moyse, as the start keynote, had us engaging with sporting analogies, including the New Zealand rugby team success over such a long time-scale, the successes of Sergei Bubka as a pole-vaulter, seeking to “raise the bar” by a cm or two each time. Practice or rehearsal were key elements of but areas of success. The ability to visualise, to put oneself into a “game situation” mentally may well be a significant part of these successes. I reflected on such a situation from my own earlier sport activities, as a cricketer, playing imaginary strokes, or practicing bowling. It’s akin to anticipation or expectation, preferably with the guidance of an aware coach, to reflect back to you what you are demonstrating. This can be now enhanced with video. Both coaching and video for self-reflection are now available in many schools, so the ability to facilitate self-reflection and self-development are more easily accessible.

Lisa Jane Ashes closed the event with a significant challenge “Why are you still here?”. She may well have been gasping for a cuppa at this stage, although the image of beer did perhaps give the after-show game away!

In many ways, the answer to why are you still here is simple. The hall was filled with thinkers, prepared to give up a Saturday to hear high quality speakers enthuse about a current area of interest. That many will have gone away, like me, with nuggets that have rattled around for the best part of twenty-four hours, is testament to the quality of the event.

Teaching is a thinker’s game. 
Teachers are the lead thinkers in a classroom:-

• They need to know the subject at hand, which may be different for a graduate specialist in a Secondary school compared to a Primary generalist, responsible for a range of subjects, where some will be stronger than others.
• They will have ordered the curriculum into discrete themes, topics or programmes of study.
• They order and organise the coherence of their plans over a known timescale, ensure that classroom and the resources for learning support the learning proposed.
• They know their children, to varying degrees, depending on their contact through the week, but they are trained to understand learner development through the age range.
• Their plans seek to match the needs of the subject with the needs of the children, providing appropriate challenge to all abilities.
• They plan learning over a timescale to ensure a dynamic is established which fully engages learners, in and out of school, and assures the imparting of a particular body of knowledge.
• They create tasks appropriate to the challenge, with an understanding of the subsequent developmental stages of the learning, so that by engaging with the learners while on task, they are able to guide and support their developing understanding.
• They ensure that any input gets across the essential information on which the lesson is to be founded, through a variety of means, which are enhanced by the availability of in-class ICT facilities.
• They ensure that behaviour allows learning to take place.
• They interact with outcomes, orally in class and in writing after the lesson, while marking books. They are constantly making judgements, on an individual, group or class level.
• They use the outcomes as new reference points against which to plan the next steps.
• And they add broader value to schools in many other ways………………….
• They undertake personal CPD that enhances their practice.

 Much current time is spent seeking to understand the latest edict from a politician, interpreted through a MAT or LA, cascaded through senior leaders to classrooms. This can lead to assimilation of simplistic methodologies rather that consideration of change within a holistic approach. Anyone connected with teaching will be aware of the myriad needs in every lesson. This needs agile thinkers, aware of, and adaptable to, evident need.

That, to me, is where “evidence-based”, metcognitive teaching sits; the teacher ability to rationalise the what and why of their teaching. It’s down to (inter)relationships and, inevitably, a level of trust.

Hants CC Special Ed Governors’ Conference

I feel that am lucky enough to live in, to have worked for, and to be a Governor in a County that has maintained a strong LA structure. This means that Governor Services play a very active role on Governor development, including an annual conference for Governors with interest or responsibility for SEND. It is an opportunity to meet together, but also to listen to speakers with a national profile, to bring experience and expertise from a wider perspective.

I hope that I have caught the flavour and some of the key details of the day.

This year’s conference started with Matthew Barnes, Specialist Adviser for SEND, HMI and Ofsted, whose key message was that Ofsted, while still maintaining rigour in processes, would be looking more closely at in-school systems, the impact of activities, whether a broad balanced curriculum was available to every child and personal development, including behaviour and welfare.

Learning and progress of all pupils was paramount. Leadership and management were highlighted, in that, in the absence of graded lessons, progress and rigorous evaluation of elements such as Performance Management and interventions, with clear evidence of investigation of anomalies would be needed.

Matthew emphasised that school tracking and data is for each school to determine and explain rationally, as well as being able to show the progress of children. He also shared thoughts on the IDSR, the Inspection Dashboard Summary Report, which Ofsted use to create points for investigation, utilising scattergrams and trends/outliers to clarify areas for consideration.

