One thousand people holding their breath in a theatre, knowing what was going to happen, but unable to move because of the incredible tension that had been built. Around me, I could hear others trying to stifle sniffles, just as I was, as the conclusion to Shadowlands drew closer.

Shadowlands, a 1985 TV drama, developed into a play, written by William Nicholson, shared the period of C S Lewis’ life when he encountered Joy Gresham, in 1952.

The programme outline written by A N Wilson, Lewis’ biographer, shared the earlier life experience of CS and his brother Warnie (Warren). Their mother dying of cancer when CS was nine, meant that he and Warnie were sent to an English boarding school, away from their Irish home. The undercurrent of that earlier, unaddressed issue, became a thread through the story; the small boys who spent their adult lives as bachelors, limited in their ability to relate to women.

Joy Gresham, an American with whom CS Lewis corresponded as a dedicated fan of his writing, arrived in the UK on an unexpected visit, with one of her children, Douglas. Their capacity to discuss and challenge each other led to a deep friendship and CS Lewis, having secured British citizenship for Joy by a marriage of convenience, eventually realising the capacity to love another. This was precipitated by Joy, having developed bone cancer, collapsing and CS realising that he might lose her in the same way as he lost his mother.

After hospital, Joy moved into CS Lewis home, with Douglas, supported by Warnie, so a form of normality was supported for a while.

Remission was followed by terminal decline, CS facing his loss, becoming aware of the impact on Douglas, having been in the same place. CS also facing the greatest challenge to his life-long faith and beliefs.

The inevitable happened, with a very powerful display of personal grief. Hugh Bonneville and Liz White sustained their characters through every possible emotion.

It is an exceptional play, on many levels; well written, well directed and acted, in a simple set that adds to the whole without distraction. It also holds many unstated truths, as it records the real lives of so many people. Love and loss are not uncommon situations.

I recalled my mother leaving the family home when I was 12 and the death of my first wife from cancer, both events creating their own distinct grieving. Many people carry their personal griefs without any outward sign to alert others, who are busy getting on with their own lives. We “get on with life”. Sometimes it takes an external event to enable us to externalise our feelings, but, when the lights go up, we revert to our “holding it together for others” demeanour; we can’t impose on others.
​
Twelve hours later, the sensations of the evening are still vivid. Shadowlands, running at Chichester Festival Theatre as a part of the summer season, is a “must see”, but take your hankies…

Tennis, table-tennis, ping pong or whiff whaff, squash, badminton all games where two or more players take turns to hit a ball or shuttlecock, with scoring systems to see who ultimately wins. Just an example of the binary nature of sport, or possibly more generally in life?
​

Apparently it's my 7th anniversary on Twitter. Sometimes education can appear to be a giant form of whiff waff. I hadn’t heard of this name for a simple game before the 2012 Olympics when one Boris Johnson sought to claim that whiff waff predated table tennis, to be corrected by the sport historians. In doing so, standing by the claim in the face of evidence, he showed the capacity of humans to box themselves into a specific way of thinking.

When there are simplicities in education, they can be framed in such a way that they can appeal to a narrow form of teaching. Having taught since 1971 there have been some simplicities, which can be expressed as:-
·         If children need to know something the simplest way might be to tell them.
·         The order, organisation and articulacy of the teacher will impact on the potential for learning.
·         Any teaching can fail if the children don’t have the means to visualise what the teacher is saying.
·         If children need to overlearn something, they may need to repeat an exercise, or receive some detailed, dedicated teaching or coaching.
·         If teachers want to know if the children have learned something, it may need checking out in some form, a combination of recall tests and use and application challenges.

Having looked at various descriptor models of teaching and learning over the recent past, I think the diagrammatic interpretation of Barak Rosenshine by Oliver Caviglioli describes that approach, to which I would add the earlier CPA (Concrete, pictorial, abstract) thinking of Jerome Bruner and “Dual Coding” thinking.
​
CPA is an essential technique within the Singapore method of teaching maths for mastery. Concrete, pictorial, abstract (CPA) is considered to be a highly effective approach to teaching that develops a deep and sustainable understanding of maths in pupils. It is sometimes referred to as the concrete, representational, abstract (CRA) framework.
​

However, when I started teaching, with classes of 39 children, no TA, occasional parent help and one chalkboard, there was a need to provide for the range and needs of the children. This was done in smaller groups, run on an integrated day approach.

It was, to some extent, a form of survival, but more importantly, the structures within which we could teach our mixed ability classes providing the broadest possible curricular opportunities. It did mean well ordered plans and resources, to underpin the needs of independent actions by children in-task. It was a lot of plate spinning, but that was what we knew and had been trained for. During a pedagogic discussion during my post grad Dip Ed in Environmental Sciences, the discussion focused on the amount of “teaching” that we did in a lesson, with a follow up activity during the subsequent week to track reality. In both “traditional” and “progressive” settings, each of us was doing in excess of 50% of the lesson time as direct teaching, as whole classes or smaller group focused teaching. The remaining 50% was responsive teaching to needs as the arose. Group dynamics meant that there was a varied demand for marking; editing, coaching advice or critiquing/responding.

