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A new generation

29/12/2014

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What will they face?

This is my last reflective post at the turning of the year and before I set to and start to finalise presentations for two important talks in January.

During the past week, I have managed to see every member of the family, including the new arrival, J, who was born on Boxing Day. As I was the overnight cover following the panic telephone call at 11pm, I had some time to think about things.

J was born on 26th December 2014. If she enjoys good health, she could achieve the milestone of seeing in the next century, which is a salutary thought. Of more immediate importance are the milestones in between.

  • She will start Primary school in September 2019.

  • She will transfer to Secondary education in 2026.

  • She will leave Secondary education in 2032 and if she goes to Higher education, could leave in 2035.

  • We are talking 21 years from now, by which time I will be eighty three! Now that’s frightening.


Education in September 2014 experienced change such as I have not seen in forty plus years of active life in education, affecting curriculum, assessment and special needs, among many others, covering the whole range of education experiences. The final fruits of these changes cannot be anticipated before 2022, for Primary outcomes and 2029 for Secondary outcomes, if children are allowed to pursue the current plans unchanged. Unless they are changed, they will provide the complete educational experience for J.

J’s generation will become the responsible generation in their turn, probably from around 2054, when they reach forty.

What will they have faced?

  • Debt- undoubtedly, as much of current life seems to be financed that way, including student finance. Will fewer go to university, if the greater number of available jobs are in pubs and cafes or other service industries?

  • Housing- more limited opportunities perhaps, unless they inherit some base finance from earlier generations. Will housing be owned by a relatively small, wealthy, London, or SE-based class and rented by the majority, so that they are always paying rent?

What impact will both of these issues have on their life plans, dreams and aspirations? How will their experiences affect their decision making?

  • Insecurity and instability. There are more small-scale wars currently than I have ever known. Equally, the macho stances of many national leaders is of concern. Will Orwell and Huxley’s predictive writings come to fruition during the middle part of the century, just a bit later than they had envisaged? Do we have to be against someone to be happy?

  • The climate is in some turmoil too, seemingly ignored by politicians. Weather patterns could dictate future food production, or housing security for some, making life a little more precarious.

The reality is that we don’t have a clue what they will face, but we can predict that many things will change, if the past is anything from which to judge.

We need children to be aware of their world, its complexity and diversity, to want to look at, to find out and understand the geography, the history and the cultures of the world, to speak languages, their own and others, with enthusiasm and enjoyment. They need to hear the stories of my childhood and others, to put time into perspective. They need the skills to explore, measure and judge phenomena. They need to be immersed in their own and other cultures and to delight in creating works of art and music that have a basis in the past and a view towards their own futures. They need to be scientists, artists, musicians, mathematicians, linguists, problem identifiers and solution finders, using a wide range of skills.

Sadly, I don’t think the current incarnation of education offering will do that. It embeds the skills and values of my own childhood and early schooling, in the 1950s. It does not stress problem solving or using and applying skills.

Life has shown me, often quite harshly, that that education was not enough and that it is more important to perceive of life-long learning as a reality, including learning from life itself, to develop the strength of personality that is occasionally needed when life gets tough.

In wishing J a long and happy life, I also wish that politicians, responsible for lives, would take a longer term view, rather than the timespan between elections, appealing to the lowest common denominator; the few voters whose votes actually make a difference.

Life is far more important than passing politicians.

 

 

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Take a risk?

23/12/2014

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Slippery slopes of learning

In discussing a PGCE student’s application for her first job, we explored the specifics of her motivation to become a teacher. She narrated a very vivid story of supporting disabled children, some wheelchair based, to attempt climbing.

That made me consider Maslow’s hierarchy of need as a learning mountain. It got me thinking about the relationship between learning and mountain climbing and a search of climbing and adventure quotes provided a frame upon which to base a commentary.
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“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”  ― Saint Augustine of Hippo
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“To put yourself into a situation where a mistake cannot necessarily be recouped, where the life you lose may be your own, clears the head wonderfully. It puts domestic problems back into proportion and adds an element of seriousness to your drab, routine life. Perhaps this is one reason why climbing has become increasingly hard as society has become increasingly, disproportionately, coddling.” – A. Alvarez, The Games Climbers Play.
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Climb every mountain, Search high and low, Follow every highway, Every path you know.

Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, ‘Till you find your dream.

There is much talk in education circles of “Learning Journeys”, with associated metaphorical language proposing adventure, striving, scaling, voyage of discovery, quest and wrestling. This suggests great activity, with children being given challenge and adventure within their daily school lives. Learning journeys for children are very often prescribed, by their teachers who may be working within an externally determined curriculum. Any adventure or challenge will be created by the teacher’s interpretation of the frameworks. However, the ability to dream, to imagine and to create ideas for oneself would seem to be prerequisites of a challenging education.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Pursuing the adventure analogy, this would propose that the teacher is the expedition leader, upon whom the safe arrival depends, requiring careful preparation, resource and supplies managed, maps consulted and transport arranged. The leader’s job is to reflect on every aspect of the upcoming expedition, to order and organise with care to minimise the dangers inherent in the inevitable risks. Expedition and adventure embody risks and it is arguable that as a society we have become risk averse. How often do you allow yourself to walk in a city without a map, just to see what is there? Are you a risk taker or risk averse? How does this affect teaching approaches?

“Discoveries are often made by not following instructions, by going off the main road, by trying the untried.” — Frank Tyger

 If you’ve never seen the Monty Python Mountain Climbing Expedition, to see how not to organise an expedition, it’s worth a look.
Or the Mountaineering Hairdressers.
“In a sense everything that is exists to learn (climb). All evolution is a learning (climbing) towards a higher form. Learning (Climbing) for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honoured the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we learn (climb)… and in learning (climbing) there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.” – Rob Parker

It is often the case that learners are offered activities which do not significantly challenge, sometimes because the class is treated as an entity and there is one activity for all. This undifferentiated approach can leave some learners untested, therefore not learning and making progress. Learning is often an isolated activity so the team aspects of learning are unchallenged. This could be because teachers are risk averse, fearing that someone will offer criticism, either of working methods or challenge outcomes. Teachers do not learn the craft by repetition. That way lies one year of experience lived forty times, not forty years of experience.

It is not the ship so much as the skilful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage. George William Curtis

It is for teachers to determine the course and steer carefully, without becoming becalmed, based on the thought that:-

“Learning (Climbing) is not a spectator sport.” — Mark Wellman

Everyone is involved in the development of a child as a learner, so in essence, learning is also a team sport, but with concentric teams around the child, controlling risk, but allowing the child to develop an awareness of risk in life. Here the analogy of being roped together to ensure a safe climb is useful, with the guide at the front giving step by step instructions, guidance and encouragement so that the learner discovers safely what can be achieved and what might then be attempted unaided. Trust is embedded within any team activity, the trust of the leadership by the team, but equally the trust from the leader that allows team members to offer ideas and suggestions, so that all may benefit from collective insights.
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“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” — Rene Daumal

At the same time as learning about “stuff”, we are learning about ourselves. Learning involves active engagement with the “stuff” of learning, making sense of each component, comparing and reclassifying against earlier learning, so that the new can supersede or supplement the old, ensuring growth in learning. Some learners will have the skills to become free climbers at certain points in their learning journeys, at least within certain defined limits. How often are learners challenged to be independent? If every piece of learning is based on walking in the teacher’s prescribes footsteps, how can children learn to think for themselves?

“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery of why we climb.” – Greg Child
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What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous. Thomas Merton

None of us knows ultimately where life’s climb will take us. We need to develop a set of generic “life” skills aside from a basic bank of knowledge. Life offers problems which we need to be able to address, with resilience, fortitude and problem solving skills that have been formed within less risky, school and home-based activity.

The last words to an intrepid traveller:-“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ernest Hemingway
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Progressively better

23/12/2014

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This is an attempt, by me, to reflect on the formative work and training experiences that led to me being the teacher that I became and the Headteacher that ensued as a result.

Having gone through Teacher Training College (St Luke’s Exeter) from 1971-74, and starting to look for work, in the June of 1974, deferring the extra year for a while in order to earn some money, the only jobs left in Hampshire, where my first wife’s parents lived was an Infant school and a Secondary science probationary post. My wife got the Infant job and I got the Science post. And so the saga of living and working in Hampshire began. Deciding to live in Fareham, in the south east corner of the county, I worked out that there were in excess of 250 schools within a 12 mile commute, so could provide the potential for a career, which has so far lasted 40 years.

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The Secondary experience was relatively short lived, largely as a result of heads of department who kept their heads down, and any schemes of work firmly to themselves and seemed to do a disappearing act when the fifth year (year 11) non-exam groups were at their worst. Funny how the probationers got the challenging groups! I enjoyed the teaching and was good at it; all observations were very positive and my lessons deemed to be creative and engaging in their approach. Having done my college course in Environmental Education, I was also able to take on Geography, some History and being sporty, some PE lessons. I was well used in that time. The school was surprised when I made the move to Primary.

I joined Primary, as a probationer in the days when teachers ran a number of clubs each week, in addition to their full time teaching commitment. Over four years, I was a Junior classteacher, taking years 3-5 (the long standing deputy head ALWAYS took year 6). During that time I learned my craft, within a culture of make do and mend, as this was the time before delegated budgets, so the school had a very small budget to spend on essentials. So shoe boxes, cadged from Clarke’s and other shoe shops, were covered with wallpaper, to store work cards or recording tapes, used to record weekly reading. (We shared a tape recorder with another class) Soap and cereal packets became file boxes. Tobacco tins and well washed vegetable cans, when painted became holders for pencils, rubbers and spelling cards. Playground football posts were large vegetable cans from the kitchen, filled with concrete and with a stick embedded. (OK, it was the days before health and safety) I took on responsibility for the topic aspects of the school, creating and collating all the necessary resources for the different topics. I was also asked to work with the County science inspector on a couple of projects. All inset was twilight or at weekends.