With a significant background and interest in SEND, Matthew also highlighted the need to track children whose performance is always likely to be described as “low”, giving examples of independence in various contexts, developing essential life skills, especially communication.

Questions that arose in my mind, as a result, were connected with a growing number of early career teachers, with, as Nick Gibb stated recently, a chance for “rapid promotion”.

• Much teacher/child interaction is based on judgements, derived from previous experiences. Is the experience sufficiently broad to encompass the skills to deal with the needs of the children in a class, or, if promoted, in a school?
• Linked to; have they had experience of teaching every year group for which they are responsible? Implications for decision-making?
• Do teachers really identify their concerns (personal/professional and about the children) sufficiently quickly and in sufficient detail to support their own and subsequent, supported investigation of anomalous outcomes or behaviours?
• Do early career teachers fully understand their responsibilities as teachers of SEND children? Do they fully understand, and adhere to, school systems?
• It is very easy for individual children to fall through or get tangled in supposed safety nets. Clarity and consistency are key.

Gareth Morewood, asked to be introduced as “a SENCo from Stockport”. Gareth is well respected among the SEND community, working at local and national levels. His title is Director of Curriculum Support, which, in some ways, could more clearly define the role of a SENCo. It is in coordinating curriculum support, teaching teachers and creating appropriate support programmes for children, that underpin the SENCo role.

His talk was essentially two parts of a whole, entitled Accountability in Action and Parent Partnerships and, in some ways, might have benefitted from being a whole session, to avoid a split in the narrative journey.

Gareth clearly highlighted the legal aspects of SEND legislation, including a very clear background to SEND changes effective from 2014. He suggested that schools should consider IPSEA online legal training module for the SENCo and possibly other members of staff. There is a need to consider the broad aspects of every teacher being a teacher of SEND, as legal responsibilities.

That teachers as teachers of SEND is especially highlighted in the legislation, was referred to often. Each teacher plays a central role in every aspect of learning, making reference to existing plans and developing and sharing personal targets, but also in highlighting anomalies as they arise, recording and discussing with the SENCo in timely manner.

A focus on definite outcomes, aspirational or otherwise, underpinned much of Gareth’s talk. To have clarity about where you want the child to end up offers guidance on interactions along the journey. In fact, it was interesting that both Gareth and Matthew talked of the importance of the journey, the process and the progress, through progressive outcomes.

Discussion of EHCP, education health and care plans was a central feature of Gareth’s talk, as this is the “sharp end” of SEND, when the way in which the school has managed a child’s needs to a particular point is placed under scrutiny by an external audience. The quality of record keeping, the interactions and interventions, with evaluations of outcomes, the involvement of external expertise and following through with their advice. The central place of the child and their parents was regularly emphasised.

In talking about personal target setting, Gareth was not a fan of IEPs, but preferred student passports. He has details of these on his blog, www.gdmorewood.com
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For me, a significant element in learning has always been how to keep the detail of current, key aspirations in front of teachers and children, so that they can be live within each piece of work. With a class of children, to remember the personal targets of each child might just be asking too much of the teacher. However, to articulate them in a form that can be easily accessed allows the child level targets to be discussed within activities. I’ll mention again the flip out sheets, within a drafting approach to written work.

For a number of parents, just to access the school can provide challenges, eg some may have had difficulty in school as children, which has left them uneasy in such settings. Making it easy to make contact with specific staff who are in a position to help or signpost a parent to help can allow easy resolution of issues. If parents know who’s who, who to contact and how to do so, with telephone, email or text access, they can more easily pass on their concerns and, if the school has a response system in place that can offer reassurance that the problem has been picked up and is receiving attention, they may well be calmed as a result. A case of a problem shared…

Staff training is of paramount importance, in creating structured approaches that help teachers and TAs to develop case studies that might support EHCP applications. Having easy to use systems, which can be digital or paper based, or a combination, allowing contemporary notes to be collected and collated, might just reveal patterns of behaviours that can give insights into issues.
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Parent Partnership issues were explored through both sections. It is important that these are established early and with some strength, ahead of potential need, especially where SEND needs are already clearly established and recorded. Active and productive parent partnership is not something that can be taken for granted as a natural part of the family-school “bond”, but, where it becomes a proper meeting of minds, can lead to proactive interventions that benefit the child and, by extension, the family and the school.

It’s something to work on.