Task challenge was, from the beginning, central to the approach, differentiated (small tweaks) to the varied needs of the groups and support available to need. Reading was individualised, supported by a colour coded reading scheme and home-school reading records.

It would have been seen now as “progressive”, but children made good progress, as measured by standardised tests.
A great deal of curricular water has flowed under education’s bridges since, not least several iterations of a National Curriculum; each seemingly adding layers of detail to the preceding incarnation. Teachers have often felt the need to run to stand still. Regular readers of the blog will know that I am not enamoured of the 2014 version.
 
This week, as a school Governor, I attended the morning session of a training day, where the staff were looking to develop the broader curriculum. The subject leads had spent time with LA subject inspectors, creating the overviews of the curriculum. The staff role, collaboratively on this day was to put the detail into the outline, structuring the broader curriculum for the term.

As a fly on the wall, it was interesting to listen to discussions that could have taken place in 1986. It struck me that, after thirty years, the constant changes have rarely been evolutionary, too often disjointed and distracting.

Education benefits from reflective development, is supported by long career teachers able to reflect on change over time coupled with newer colleagues bringing their enthusiasm and newer understandings to the discussion. Firm decisions can impact on resourcing, which is then, on an annual cycle, considered for utility, quality and, where necessary, replacement or updating. Teachers and children are entitled to the best quality resources available. However, these can also be supplemented by found items, eg buttons, conkers, stones for counting.

So, if I was a Primary head today, what would I want to be doing?

·         Create an inspiring range of challenging topic and project areas that would embed the necessary knowledge to be used in other scenarios. These would have time allocations, not necessarily to fill a half term, so that Science, History, Geography and Technology all had a secure place.
·         Ensuring that each element was appropriately resourced so that it could happen and be of quality.
·         Link the English and Maths curriculum within themes in such a way that each could make use of the current and recent past topics, so that each fed the other, with opportunities to use and apply earlier skills and knowledge.
·         Ensure that art, drama and music were deployed as interpretative subjects of worth and each capable of supporting the oral English and Maths curriculum.
·         MFL, music and aspects of PE can be used to support the PPA needs of the school, by judicious use of specialists.
·         Utilise one closure day in June or July to enable staff to consider overview planning for the coming year.
·         Then only ask for teacher medium term plans, to see the direction of travel.
·         Short term plans are for the teacher in the classroom, so can take any form that suits.
·         I’d want children to know the focus for their personal efforts at any particular time.
·         Create portfolios of moderated in-house examples that could support discussion and decision making in the school or be used to moderate against other school outcomes to validate judgements.
·         Mentoring, especially of early career teachers, needs to be secure.
·         Every area of life is governed by a measure of capability in some form. “Can do” statements are a guide.

So, to summarise
​
·         Plan long, medium and short with different emphases on what’s recorded and share with supporting adults. Organise the “knowledge journey” developmentally.
·         Order and organise space, resources and consider the available time.
·         Pitch and pace each lesson to known needs of the curriculum and the learners.
·         Set learning tasks that provide some challenge.
·         Share outcomes as learner models of expectation within and between lessons.
·         Evaluate throughout, ensuring continuity of expectation.
·         Checks en route, memory, use and application in challenge.
·         Simple personal record systems of developing vocabulary and presentation needs.
·         Books to become personal learning records.
·         Know your children as fully as possible, recognising that you can’t see exactly what they are thinking.

Children are children, as they always have been. They deserve the best that can be offered.
Schools need to secure their curriculum, so that it can provide the essential core of experience, enhanced by incoming expertise.
​
Something that I wrote a few years ago continues to resonate with me. Teachers are the lead thinkers in their classrooms. They must have every opportunity to be autonomous decision makers, in the moment.
​

Picture; 14 July, Fete Nationale, our local town. Annual commemoration

On 15th April 2019, a new date was recorded for posterity, with the devastating fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral, in Paris. Events, of every hue, in every life, create anniversaries; some that must not be forgotten, others that might disappear into, or be distorted by, the mists of time, simply because there’s no-one left to remember.

Our histories are marked by events, some small and insignificant, others world shattering. It's likely to be the latter that make the greatest mark on our continuing lives.

Recently, my eldest celebrated her  40th birthday. With birthdays, decades matter, so she took her family on a trip to remember. I still recall the day of her birth, a long day of waiting, followed by such a feeling of elation, of happiness that all had gone smoothly and all was well.