Headhunted, through voluntary redeployment, to a promoted post (scale 2) in a school which wanted my sporting credentials, rather than my approach to teaching, was a mistake, as the formality was ok until I met children who couldn’t learn maths that way, and I got out the concrete apparatus to support them. This was a critical error, according to the head and I was eventually “encouraged” out of the school, with the help of the Local Authority, into a recently built school which was held to be a model of child-centred approaches.

Every member of that staff went on to successful headship, so it was a very skilled and challenging group within which to develop. While there, I undertook a twilight two year Dip Ed, in Environmental Science. I taught from year 2 to year 6 while there and got to really understand the need for imagery and concrete apparatus to embed and support understanding and mental manipulation in learning. I was seconded to the Government sponsored Assessment of Performance Unit, run by Wynne Harlen, for a summer term, to conduct trial practical assessments with individual children, chosen at random from randomly chosen schools.

I have to say that I learned a great deal about children’s thinking in science as a result.

My last year at that school coincided with a significant rise in the mortgage rate to 15% and finding a school near to home, so reducing the need for car use, was imperative.

The Junior School where I got my scale 3 post as a year leader and science and PE coordinator (later to include maths) enabled me to consolidate my approach to teaching, while also being more directly responsible for colleagues. I added a two year, part time Advanced Dip Ed in Language and Reading Development to my portfolio, to broaden my learning. It was a very important part of my future development as a teacher, in that it consolidated my thinking about aspects of reading, while allowing greater insights into how younger children develop their language facility.

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In many ways, the path to deputy headship was smoothed a little by this studying. I became deputy of an Infant/First school, with children 5-8 (year R to yr 3). I learned from the expertise of a very experienced staff and they enjoyed having a Tigger in their midst. It was a very creative period. Children enjoyed learning and they learned a lot about themselves as independent learners. The national Writing Project happened during this time, followed reasonably swiftly by the National Curriculum, in 1987, so this was embedded into a creative, stimulating culture and the level descriptors supported the development of internal exemplar portfolios, to support the development of new teachers.

When year 3 are top of the school, it is amazing what they can achieve. When year 2 are in the same place, they rise to the challenge. Being the top year of any school is a special place.

It is easy to underestimate the capacity of young children in learning situations.

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I had built a strong track record as a broad thinking and learned teacher and strategic manager during my 16 years as a purely classroom-based teacher. It took a few interviews to get my headship and this was in a school that, to me, proved to be the best place I could have found.

I had taught every year group from Reception to year 11, albeit for sometimes shorter periods, so had encountered a very wide range of needs and responses to different learning situations. I had the skills to run a whole school approach to Primary, not a separate Infant-Junior school within the same building. This was very important to me, as the separations can cause significant internal tensions. I also knew that I wanted staff who could teach across the age range and function autonomously in their classrooms.  

My role, as a head was to seek to make the building the best place for learning to take place, with the best possible resources to make the teachers lives easier and consideration of time demands to seek to make it possible always to focus on quality outcomes.

  • The first was organisational, moving around some areas to make the free flow of children possible and putting the school library firmly at the centre of the school.

  • The second, in the early days, depended a little on the PTA, who proved generous and the school resources, selected by the teachers, developed rapidly.

  • The third, time, to some extent, was up to discussion. That involved discussions about necessary time to produce quality outcomes for ALL learners. Eventually we came to the decision that time allocation must always be with the teacher, so that, if a child needed an extra ten minutes to complete a task, that would be made available. Different models arose, which further enhanced discussion, with the outcome that some lessons were 15-20 minutes long, some an hour, some a morning or an afternoon and occasionally, to go through stages of a process-based piece of learning to a final product could need a day.

We also changed the year pattern, so that in September the first two weeks were for teachers to get to know their children really well, through a self-developed topic. Then we held a closure to consider planning in detail for the rest of the term, collegiately and individually. I received a medium term plan from the teachers. Short term plans were in their own hands.

Flexibility was key to successful outcomes, in every subject. As a result, children developed clear thinking about both the process and the product, which was then subject to evaluation to shape future efforts.

Creating a defined audience could also have a positive additional impact on learning outcomes.

While I was confident in my own abilities and those of the staff which eventually was “hand-picked” to a defined “vision”, I was also acutely aware of any personal limitations that might stifle growth. To that end, I ensured that all staff were undertaking personal development activities, as I was. We would grow by collective effort and shared insights. Every member of staff had a voice.

The death of my first wife and having a young teenager at home, eventually made my decision to step away from headship for me. I needed to take some control over my working hours, to be available to parent.

The past nine years have actually turned out to be developmental after a period of darkness, in that I took a part time SENCo role in a local Junior school and sent my CV to the local unis and a few consultancy firms. It was very much fishing, but I had bites and, as long as I could control my diary, I could earn and parent appropriately.

The many varied roles which I have played over the past nine years have allowed much reflection, some of which has ended up in blogging, formerly as IQMLtd, now for myself. If you read my blogs, you will often see that they are “thought pieces”, where I am at that moment. I know, from sometimes bitter experience, that experience changes one. It can’t help but to do so.

No one is a finished article in life. We all grow and change within the experiences that life offers. This adaptability is an essential survival skill. We must offer children the opportunity to develop this insight within an education setting where it is safe to do so. Life may not be so caring.

I’m still learning. I have personal goals and aspirations still to be achieved, some of which may prove challenging. I will not be the same person in five years’ time.

I want to make progress, personally, not stay the same. I’d want the same for all learners.

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Nurture 14/15

22/12/2014

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It’s always interesting to reflect on the past year and to look forward to the next. I’ve always believed in the ability of dreaming and planning to support a healthy lifestyle. This grew out of my first wife having cancer, with the big dream realised of buying a cottage in France, allowing holidays to be distracting with building activities, gardening and lying in a hammock. It’s the looking forwards with some hope, albeit sometimes short term. Perhaps it is just being human; we all need some hope.

This year has been populated with visits to very many inspiring schools, to spend some quality time with very committed staff, who were very keen to share their school in detail. In doing so, and by triangulating developing themes, they enabled developmental conversations, which allowed them insights into their own next steps. I suppose it was a form of coaching. As I was there to do an assessment, they could have only shown what they wanted. That is a real privilege; to be able to have such open and honest conversations with caring professionals, whose mission is to make their schools the best that they can be.

I got asked, by Rachel Jones,  , to contribute some ideas on Inclusion to “Don’t Change the Light Bulbs”, which I felt was a tremendous honour, which then allowed the privilege of meeting fellow contributors at a book launch. That, in itself, felt grand and I left with a hard copy of a book with my name in it! I’m a child at heart!

Rachel then asked me to present at a Pedagoo event in Bristol. Nerves abounded for ages before, but, when I started speaking, albeit to a smallish group, it was an amazing experience.

Of course, then you get the bug and I’ve since presented at a couple of Teachmeets.

The later part of the year saw me pull away from Inclusion Quality Mark. I had been the blogger and website and product developer on a freelance and ad hoc basis, on a small retainer, for a couple of years. Perhaps I wanted to see my ideas attributed to me? So I started my own blog site in the middle of October. To date (two months) the site has had 10,000 visits with a significant number of pages visited.

From that point, when some it became clear that I was more of a free agent, I have had a number of interesting offers of work, which, as I am, being older, and in the fortunate position of doing projects for interest, I can consider with care.

On the family front, one stepdaughter got married in the summer and another has just passed a Masters in Spanish with distinction, so is now looking for the substantive job (She has an interest in teaching). My daughter should be having her third child by the New Year. Everyone else is fit, well, healthy and happy, so to use the immortal phrase, “mustn’t grumble”… except with politicians who know nothing about education… and I have five, soon to be six, grandchildren in education…

Next year

I’ve mentioned that I’m getting older, and will sometime need to consider retirement, but not quite yet. So I’ll…

Keep reading education books, articles and blogs, to keep abreast of the constant changes being enacted. I’ve got my collection of Simenon books to work through too, for light relief.

Keep blogging; there are so many ideas to be explored and with an election coming up, will provide much food for thought. If you think we have had the substantive change being envisaged, be wary. Money will be the next topic; cutting costs will cause human hurt and emotional harm.

Keep tweeting; a chance to share and explore ideas with a wider group of colleagues.

Present and share ideas when asked.

Support colleagues who ask for auditing guidance to help with unpicking school needs. Coaching is a powerful development tool, at an institution and a personal level.

Look, and argue, for a balanced approach to teaching and learning, because there is no one right way to do it.

Get my paints and camera out more, to find a little more time for me.

Walk and cycle more.

Support colleagues, especially @MartynReah, developing the idea of #teacher5aday, looking out for teacher well-being.

Did I mention that I am freelance? ….

Be well and happy and look forward with hope…

 

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#teacher5aday week 1

17/12/2014

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The potential of Twitter to #connect

This past week, week one of #teacher5aday, has been interesting for a couple of reasons which show Twitter in its best light.

It has been a busy week of blogging, especially now that school experience has ended for my ITT students. One post was created around a piece of work by my wife, who is a secondary school librarian, in response to a request some time ago, to put together a list of books with an Inclusion theme. Not only did she read all the books concerned, but she also created an infographic with a short resume about each one. It lit up my Twitter time line for a couple of days as very kind comments and retweets were thanked profusely.

For info, the blog and the book list can be found at:-

http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/books-for-inclusion

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Twitter effected an introduction to @HTBruce, aka Bruce Wealand, head of St James Primary, in Emsworth, which was, when I was a headteacher, a local colleague school, but was also an exact design replica, the Scola system, built in 1974/5. Bruce and I got chatting on Twitter and then met up to spend a couple of hours “chewing the fat”, almost without drawing breath. On Friday, Bruce retires as head, so it was a delight to have coffee with him today and spend more rapidly passing time talking ideas. There is still much to discuss, after the births of grandchildren to daughters, in the near future, that’s for both of us. Bruce will still be active locally in education and will have much to add to blogging and Twitter, with a little extra time. My best wishes, to Bruce for a happy and healthy retirement.

Meanwhile, today, my blog went significantly past 1000 page views in one day. That’s a real wow.

#connect = #talk = #health

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Inclusion reads

17/12/2014

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Browsing the bookshelves of one of my local universities, I noted the following names of authors who have written text material in the past ten years; Gianna Knowles, Rosemary Sage, Mel Ainscow, Sue Briggs, Roger Slee, Michael Farrell, Dennis Hayes, David Mitchell, Philip Garner, Gary Wilson, Vini Lander. Over the coming months, I’ll add their biographies and details of their publications. Bold type, see below.

Professor Rosemary Sage is a qualified Speech and Language Therapist, Psychologist and teacher with experience in health and education fields. For the past 20 years she has worked in higher education both in London and Leicester and was made Professor of Communication in Education at Liverpool Hope University in 2007.

She is also long-standing Visiting Professor at the Women’s University, Nara, Japan and has been Visiting Professor at the University of Havana. Rosemary was a Trustee for both the Association for Speech Impaired Children and the Independent Panel for Education Advice; President of Human Communication International; Education Advisor to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists; Member of the Research Committee of the British Stammering Association and a Member of Sir Michael Rutter’s Advisory Committee on Language Research.

Publications include:- Meeting the Needs of Students with Diverse Backgrounds 2010;  Inclusion in Schools 2007; World of Difference 2004; Lend Us Your Ears 2003

Gianna Knowles is the Co-ordinator for the Foundation Degree in Teaching and Learning Support and a Primary Education Lecturer at Chichester University.

Gianna has over 12 years experience of working in primary schools in London and across the country. She has experience of classroom teaching and leadership and management and her specialist curriculum area is English. She has also worked in the advisory service as an advisory teacher for English and monitoring and assessment, as part of this role she worked with individual teachers and whole school staffs to develop practice and policies in these areas.

Gianna’s research interest is in the area of social justice and inclusion. She is the editor of Supporting Inclusive Practice, written with colleagues from the School of Teacher Education, to help students and teachers develop their knowledge and understanding about inclusion in schools. Gianna has also worked as a QAA subject reviewer and as an Ofsted Inspector for nursery and primary school inspection teams.

Current books

Ensuring Every Child Matters: A Critical Approach 22 April 2009

Diversity, Equality and Achievement in Education 9 Feb 2011

Thinking Through Ethics and Values in Primary Education Publication Date: 01/04/2012

The last two books have been produced in conjunction with

Vini Lander, who is the Head of the BA (Hons) Primary Education and Programme Coordinator for BA (Hons) Primary Education & Teaching. She was also Deputy Director of Multiverse, a TDA funded professional resource network on achievement and diversity. Vini worked in mainstream schools teaching science and A level Biology for a number of years.  In the latter part of her time in schools she worked as a Section 11 Schools Liaison teacher and teacher in charge of pupils with English as an Additional Language. Vini joined the University of Chichester as Head of the undergraduate primary Initial Teacher Education programme. She teaches on the primary undergraduate, postgraduate and Masters level programmes. Vini teaches on the Primary Science and Professional Studies modules at the University.

Vini has undertaken research in the area of students teachers’ developing subject knowledge in science and written subject support materials for the SCIcentre.  She has also been a Ofsted inspector for primary schools and initial teacher training.  As part of her role in Multiverse, Vini delivered training sessions to student teachers and teacher educators on diversity, inclusion and achievement across the country and in Germany. Her research interests lie in the field of diversity and initial teacher education. She is undertaking doctoral research in this area.

Gary Wilson is currently a freelance consultant and author of several books including “Breaking Through the Barriers to Boys’ Achievement” and (for parents) “How to Help Your Boy Succeed” , Gary Wilson taught in secondary schools for twenty seven years, mostly in West Yorkshire. He began work on raising boys’ achievement in 1993, quickly realising the need to work in conjunction with feeder primary schools in order to maximise the impact.

In the late 90′s he contributed an account of this work to “Getting it Right for Girls and Boys”, edited by Noble and Bradford. In 2001 he was asked to write “Using the National Healthy School Standard to Raise Boys’ Achievement” for the NHA and the DFES.

A year later he was seconded to the local authority to work with 10 high schools. In 2003 he was made the country’s first LEA school improvement officer with specific responsibility for raising boys’ achievement. In 2005 he was made chair of the National Education Breakthrough Programme on Raising Boys’ Achievement, established by the National Primary Care Trust and the DFES Innovations Unit which has worked in over 300 schools nationwide. In 2005 he led a double national award winning campaign to raise achievement across Kirklees LEA. In 2008 he ran a campaign to raise boys’ achievement in Derbyshire which won a national award for work with parents

He has spoken at numerous DFES best practice events as well as LEA and National conferences all over the country and in Brazil. He has advised and trained in over three hundred schools and over thirty LEAs across the UK. He has delivered countless sessions for parents and governors and worked with boys across the length and breadth of the UK. He delivers INSET days, twilight sessions and parents’ evenings and also runs courses for OSIRIS Educational on boys in the Early years, boys and literacy and boys in year 7, as well as being associate advisor to four LEAs.

He has written for the TES, Secondary Leadership Focus, Working with Young Men, Teaching Expertise and numerous websites. Three programmes have been made about his work for Teachers TV “Raising Boys’ Achievement” parts one and two and “The Trouble With Boys” and he has appeared on the BBC and Woman’s Hour many times.

Publications
Breaking Through Barriers to Boys Achievement
It is, sadly, a fact that boys don’t do as well as girls at school. There is no logical reason for this, of course, it is not as if boys are innately more stupid than girls, more of a case that many boys don’t perform as well for a number of reasons. This book aims to change all that by examining research findings and providing strategies to help teachers.
Raising Boys’ Achievement
Based on sound research and experience by leading author Gary Wilson, this “Pocket PAL” provides an introduction to why boys underachieve along with a practical toolkit of proven strategies to help raise boys’ attainment across all age boundaries, enabling every teacher, department, key stage or school to identify the problems and plan a way forward.
Help Your Boys Succeed
This highly practical book contains strong messages about the need to develop independence in boys, the importance of male role models within the family and what to look out for in school, including signs of peer pressure and limiting negative self beliefs. It gives advice on how best to support boys in their learning and in developing self esteem.

Roger Slee was Routledge author of the month in October 2011. Professor Roger Slee, Chair of Inclusive Education at the Institute of Education, was Routledge’s October author of the month. He is the founding editor of the International Journal of Inclusive Education and the editor in chief of the London Review of Education. He serves on the editorial boards of a number of other journals including Disability & Society, Critical Studies in Education, British Journal of Studies in Education and Educational Research.

Slee’s association with Routledge started with “Is there a desk with my name on it?” (Falmer Press, 1993). His newest endeavour is “The Irregular School”, published 2010.

In 2000 he took up the position of the Deputy Director General of Education in Queensland. At first hand, he would experience the struggles of school reform and attempting to establish exclusive education as an educational aspiration and strategy. The Irregular School suggests that conceptions of regular and special education drag us backwards and that inclusive education is in serious danger of subverting reform and supporting exclusion.

Currently he is working on projects with Iraqi academics, some of whom are in forced exile while others are struggling to rebuild a culture of research in the higher education sector in Iraq.

To read more and get a deeper insight into Professor Slee’s background and research, go to the Routledge website: http://bit.ly/aBNeYS

Publications

Doing Inclusive Education Research by Julie Allan and Roger Slee (Paperback – 15 May 2008)

Irregular Schooling: Special Education, Regular Education and Inclusive Education (Foundations and Futures of Education) by Roger Slee (Paperback – 25 Nov 2010)

Mel Ainscow is Professor of Education and co-director of the Centre for Equity in Education.  Between 2007 and 2011 he was the Government’s Chief Adviser for the Greater Manchester Challenge, a 50 million pound initiative to improve educational outcomes for all young people in the region.  Previously a head teacher, local education authority inspector and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, Mel’s work attempts to explore connections between inclusion, teacher development and school improvement.  A particular feature of this research involves the development and use of participatory methods of inquiry that set out to make a direct impact on thinking and practice in systems, schools and classrooms. Mel was director of a UNESCO Teacher Education project on inclusive education which involved research and development in over 80 countries, and has been a consultant to UNESCO, UNICEF and Save the Children.  In  the 2012 New Year honours list he was awarded a CBE for services to education.Publications

Index for Inclusion:- See the site of the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education http://www.csie.org.uk/publications/inclusion-index-explained.shtml

David Mitchell is a leading writer in special and inclusive education who has distilled a huge range of recent studies that have the most genuine potential for improving the practices of teachers and schools, in order to help them produce high-quality learning and social outcomes for all.

Teachers around the globe are anxious to develop genuine, evidence-based policies and practices in their teaching of children with special educational needs, yet this field is notorious for the significant gap that exists between research and practice. What Really Works in Special and Inclusive Education presents educators of learners with special educational needs with a range of strategies they can implement right away in the classroom.Each of the twenty-four strategies included in the book has a substantial research base, a sound theoretical rationale, clear practical guidelines on how they can be employed, as well as cautions about their use. The book covers: strategies for arranging the context of learning, such as inclusive education, cooperative group teaching and the classroom climate cognitive strategies, including self-regulated learning, memory enhancement and cognitive behavioural therapy behavioural strategies, addressing issues of functional assessment and direct instruction formative assessment and feedback assistive technology and opportunities to learn.While the book focuses on learners with special educational needs, most of the strategies are applicable to all learners. This ground-breaking book will be welcomed by any teacher working in special and inclusive education settings who has neither the time nor the inclination to engage with theory-heavy research, yet wants to ensure that their teaching strategies are up-to-the-minute and proven to be the most effective best practices. Researchers, teacher educators and psychologists will also find this book informative and unique in its scope.What Really Works in Special and Inclusive Education: Using Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies David Mitchell

Michael Farrell is an independent consultant in special education. He has published extensively in the field; his books include The Special Education Handbook, Celebrating the Special School, Key Issues in Special Education and Educating Special Children along with a number of The Effective Teacher’s Guides (all published by Routledge).

Debating Special Education is a provocative yet timely book examining a range of criticisms made of special education in recent years. Michael Farrell analyses several key debates in special education giving balanced critical responses to inform policy and practice for the future of special education.

The book identifies possible limitations to the current special education knowledge base and provision. Michael Farrell examines the value of labelling and classification, and asks if intelligence testing may have detrimental effects; and addresses a number of complex issues such as:

  • how practitioners work within special education; and if, sometimes, professionals may be self-serving
  • whether there is distinctive provision for different types of disabilities and disorders
  • inclusion as mainstreaming offered as an alternative to special education, and the challenges this presents.
The author’s conclusion is that in responding to these challenges, special education demonstrates its continuing relevance and strength. Presenting a range of international, cross-disciplinary perspectives and debates – which are vital to an understanding of special education today, and written in Farrell’s typically accessible style – this book will be relevant for teachers of special children in ordinary and special schools; those on teacher training courses and anyone whose work relates to special education.

See the range of Michael Farrell’s publications on his Amazon webpage.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Farrell/e/B001H6QPB4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Sue Briggs. Teachers need realistic ideas to help them meet the day-to-day challenges of inclusion. Sue Briggs writes as an experienced and sympathetic inclusion Co-ordinator. Her books cover: planning and setting targets using P scales and IEPs; teachers and TAs working together to best support the pupil; successful communication between teachers and pupils, pupils and pupils; making circle time and emotional literacy work for pupils with SEN; loads of time saving materials such as photocopiable sheets and templates.

You will find the range of books by Sue Briggs via the link below.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Sue+Briggs%22&source=gbs_metadata_r&cad=3

A PDF document written by Sue Briggs can be downloaded from the TDA website.

http://www.tda.gov.uk/school-leader/school-improvement/sen-and-disability/sen-training-resources/~/media/resources/teacher/sen/session6.pdf?keywords=SEN+toolkit

Dennis Hayes .Professor of Education at the University of Derby and a visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of many books on education and teaching.  His co-authored book, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education (2009) was been described as ‘one of the most important books to have been written in at least the last twenty years in that crucial area where philosophy, policy and practice coincide.’
In 2006-7, he was the first joint president of the University and College Union, the largest post-compulsory education union in the world.
He is the founder of the campaign group Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF), and in 2009 he edited and contributed to a special edition of the British Journal of Educational Studies on academic freedom and is currently writing a book on Academic Freedom.

Publications include:- Foundations of Primary Teaching ; Primary Education: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides) ; Developing Advanced Primary Teaching Skills  due out May 2012

Philip Garner worked as a classroom teacher for 17 years in both mainstream and special schools before moving into teacher education. He has held academic posts at Brunel University, Nottingham Trent University and, currently, at The University of Northampton, where he is Professor of Education, with particular reference to Postgraduate Professional Development. He has published extensively on aspects of special and inclusive education and on children’s emotional and behavioural difficulties and is the Editor of Support for Learning. His latest book is A Handbook of Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in Education (Sage Publishers, 2005). http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book225052

Philip Garner is Director of the Training and Development Agency’s Professional Resource Network (IPRN) focussing on Behaviour for Learning, a British Academy Fellow and is extensively involved in national and international networks in teacher development and inclusion.

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Research, anecdote, research...

17/12/2014

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Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

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Like the song says, things go round and round; there’s no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. (Mark Twain). Someone’s probably been there before.

Through the summer and autumn, if you follow UK Twitter educators, you can’t have missed the talk of the ResearchEd conference and the follow up for Researchleads. Some of the tweets included the slides from the talks and, in reading one in particular, from Prof Coe, I was moved to tweet that it was stating the obvious, probably causing someone to splutter a little. The gist, as I read it, was that it is hard to really describe and unpick what a good teacher does, something which I would endorse.

Reflecting on a long career, I have been lucky enough to read reasonably widely and to listen to speakers, both local and national, sharing their ideas, their interpretations in some cases, of their research, geared to the needs of the assembled audience. There was inevitably some nugget to take away and consider further.

Now, taking away that nugget and distilling it to fit with the reality of my own practice, using the available classroom resources and gearing it to the needs of the class, would inevitably mean that it was not an exact copy of what had been proposed, but, in most cases, it worked. Others took the ideas, use them verbatim and found that they did not work. The difference was their lack of interpretation to their own circumstance.

When we gathered to share outcomes, it was interesting, as we were all then sharing anecdotal evidence from our classrooms or schools, not pure research.

However, to me the significance was that few ideas can be replicated in another setting without adaptation, to the available resource and the host environment and the intended audience.

I’d go as far as to say that any teacher who uses material from another source, even a parallel class colleague, without adaptation, faces the prospect that “it won’t work”, and worse, they will not have the background thinking in order to find ways to adapt it in-lesson.

The notion of research in education intrigues me, in that it implies, by simply using the word, that something top-level is being done, where in reality, someone may be keeping a close eye on a classroom tweak, and that sums up for me the reality of the situation.

As a head, I wanted my staff to be actively investigators in their classrooms; they were certainly paid to be the lead thinkers in the classrooms on a day to day basis, which is where the list of words in the title seek to articulate the range of thoughts that might go through an actively engaged teacher mind during and after a lesson.

AnalysED; PlannED; AppliED; ReviewED; RecordED...


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Most teachers are aware of the plan-do-review cycle of decisions, which was articulated by Kolb, and has since had a number of different interpretations, as shown above, from dubioblog.com. It shows a conscious series of decisions from intention, through outcomes, to reflection and alteration of action.

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I’ve already written a number of pieces about the teacher mindset, on the blog , where I have argued that good teachers are constantly checking out their classrooms and the learners; some do this more consciously and conscientiously than others, some do it intuitively, whereas, some, working to a prescribed or understood formula, seeking to ensure demonstration of “intervention”, might do an ill-timed “mini-plenary”, which may, or may not impact of learning. Where on earth did that idea come from? Hopefully someone’s research; more likely it “worked for someone”.

The larger proportion of teachers set up their class spaces to suit their preferred approach to and their understanding of, teaching and learning. The order and organisation of the space, the tables, the resources, the storage of work books are all critical to good classroom management. Too little space between tables and there’s room for bumping and irritation/distraction. If all resources are stored together, they ensure convergence into a small space. If teacher sight lines are obscured in some way, there is potential for a child to avoid detection. So the first decisions that a teacher makes are to do with the way the space will operate, under perceived ideal conditions. If learner behaviour offers insights into inefficiencies, leading to less effective learning, adaptation has to be considered.  

EngagED; QuestionED; WonderED; SpeculatED; ConsiderED; InvestigatED; ArticulatED; DecidED…

The teacher role is to seek to get across essential information/knowledge to learners in a way that enables them to assimilate it, consider it and then to be able to put the information into use, sometimes by repetition, but also by application in a situation that enables the teacher to check whether the information is secure.

The teacher is acting for a short period as a storyteller, has a narrative with an internalised script and the audience. The best teachers, aware of their audience, will interact intuitively with individuals, in a learning dialogue that enables them to ascertain the growing awareness of the subject matter. If information is being shared by a different means, such as film, then the teacher will be aware of the attentiveness of the group and may seek to cement some aspects of learning by note-making exercises while the film is being shown.

Dialogic approaches enable learners to see the thinking of more confident, articulate peers, as the processes are pursued. Engagement with issues enable the teacher to gain insights into learner thinking.

While children are working, the teacher should be actively scanning the room, looking for signs of learning tension; too easy, too hard, each has its own body language. Distraction, disruption should be noted and acted upon quickly enough to maintain the learning tone. It is a case of ignore signals at your peril. Time is of the essence. Cliché but true.

The teacher will be guided by their expectations in creating the lesson, anticipating how it will go and any distraction from that should lead at least to wondering, then exploring matters arising.

Issues that are investigated, checked and addressed, based on the evidence arising, are likely to be more easily resolved within the lesson, where the information is useful. To consider marking and written responses after the event as adequate may be putting an additional hurdle into the equation. Marking and response are vitally important, but they are, to me, no substitute for timely interaction.

So, before we get to the stage where every teacher is deemed to be an in-class researcher, I’d much rather that they became active in the following activities, which would be the basis of my definition of the craft and art of good teaching.

Before; AnalysED; PlannED;

During: AppliED; ==EngagED; WonderED; SpeculatED; ConsiderED; InvestigatED; ArticulatED; DecidED…

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After; ReviewED; RecordED... QuestionED

RepeatEd as needed.

What if teaching became:- planning as closely as possible for the perceived needs of the learners, with in-lesson adaptations to evident needs? Too simple?

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Individual needs; fine tuning

15/12/2014

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It took someone who must have been looking for the image above on my website, and another on Twitter, highlighting the Mencap report, detailed in the Independent, to start me thinking again about SEND; not that I haven’t been doing so, but there have been other distractions, not least, supporting ITT students in learning the craft.

At the same time, in the Guardian, the Ofsted annual report showed that children in disadvantaged areas and from other heritages were outperforming English learners. I know that these children do not have special educational needs in the strict sense, but they do have individual needs, and that, to me is where the secret of success might lie. It is more a case of knowing the children’s needs well, fine tuning challenge and expectation and supporting appropriately; otherwise known as personalisation, the opposite of much current education discourse. This approach also support children whose learning outcomes exceed their peers and whose needs are also not always met. This is a consequence of “teaching to the middle”. Challenge at the different ends is often less appropriate.

Also at the same time, various reports have suggested that children with special educational needs are largely working with teaching assistants and making less progress. The children with the greatest needs often work with the least qualified person, although I do know many Teaching Assistants whose specialist skills are greater than the classteachers, so not a completely black and white position.

I am beginning to consider that, with teaching and learning sometimes seeming to be in danger of describing itself in ever-narrower terms, more teacher-centred, the learner is being required to fit the system, rather than the system being designed to fit the learner. Should they not do so, they are in danger of being failed by the system that is supposed to secure the best possible outcomes.

What we are really talking about is the sharp end of teaching and learning, dealing with learners whose individual needs are quite specific and may, for some time be undiagnosed, although they should be capable of description. This latter point is the reason I developed the crib sheet at the header of this post; seeking to support the clear description of learning needs that might help the school SENCo to fine tune support, or to engage the necessary external expertise to offer insights into the specific needs being displayed.

I have to reflect that the current incarnation of the National Curriculum, although designed to raise standards, especially in Primary education, if interpreted as a delivery model, could put these children at greater disadvantage, if they don’t “get it”. In other words, they are not keeping up with their peers. The situation is compounded, in my opinion, with a lack of clarity in assessment systems, which may well add another layer of confusion, in that, in the absence of a definite framework against which judgements are made, any aspect of subjectivity in teacher responses could exacerbate the feelings of failure from the learner finding learning a challenge.

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I have long been an advocate of exemplar portfolios, at a school level, to describe what progression might look like across all abilities of learner within the school. They are relatively easy to organise and provide the basis for moderation discussions, decisions about outcomes and also the potential for describing the next learning steps. That way, they become reference documents for early career teachers to build their judgements, as well as more experienced teachers to clarify their decision making. In a world “without levels”, this seems to me an essential step. While there may be a desire to move away from the idea of “levels”, there is still a need to be able to describe step-change, in order to support individuals in their progress.

If children’s work books are organised as portfolios too, they provide the narrative for discussion, and decision making, especially when compared to the school outcomes. Schools need to create the basis for fine-tuned decisions, especially where they affect potentially vulnerable learners, for whom a small group will have significant, long term needs to be addressed.


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Classes are, by definition, mixed ability in composition, even streams and sets, which are simply a narrower demographic. The needs of the learners need to be known, as the starting point for all substantive decisions. This is an essential teacher skill; determine where each learner is, so that clarity can support planning for the next phase of learning.
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It was to articulate this, that I wrote a piece which I entitled 24652, to explore a teaching and learning rationale against the teaching standards. The 24652 approach describes very clearly the analyse-plan-do-review-record approach which is well known to teachers. It is then easier to look at what is happening within a lesson, with expectation becoming a prompt to teacher action, when it is clear that an individual, or a group, is not “getting it”. I have called this opportunistic teaching, which I feel is a more dynamic approach than the “mini-plenary” model which can be used just to show teaching “prowess”.

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While some individual children demonstrate very clearly that they have significant individualised needs, which ultimately leads to a diagnosis and, for some, an Education Health and Care Plan, there is a further group who find learning more difficult, whose needs might just put them around whatever the teacher internalises as the significant point. Schools are being challenged to develop learners to get 85% of their year six cohort in 2016 “at or above national expectation”, with some at “mastery” level. (Until they change the wording)

Those children in the 70-90% group will become a significant target group for some schools in such a scenario. Equally, however the notion of progress will also become significant, for all schools, as they will be asked to be able to show progress across all ability groups over time.

What would I do?

  • Ensure that teachers know the needs of their children really well and plan to teach the groups with the greatest needs, at critical points. TAs can then be deployed to the needs of other groups.

  • Ensure that all communication across the school was of the highest quality, including with parents, whose backgrounds and needs need also to be taken into account.

  • Develop a school portfolio, based on a series of whole school writing projects, linking with other schools if possible, to moderate internally and seek external feedback. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/school-portfolios-support-assessment

  • If teachers are insecure about teaching children with significant individual needs at either end of the learning spectrum, they should seek support from colleagues in other year groups, to extend their expertise.

  • Look at internal systems, especially reading approaches, to explore whether they support learners, or whether the learners have to fit the prescribed system.

  • Develop a more open approach to writing, based on an individual portfolio approach, as detailed here. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/pupil-portfolios-public-progress

  • In Primary, have one writing book, whatever the subject, to create a clear focus for each piece of writing. This would enhance writing across the curriculum and allow other subjects to provide the stimulus, the context and the vocabulary for writing.  http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/writing-process-tweak-your-books

  • Learning Objectives to be seen as the title for the lesson.

  • Success Criteria to be the sub headings and a stepped guide to a successful outcome.

  • Individuals to have flip out personalised learning foci, so that they can support in-lesson discussions of learning. They also provide the basis for marking to the individual need. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/marking-keep-it-simple  

  • Keep a track of individual progress, with some vulnerable individuals being subject to more of a case-study approach. http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/send-building-an-individual-case-study

 

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Books for Inclusion

12/12/2014

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I am grateful to my wife, Melanie, the library manager from Cams Hill School, Fareham, for this list of books for (largely secondary) children, to create the basis for discussion about inclusion issues. She has read them all!


Fiction books with an Inclusion theme, to stimulate discussion with and among children. Some books have an age suggestion.
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1000 years of experience.

12/12/2014

69 Comments

 
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Thank you to anyone who reads my blog. It’s been two months as of today and the visitor count has been high, which has been a source of much pleasure.

The site is a series of reflective posts, which occasionally seek to put current issues into a historical perspective, at least a career perspective. It has long worried me that large numbers of people leave education, after a long and successful career and that’s that. The wealth of expertise and their insights are lost to the system.

Schools are organic and go through phases of development. A settled staff, working together, develops an internal (historical) narrative that is enhanced and becomes more nuanced each year. When significant members, or large numbers, change, there can be a loss of history, with new members who may fail to understand the story to date and their own interpretations may be a shadow of what went before. Of course, it can be the case that the “group think” created by a settled staff can embed practices that a new pair of eyes sees more objectively. Either way, the organic nature of the organisation is to “heal” within the new body, to assume, hopefully, a new equilibrium.

Whether good, bad or indifferent, a school career offers insights into oneself, as a person and a practitioner, into children, as people and learners, parenting habits and management, either as a promoted post or having to deal with management decisions.

Having contributed to Rachel Jones “Don’t Change the Light Bulbs” book, it struck me that crowd-sourcing could be a means of collating a wealth of information. So I extend an invitation, to any reader of my blog, to share their distilled thoughts as succinctly as possible. If we can get to 1000 years, with a corporate effort, I’ll do my best to distil the thoughts further to come up with a collegiate précis.

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Below is a contribution from @GazNeedle, who is normally sketching, doodling and cartooning ideas. As it wouldn't copy into the comment thread, I thought it would fit here.
Please Read Gaz's written comment plus those of many other kind contributors below.
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My own effort is below. You can use that format, or any that suits your style.

40 year career, Secondary science, Primary, Junior, Primary, Junior, Infant (DH), Primary (HT) ITT tutor, assessor for a range of national schemes, Consultant (isn’t everyone, these days?)

On you, as a person.

  • Keep things simple; they are then easy to understand and communicate.

  • Be yourself, be strong and continue to be a learner and thinker. Have a hobby/life!

  • Be a team player and a leader when necessary. Schools are stronger together.

  • Organise a class space that supports learning, as well as your teaching.

  • Resource effectively, for easy retrieval and return.

  • Be ordered and organised, be strategic in your thinking and communicate effectively with everyone.

On children

  • Know your children well.

  • Plan for their learning, over different timescales, make sure the “story” is good and makes them think. There’s a big world out there; open eyes, ears, hearts and minds.

  • Think with them, talk with them and make adjustments when you see they are not “getting it”.

  • As you get to know them better, fine tune challenges to their needs.

  • Parents are essential partners. Harness their energy appropriately. Make home activity count.

On management (working with people)

  • Humanity should be a byword for everyone. Create a climate of respect. Model it.

  • You work with and through your team. You are responsible for their welfare. Value them.

  • Make sure the work environment supports their efforts, with appropriate space, resources and time.

  • Goodwill works two ways; a “give and take” approach buys extra effort.

  • Communicate, communicate, communicate; don’t assume.

  • Strategy is only as good as the explanation and the understanding. You can have all the plans in the world, but, if no-one understands them, they will fail.

  • Take time to say thank you.



Thanks to Craig Parkinson @cparkie, for the Wordle below, highlighting the key words from eight contributors. Interesting what are the highlights; could be a useful discussion piece. Would your staff room agree the priorities? 
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69 Comments

#teacher5aday

10/12/2014

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There’s a new hashtag recently started, by Martyn Reah (@MartynReah) pursuing his interest in teacher well-being, which he outlined to a small group of attendees at a #TMConnectED event held at Jane Austen’s house in Chawton.

In many ways, the challenge appears simple enough; to find time in your day for an activity specifically for you. I’ve set myself the challenge of finding at least 20 minutes each day to do something with an art basis, with the efforts being shared at a meeting in January, so no pressure!

It has led me to reflect on the story of my working life and the litter of discarded or neglected hobbies that seems to have been left in it’s wake. In the early days, while still reasonably fit and time rich, sport played a reasonable part, particularly in the summer, when cricket sometimes took Saturday and Sunday and occasional mid-week fixtures. My Bothamesque efforts with the bat and ball were appreciated. Then along came child one and a ball into the face, to revise that.

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Music took over, with me learning the guitar with the children at one school, then running the beginner group, leading to that being a very useful skill for the rest of my career. Self-taught bodhran playing led to me joining a barn dance band and a social dance group, which enabled me to play at some of the major folk festivals around the country. Along came management and Ofsted preparation and the inability to commit to practice and the weekends away meant pulling out of that.

Holidays in France, playing music there for a couple of years (finalists in the truffe de Perigeux 1990)  and buying a small country cottage there after my first wife was diagnosed with cancer, meant escapes of a different kind, to undertake plumbing and electrics and carpentry, as well as working with the garden and the developing trees. That still exists and is one area that provides continuous refreshment, simply down to calm and no external stimulation; no internet, no TV… Roll on Easter and the warmer weather. The tree-work list is very long.

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Art was my bête noire at 12, following a less than enthusiastic teacher demotivating anyone who was not naturally gifted. Finding some time in France one summer, and a source of very cheap material, I “had a go”. The style is naïve, to say the least, and always very rusty when revisited. But, it is for me and, if I feel that anything is worth sharing, for a few select others. That, and photography form the basis of remaining hobbies, for now.

It will be interesting to see the outcomes from my own and other’s efforts.

What will you do for yourself?

Good luck and be well.

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“growing” education?

10/12/2014

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When does “accountability” get in the way?

We need a top down “growth mind-set”.

At one of the Grammar Schools that I attended, we had to learn by heart the creed and the act of contrition, the key words of which I still remember;

 We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;

And we have done those things which we ought not to have done;

And there is no health in us.

This was an interesting concept for an 11 year old, reinforcing our place in the world; relatively low, as far as some teachers were concerned.

Teaching staff are accountable in many different ways, to their class(es), to their line manager, to the headteacher, the Governors, the parents, LA, Trust or Academy, Ofsted, Government. It can feel like accountability overload and I am wondering if there is a danger that it is the accountability, in itself, that might be causing significant issues for schools who find themselves in more challenging situations.

Holding to account is a top down model, a case of being done unto, with the implication of deficits to be addressed. This can put the person lower down the scale at a significant disadvantage.

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I had the great fortune to sit in on a conversation between Dame Alison Peacock and Sir David Carter recently, in Bristol, during the filming of a school improvement film by School Improve. Both occupy important places in the education pantheon, so their views are significant. They are listened to regularly by policy-makers. In due course, the film will be available for in-school CPD.

There was some inevitably common ground, not least in the purposes of education, with children central to both sets of thinking. However there was also a discernible difference in approach between the two, which I will seek to summarise.

Dame Alison, at Wroxham School, inherited a school that needed substantial structural and communal change in order to improve. It was a case of professional, parental and child capital all needing an upgrade, to start to believe in the corporate aspiration and to see the direction of travel. It was the visionary approach that was needed, to show everyone that change was possible, as well as essential. Time and effort was put into developing all of the different aspects of the school, celebrating the step changes that became visible. Celebration added positivity to the journey, so people kept up the momentum. As a result, the school came out of special measures and is now enjoying success.

Sir David’s role is more overview and strategic; he is responsible for the Academy schools in the South West of England. He gave a very clear outline of the different levels of responsibility and accountability that underpinned decision making within the “authority” of the School Regional Commissioner. Some flexibilities were described, for schools operating at a discernibly high level. Intervention was a key feature of the accountability system.

So, the person charged with improving a school took a bottom-up approach, whereas the bureaucrat articulated accountability levels to make schools improve. This is mirrored through the system, with pure data often driving decisions, where the reality “on the ground” is in need of a more nuanced approach.

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This last point developed broader reflections in my own mind, as the education system is fraught with seeking those things that will have the biggest impact on learning.

Bright ideas are sought from across the world, by politicians, desperate to demonstrate that they are improving the system.

Plug-ins in computer, website terms, don’t always work, as an aspect of one plug-in might create an incompatibility with another, resulting in the system crashing.

Similarly, in medicine, overprescription of drugs to a patient can cause one drug to work against another, again causing system breakdown.

In both cases, system breakdown can be fatal, usually caused by human error.

Bright ideas, unless their purpose, development and potential utility are well understood, fall down in education. A simple case in point would be the worksheet, “borrowed” from a colleague, downloaded from the internet, or created by a central authority. All goes well, until a number of learners encounter a problem. At this point, the teacher understanding can be compromised, reducing their ability to move the learning on. Thinking for yourself, to provide maximum benefit to learners, is a fundamental teacher need and should never be compromised. Teacher need to know their children well and also to know their stuff, so that they can fine-tune to the needs of the learners in front of them, not a generic group visualised by another author.

Initiatives cause distraction. It is hard to be working within a system, knowing that what you are currently doing is being superseded, so that you are planning at one level, while developing the replacement. Initiative overload can also occur if managers are not good at filtering out those bright ideas that will not add value to the school.

Thinking about this a little further, accountability can, if mishandled, become disabling, of individuals, schools and ultimately the system.

This links with thinking for yourself and having a clear rationale for the decisions that are being taken at different points in time. Having a plan of action and following through, with evaluation points built in, are the bread and butter of project management. Organising for teaching and organising the structures of the system, are all part of project management. If an end point can be visualised, the plan can become a clear journey map, or narrative, that can be shared with others.

Communication, across every aspect of the system is the basis on which everything succeeds or fails. A lack of good communication can allow parts of the system to become detached, so that the mechanism, over time, becomes less effective.

If I was to propose one area from this discussion that needs to be a part of the whole educational establishment, it would be to encourage discussion, rather than the top-down, edict-led, initiative rich and headline grabbing pronouncements. That way might allow all to move together.

It would also potentially improve the lot of classroom teachers, whose role is to effect the change in learners.

Management can hold teachers to account if they have provided the cultural and physical environment where the teacher is likely to succeed. If day to day working decisions are compromised, the teacher will defer to authority and become less effective.

Teachers in the classroom should be autonomous thinkers; then they can be held accountable. That way too, we’ll be growing the leaders of the future, capable of thinking for themselves.


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Improvement through inspection? Better value from expensive audits?

As we all are in a situation of looking for ways of saving money and at the same time seeking ways to improve the school system, should any aspect of the system be “ring-fenced” and become untouchable?

Having entered Teacher Training College almost 40years ago, taught and been a head teacher within a 32 year career in schools, it is almost flippant to say that I have heard it all before. However, that is true, but it is also true that the impact of successive change has been at best tinkering, more often revolution, as one system replaced another. All political parties wish to “improve” education and each claims to have the magic solution, which is inevitably delivered in sound-bites .  

Evolutionary development has never been the hallmark of any systematic change.

Each school is in a unique situation, based on location, staffing and resources. The former, ranging from leafy suburbs to inner-city can be a determinant of motivation and aspiration, both important to success. The resources, from building to moveable items, can encourage or discourage potential teachers and motivate students. The best teachers inspire students, encourage them to aspire and show them ways to achieve, with support, space and time to think given by management.

The systems within which teachers work are often the limiting factors, if they are required to work to the book and therefore in a dogmatic, stereotypical, prescribed manner. Teaching should be efficient and effective, but learning can be messier.

Ofsted is one such system. There are aspects of Ofsted which I would applaud and seek to keep and tweak. There are limitations to the system, which can have a detrimental impact on school development. It is always encouraging to be told that your school is good, even better maybe to be outstanding. At the other end of the scale, a school struggling with potentially a range of issues, will not be helped to be told that what they are doing is not good enough, by a team which then leaves the recovery to others.

It is a very expensive audit tool and as such should add value to school development, if the country is to make full use of visiting expertise.

Interventions by Local Authorities, or Academy chains can then exacerbate the situation, as multiple agendas are pursued, within very tight timescales. On a school level, a tighter, supported audit leads to a known agenda, by school, LA (Academy) and Ofsted.

If a school Self Evaluation process was geared towards providing a clear audit trail, a clear descriptor supported by evidence, validation would either follow, or there would be areas for discussion, refinement and for subsequent action planning.

If I was in charge of education today, I’d want Ofsted to do two things, separating the inspection of teaching standards from the running of the school.

For the first, as an enhancement, I would create a validation system, based on the teaching standards, and expect every teacher to undergo an internal assessment every four years, earlier if asked for, a form of quality control, supporting their continuing professional development needs, as well as offering help and advice to head teachers.  The evidence would enable teachers to make valid, evidenced, claims for promotion and ensure national consistency, as well as provide the basis for personal professional development actions. Every head teacher, and other senior staff as appropriate, in England would be formally trained in lesson observation to the standards.  This judgement would be validated through joint observations during inspection visits.

The second; I’d want every school to be visited every two years, by an experienced assessor, to explore the effectiveness of the school, looking at the local context, local issues and the internal organisation, working to validate school self-evaluation, with one of two outcomes, acceptance of judgements (possibly with advice notes) or a decision that an extended inspection was necessary, within a specific timescale.

Why two years? Simply because schools can experience very rapid change, through staffing, and this can have an immediate impact, especially if change is at a senior level. I would expect every school inspected to have a detailed action plan for the subsequent two year period, which would form part of the validation exercise. What has been the two year development, how is it to be sustained and developed?

Would this system be cheaper? To some extent, it would depend on the decision on the first proposal (external or internal) and the contact time needed for the second.

However, it would allow latitude for evolutionary development, especially if the system was allowed to run for a number of years.

Basic mandate for education

Schools:-

  • Will ensure that they understand, and cater for, the needs of each individual child.

  • Will have clear plans to ensure that each child makes at least expected progress while at the school.

  • Will plan maths and English with regard to the national expectation.

  • Will devise a curriculum that makes use of local resources, which inspires and engages children in learning widely, covering all the curriculum subjects.

  • Will demonstrate that learning takes place in many different settings, through extended experiences, off-site or at home.

  • Will ensure that all communication is of the highest quality, within the school and to outside stakeholders.

  • Will monitor the performance of all staff to ensure the highest quality of provision. Staff will participate fully in the school development agenda, taking responsibility for their own Continuing Professional Development.

  • Will ensure that they regularly quality-assure the running of the school, with external validation as appropriate.

  • Will ensure that systems are in place that ensure progression throughout a child’s education, especially at transition and transfer points.

  • Will ensure that all children leave formal education with qualifications that equip them for further academic study or to enter the world of work.

  • Will support Initial Teacher Training through whatever means best suits the school stage of development.

Support and challenge- Ofsted:-

  • Visit school to quality assure the organisation, based on the school responsibilities outlined above.

  • Focus on the senior management roles of quality assurance, to validate internal judgements, including sample joint observations and joint work sampling.

  • Explore fully any inconsistencies evidenced, particularly on exit data.

  • Support school development after inspection, with clear action plans, developed in discussion with the school.

  • Support post-inspection issues for schools in Special Measures, coordinating any actions needed to improve management and leadership.

  • Use its resources to explore and disseminate the best practice available throughout the world, to extend the information base for schools to develop their curricula and classroom approaches.

     

Government:-

  • Devise, and keep under regular review, frameworks for mathematics and English that ensures every child leaves school with competency in these subjects appropriate to the needs of life, further study and the workplace.

  • All other subjects will be subject to monitoring through national progress descriptors until a child starts a formal examination route, when that grading will take effect. Equivalence between stage descriptors and examination grades will be established, over time, to ensure all study routes are equally valued.

  • Academic and vocational routes will be equally valued, from year 10, as students prepare for the next phase of study.

  • A national aspiration would be for 85% of children at age 7, 11 and 14 to reach an age appropriate level. Children not achieving this will be entitled to appropriate support.

  • Quality-assure Ofsted inspection through sampling by Her Majesties Inspectors.

  • Use its resources to explore and disseminate the best practice available throughout the world, to extend the information base for schools to develop their curricula and classroom approaches.

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Grit and resilience

7/12/2014

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Or choices and consequences.

For anyone who has not read my personal story, I think I have some insight into the potential for life to throw things at you. I am also well aware that some people have had greater things to cope with than me. For all the challenges I am content with my lot.

Life offers challenges, opportunities, experiences at different levels to each and every one of us, unless we live in a self-contained bubble and don’t participate. It is something of a truism that children today don’t enjoy the same freedoms which my generation did, to explore the surrounding area without worry, to play together, or climb trees, until caught, in a local recreation ground. I walked the couple of kilometres or so to school aged 5, crossing roads by myself. These experiences developed personal capabilities and a certain amount of self-reliance.

If children are not able to experience the world through their own eyes and through their own decisions, but have to rely on an adult to make the decisions for them, they are somewhat disabled in their growing experiences. We want our children to be safe and secure and I do remember the first time my own children went off on their own into town, a kilometre away, in the days before mobile phones. That they went, got back safely and wanted to talk about what they had done in the interim was a rite of passage. Their confidence raised our confidence as parents. They had demonstrated their capability and independence in decision making.


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Today, we hear that there are proposals for “lessons” in grit and resilience. In a school system that has almost systematically embedded a spoon feeding culture, how will it be done? Put children out n wet days without a coat, to see how it feels to be cold and wet? Deprive them of food for a time to experience hunger? Not let them have access to their current screen of choice? Or will we see a return to extended cross-country running, or some other physical exertion, to feel real physical exhaustion.

Because, in reality, grit, determination and resilience are internalised, personal to each and every one of us. Some have more than others. This can be our ability to tolerate discomfort or pain, in different forms, mental or physical. We sometimes don’t know what we can endure until we are tested.

Independent decision making is a part of this process; making appropriate choices when faced with a problem. Working together as a team can sometimes be problematic, but success can be as a result of collaboration. Life is after all a glorified team work exercise. Getting on with someone can be testing, at times.

Thinking back to my active teaching days, which extended through headship, my aim was always to develop independent learners, with decision-making an integral part of as many learning challenges as possible. My classroom, set up as a “learning workshop” enabled an instruction such as “Make a picture to represent autumn” would allow the children choices of materials, composition and the direction of their working together, as they always made such pictures in twos or threes, so decisions were corporate. Other subjects were treated in the same way. As someone is likely to be asking if teaching occurred, the answer is a resounding yes, with the tasking checking that the teaching had been embedded, and remediated within the task as necessary.

Children will not become resilient through lessons, which are likely to become exhortations to effort. Making learning challenges such that effort is needed, over time, so that grit, resilience and decisions are in-built, might just offer a greater chance of success.

Then again, life might already have given some of the children their life-time’s quota of resilience. Imagine a refugee child, who has had to flee conflict. School does not often mirror real life, so is not always a preparation for those things that will be encountered.

You just need to know them well, challenge them appropriately and support, guide and mentor to need.

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School portfolios support assessment.

5/12/2014

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Agreeing standards- a headache in the making?

Between classes and between schools, once assessment systems are selected, there will still be a need to moderate outcomes, to validate personal and internal judgements.

For as long as the National Curriculum has existed, levelness has caused a problem, both within and between schools. It is a matter of personal judgement. I wrote about this in a post called “Informed teacher judgement =quality assurance”, flowing on from a series of other posts.

It has been a bit of a bee in my bonnet, as I have always seen levelness as a set of descriptors, or criteria, against which it was possible to make judgements, when presented with evidence of a learner’s capability against the criteria. The essence of the teacher role is to know their children. All classroom decisions are premised on this reality.

There is confusion at present, with one source saying that levels are no more, and another making judgements based on levels, which will, in reality, last a couple of years yet, until new examinations become available.

Another confusion was caused by David Laws announcing that level 4b would be the new aspirational target for year six learners, as it was a greater “guarantee” of success at Secondary School.

So, it would appear that we are looking for 85% of KS2 learners to achieve better than the equivalent level 4b at the end of seven years in a Primary School. At first sight quite a task; however, having spent time in inner London Primaries in the summer of 2013, I can say that this threshold is achieved, through personalised approaches, with levelness, as described above, being the tool for tracking, supplemented by APP for very vulnerable learners. Personalisation was the only route for these schools with multiple deprivation factors, because they had to and had developed the capacity to do so…

Where schools do not have multiple deprivation indices, and a more homogenous intake, it can be the case that less need to differentiate is perceived. Children begin to conform to the labels which they attach to themselves, as well as any by the teachers. This can lead to articulation of learning need as moving from one sub-level to another, with no idea of how to do so. This is the poor end of assessment; limited analysis and even more limited articulation, so learning is not progressed.

Whether we have levels or not, children will still be learning to read, write and do maths, in the same way as before. Understanding child learning development has always been the bread and butter of teaching, alongside knowing your stuff. Supporting a child to improve, by careful oral and written guidance, engaging with the journey and coaching and mentoring, should be a part of everyday classroom practice. Sometimes this is shorthanded to simple target setting. These are often hidden inside book covers, so are not available as discussion prompts. A post looks at this issue and suggests a way forward.

Inevitably, at the end of a writing task, a teacher will have to make judgements about a learner’s performance. What will be used as benchmarks, in the absence of levels? What is good enough, or good, or very good, for different ages of learner? Currently, in terms of levels, we have 3c/3b probably at the very good end of KS1, level 5+ the upper end of KS2, with an ability to extrapolate into year 4 as level 4 at the upper end, with levels 2, 3 and 4 being “expected levels” at years 2,4 and 6.

School portfolios

If, over the next term, work was collected, assessed and moderated within a school, with annotation sharing clear descriptors demonstrating the visible criteria, even highlighted, these pieces would become a portfolio of exemplars for future reference. It is likely that something like levelness descriptors would form the backbone of the criteria. If the portfolio also articulated the possible next steps, these would provide guidance to newer teachers, whose first job is to know their children. The methodology would provide a coherence to writing progression, which may be less clear in the new NC. The portfolio would also act as a baseline of achievement from an earlier year, against which to judge the achievement of future years. They would also articulate the “art of the possible”, to any teacher whose expectations might be less than required.

It would also be able to demonstrate to an external review the processes that underpin decision making within the school.

Of course, if the portfolio was shared between schools, there would be a greater understanding of the professional judgements in the two settings. Across a pyramid of schools, linked to Secondary decisions, and more fruitfully, perhaps, to GCSE criteria, the development and decision agenda would be better informed throughout the twelve years to GCSE.
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Pupil portfolios = public progress.

4/12/2014

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We want learners to see the point of learning, to know how to get better at it and to learn that working at something a little bit hard and succeeding can be very enjoyable.

Blank ruler assessment.

Use the blank ruler below to determine how big the penny is

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Now repeat the exercise with this ruler.

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In order to give an accurate measurement, there needs to be some kind of scale available. Where this ruler is in metric, centimetres, rather than imperial, inches, it gives a measurement specific to that scale.

Measurement, of any kind needs a scale against which to make appropriately accurate judgements. In Roman times, measures were things like cubits and hand-spans. Non-standard measures can be useful for approximation, a sort of rule of thumb, but, if accuracy is needed, then standardised measures are essential.

I used to tell a story to illustrate this point with young learners.

A king wanted a ship built, went to a carpenter with measurements, 50 feet long and 10 feet wide. When the day of the launch was arranged with all the dignitaries present, the king went red in the face, shouted at everyone, especially the carpenter, that the ship was too small.

What had happened? This question gave rise to a variety of thoughts, leading to formalising measures.

I’d say that assessment in learning also needs a scale against which learners can be measured, but more from the point of view of supporting them to take the next steps, based on the evidence of outcomes.

In many ways, it can be argued that this scale is embedded within the development of discrete subjects, with one element leading to the next, so that, for some teachers, presenting sequential lessons provides that structure, as each aspect is covered. However, most teachers would acknowledge that assimilation and retaining of information, coupled with organisation and recall issues, can mean that different children make progress at different speeds.

It’s relatively easy to put children into a list order, from less able to most able. This has been the stuff of many aspects of teaching for a very long time. Examinations and test scores do this, based on score outcomes.

Examinations and tests are based on criteria, exploring aspects of what has been learned. Rarely will an exam or test enable a participant to demonstrate the whole of their competence or capability. If the parameters of the test or exam are known ahead of time, they can be planned for and rehearsed, as effectively as possible. They are usually knowledge based, with a simple remit to ascertain what has been retained. They serve that purpose.

Occasionally, they require the participant to reflect on some pieces of information and to make an argument for or against a proposition. This is a more demanding challenge, as it moves into using and applying the knowledge, and may, to some extent, and in some, or most, subjects, rely on a more general articulacy, rather than subject specific content. 

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This topic re-emerged with the publication by the Government of the Performance Descriptors for the end of Key Stage tests at 7 and 11. While the Government had earlier removed the previous system of levels and required schools to develop their own systems, this document suggested that, at the end of the testing, children would be given a descriptive grade, but based on a narrative that used mastery, at national standard, working towards national standards and not at national standard, with the potential for a numeric attribute too.  

Assessment, to a large extent, is just describing learners, what they can do, where they are in relation to the learning journey and what they need to do next. I always summarise this as “Know your children well”.

“Testing” this, and recording it, at specific points allows for tracking of progress. However, any teacher who spends time with learners should be able to provide a reasonably accurate summary at any point. Equally, teachers need to be aware of the limitations of different forms of testing, including an awareness of their own perceptions that can skew decisions on some individuals.

It is a cyclic process, (articulated within the blog entitled 24652), where all teaching and learning is premised on knowing the learners really well and refining that knowledge over successive teaching cycles.

Teaching standard 2 is Progress and Outcomes. This can be analogous to process and product, with the learning and thinking process leading to a product which can be evaluated, reflecting on the development to find the points where additional attention would improve future products/outcomes.

Knowing the steps to develop the subjects is essential and this can appear to be the point of the Progress Descriptors. At one level, the decision is whether a child can do, or knows something or not. It is a list of attributes, but each is long and detailed and will probably need to be distilled to make sense on a day to day basis, with certain key elements being essential for focus.

The process is likely to be an integrated mixture of experiences, in school or external to school, technicalities and interactive advice. Unpicking experiences and bringing the detail of those experiences into classroom learning makes for greater progress, but, where learners may not have had background experiences outside school, their thinking will be disadvantaged.

Consider a range of cultural experiences; museums, galleries, places of interest/worship and wild places. Each will hold sensory experience which can be internalised, especially if they have an interested adult to point out, question and reflect on what is being experienced. Access to the internet, or to documentary style programmes on the TV, can have a second hand impact. The oral culture of the family is likely to impact on learning, as are the reading habits, of books shared together, or encouraged independently. From all these experiences come the foundation of vocabulary, which enables the learner to join in the learning conversation.

School experience should enable the learner to use what they already know to explore new situations, thereby adding to their working vocabulary. A rich adult language also adds to this stock. The outstanding teacher/storyteller contributes to this through interactive storytelling. They use the more difficult words then interpret to the needs of the rest of the audience, so links are made overt.

Learners need to learn the words, the way in which words go together to make sentences, then to order and organise their thoughts into a clear narrative; they learn to tell the story their way.

From the oral organisation, this can then be recorded in a variety of ways, including writing.

It is often this latter point that is subject to “testing”. The ideas, wrapped up through a learning narrative in response to a question. It is then the fluency and articulacy with which a learner expresses their understanding that is more often the basis for judgement. If they can get their ideas across, they are judged to be higher grade than one who struggles.

If the process of articulation is explored thoroughly, then where aspects are missed out can be identified and rectified.

Towards a portfolio approach

Structures matter. The two page approach to writing (see blog) was an attempt to embed the process of crafting ideas into regular exercise book use. Each aspect of the process could be considered at a personal level. Linked to flip out personal targeting (see blog), this provides the agenda for discussion between the teacher and the learner. Writing frames enabled whole writing, with an emphasis on particular parts for different purposes, but always to present a whole narrative. This draft, edit, redraft approach can be very powerful in supporting learning. I’m not going down the route of Triple Impact Marking (TIM), as, to me, this can distract from the process of draft and redraft with editing embedded.

I’d suggest this as opportunistic teaching, as outlined in this nutshell.

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The reworking, and subsequent consideration of steps taken that led to improvement, enables the establishment of a new baseline for the product. In so doing, a developmental portfolio is created, with staged commentary showing the interactions and the outcomes, against the expectations.

Over time, the portfolio builds with a succession of processes, feedback and responses, first draft material that might have been further developed, linked to personal development points which can be affixed as a permanent agenda for discussion, to the side of the exercise book.

Each piece becomes a new baseline, from which progress can be described, by both learner and teacher. It provides a certain amount of flexibility too, to the teacher, to engage with different aspects of the process to better guide the learner.

What’s interesting is that this approach can apply to all subjects.

Emphasise and improve the process, so that the outcomes show improvement.

Improvement =positive mind-set.

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In sickness and in health

3/12/2014

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...when a school gets ill.

Life’s strange sometimes. I’d been thinking about the impact of a school having a sick colleague, when, for the first time in over eight years, while arriving for a platelet donation session, I met the son of a teacher who had died of cancer during my last year of headship. We each expressed surprise at the sheer coincidence and pleasure, in part because life’s been kind to us both. He’s married with two children and I’ve remarried after my wife died that same year.

We all know what it’s like to feel a bit under the weather. The effects can range from just being a little off colour to being debilitated, especially if it is a little more than a cold. I’m not including man-flu, which obviously means instant medicalisation at the least.

Headteachers may often feel that they are married to their school; it can certainly be a 24/7/365 role, meaning that schools are like extended families, often sharing a member’s pleasure or pain. A happy event is celebrated together. A sick colleague attracts support, either within, keeping a close eye in case of problems, or without, with visits to check up on progress. However, like all sickness this can become pervasive and can eventually distract the whole community, in extreme cases pushing individuals or the collective to virtual destruction.

In another post, I’ve speculated that the level of distraction within a school will have a correlation with the school ability to make progress. If a head’s door is regularly knocked with requests for five minutes, this soon adds up to significant disruption, distracting the HT from frontline issues and from development needs.

Reflecting back to my headship, of 16 years, I can recognise periods where there were significant strains, as well as extended periods of development, supported by very active, fit and longer serving colleagues.

Coping with staff change can be seen as a form of institutional illness, in that there’s a phase akin to bereavement for some, while the change offers opportunities to others for new relationships. It is, however, the impact of actual illness which can cripple a school, especially if the illness is terminal. Seeing the impact on my own school over a relatively short time scale, of the death of a colleague, brought home the realities of life and headship. You are often in a lonely position as a head. To be the central figure through which significant information is passed, and being required to pass this to the rest of the staff, is a burden, as your messaging has to be tactful and supportive. That was February. In the April, my first wife entered the terminal phase of cancer. To say it knocked me would be an understatement, but for a couple of months, work-life continued, “as normal”. It was the hospice phase that finally meant time off, with a subsequent knock on to the DH and needing a temporary cover teacher for an unknown timescale. Eye on which ball? Life’s ball came top.

Ofsted, according to very many insightful blogs can have a similar impact, especially if the judgements mean some form of further intervention or worse. The school capacity to deal with this will determine the speed of recovery, if that time is available.

I was fortunate that the Local Authority was strong and prepared to intervene as needed, so there was a plan in place for issues which might arise and specific staff were alerted to the need to act with urgency if asked. With significant changes at LA level across the country, I am not sure if that support is easily available to every head.

I’d certainly counsel every head to put in place an emergency plan. The classic interview question to a prospective deputy as to their thinking in case of headteacher illness can become a rapid reality.

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On testing

2/12/2014

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At times there is an articulation that children need to learn to cope with failure. Life can at times be challenging and it is a good idea for children to have experiences which offer chances to address things that have not gone as expected. Testing covers such a wide range of options that the choice and application of the test can make learning situations worse, rather than better, for some.

While some writers dislike anecdote as a justification, I’ll use one to illustrate. I was sufficiently able to pass the 11 plus and went to a traditional boy’s grammar. Most subjects were fine, but, although I enjoyed drawing and painting, this had not been a significant part of a very disjointed schooling. Homework one day was to draw from life the road in which you lived. Diligently I undertook the task, probably with tongue out in correct artist pose. The teacher lined everyone up and moved people up and down the line until he was satisfied, before giving a percentage mark which was recorded in the markbook. As I slowly shuffled down the line, my interest and enthusiasm for art diminished by each move. Luckily, I moved schools to a more humane grammar and met encouragement and insights which allowed me to take art at GCE and pass. That was good for teaching, as my pleasure was able to be shared throughout my career. Nobody likes to “fail”, but there are ways of failing which can result in growth, while the opposite is also true. Taking away second or third chances can seem perverse.

When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years. Michael Morpurgo

Looking at definitions of testing gives rise to a range of opinions,

  • A procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something; a trial:
  • the act of subjecting to experimental test in order to determine how well something works
  • testing objects or persons in order to identify those with particular characteristics
  • the act of giving students or candidates a test (as by questions) to determine what they know or have learned
  • the work of inquiring into something thoroughly and systematically
  • Information from which to rank order outcomes for a specific purpose.
I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning. Carl Rogers




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So testing can imply different things to different people. In one situation this will lead to 11 plus style testing, to order children by rank order to facilitate some organisational need. To another teacher it will mean probing the child’s understanding. This may be through application in a different context.

For some activities, repetitive rehearsal is needed. Consider the “Look and say, cover, write, check” approach to learning spellings, where a child has a list to be learned, focuses and says the word aloud, covers it up, writes it down, then uncovers to check whether it is correct or not. For some this requires several attempts. The purpose is to train the short term memory, based on the need to acquire the spellings of words by sight.

The teacher testing role is often diagnostic. Checking a child’s capabilities is part of the daily routine. Open questioning can allow a child to scaffold their explanation, securing the information more securely, particularly if the oral rehearsal is followed by written recording. Probing questions can enable a diagnostic testing, to identify gaps in understanding which can then be addressed.

Accuracy, eg in maths can be checked with a page of equations to be solved. How many are required for this can be determined by negotiation; it is possible to differentiate this demand, by seeking five straight correct answers before moving on.

Understanding and accuracy can be checked by offering the equations to be solved, then to explore the thinking that went on and explaining how the answer could be checked for accuracy.

Testing oneself is best when done alone. Jimmy Carter

It is possible to view reflection as a form of self-testing. What do I know and what do I need to address? Creating situations where learners have to engage with both the “stuff” of their learning and the means by which they “know and understand” what they have learned is more likely to secure long term gains. It is even stronger if they have to “use and apply” what they know to solve real life problems.

Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I may remember. But involve me, and I’ll understand. Chinese proverb

In the right hands, testing can support, refine and promote further learning, especially if the outcome is to address any issues arising. In the wrong hands, testing can become destructive, especially when coupled with a deficit mindset, where a student scoring low on the test is subject to comments which further undermine learning confidence.

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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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