Marrying my first wife while I was in my final year of teacher training was the start of a 32-year journey until her death in 2005. In a quirk of fate, on our 20th wedding anniversary, a surgeon, using his kindest manner, told us that D had breast cancer. Our wedding anniversary, from that moment, became an anniversary of survival. Five and ten years were celebrated with a ceilidh for friends and family. D’s death created another date to commemorate.

 On June 1st, it’s the 25th anniversary of buying a small house in France as a “life project”, trying to thumb a nose at life in general and offering a different kind of stability during holidays.

The house in France is in the Limousin region. One town nearby will be remembering a devastating event that occurred 75 years ago. While many areas of France, starting on the north coast, will be remembering their liberation after D-day, on a rolling timetable from early June, Oradour sur Glane will commemorate the destructive nature of a defeated force taking revenge while withdrawing. A Nazi battalion encircled the town and herded people to the centre, before shooting the men, grenading the church with women and children inside and setting fire to buildings.

Meeting with my sister recently, we reminisced about our childhood, which was marked by our mother announcing that she would be leaving the family home on 11th October (1965) after her summer season job in a local hotel finished on the 8th. Leaving home for school on 11th October, seeing a travel bag packed by the door and being asked if we wanted to go with her created an indelible mark.

So, dates keep piling up. I have another anniversary and additional birthdays to remember now, having been lucky and found M, extending the family further. Mind, you, it’s just as well that we keep a diary with the information copied from one year to the next, as an aide memoire. I’m beginning to experience senior moments…
​
I wonder what anniversaries you mark?

Picture; the view from our French cottage
​

Picture; Butser Ancient Farm. Reconstruction Iron Age settlement, Chalton, nr Petersfield, Hampshire

I know we’re not supposed “to Google” things these days, according to some commentators, but in reality, unless one has an extensive personal library, it’s highly likely that the internet is a major source of information.

So, in looking up the notion of Cultural Capital, which is a "current" buzz phrase, Wikipedia threw up this opener: -

In the field of sociology, cultural capital comprises the social assets of a person (education, intellect, style of speech, style of dress, etc.) that promote social mobility in a stratified society. Cultural capital functions as a social-relation within an economy of practices (system of exchange), and comprises all of the material and symbolic goods, without distinction, that society considers rare and worth seeking. As a social relation within a system of exchange, cultural capital includes the accumulated cultural knowledge that confers social status and power.

In "Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction" (1977), Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron presented cultural capital to conceptually explain the differences among the levels of performance and academic achievement of children within the educational system of France in the 1960s; and further developed the concept in the essay "The Forms of Capital" (1985) and in the book The State Nobility: Élite Schools in the Field of Power (1996).

As someone who was originally trained in 71-74, first year in science, then transfer to a Primary based environmental Studies course, where we explored the environment as a source of learning, Bourdieu was a bit of a revelation a few years later, as he appeared to validate the substance of my earlier study.

I think that we need to look at cultural capital as a product of a learner’s interaction with, first, their surroundings.

The home being the first environment and parents the first teacher, the richness of the surroundings is likely to be the original baseline opportunity. The quality of stimulus, toys, or natural opportunity, within the house or in the garden, supplemented by interactions with older siblings or adults capable of introducing language, naming and describing things that are experienced through the senses, is either enabling or disabling through a lack of potential. The willingness or ability of the adults to take their children further afield offers enhanced stimulus; consider the potential of a local park, a wood or an open grass area for example. A limitation could be disposable income available to a family. During a school visit in Redruth, Cornwall, the head spoke of the sea being only a few miles away, but families unable to afford the bus fare, so an opportunity was not available. This will have an unseen impact on children as they may not have the experiences common to their peers. Poverty can impact in many ways.

What a school offers children when they start, then progressively through their experience needs to be as rich a diet of opportunity as possible. Having experiences that they can then take into their locality to support further engagement, with natural or man-made environments, with living things, helping them to orientate themselves would seem key to progress(ive/in) learning. Building a vocabulary for description and for asking questions are fundamental capabilities. Learning is a social activity. Externalisation enables another to offer further or alternative insights, or to add their own understandings.

In many ways, this has a simplicity at the core. The richer the diet of opportunity, in experience and support, will lead to more independence in exploratory activity that enhances the core, enabling a child to become a greater partner in, or eventually to take responsibility for their learning. Greater experience embeds greater vocabulary, which in turn supports communication and reader understanding.

Why is this contentious?

Not everyone lives in, or near London. In a previous role, I was regularly visiting London schools. The quality of work was often absolutely stunning from children in “deprived areas”. The work was often based on school visits to places of interest, museums, galleries etc, all within relatively easy reach and supported by travel on the tube or a bus ride. Culture was on the doorstep and a “day out” meant a day out. These experiences were available to families at weekends, as were broader opportunities from national organisations offering “scholarships”, Saturday morning dance or musical opportunities to areas in need.

My career was Hampshire based. The schools were sufficiently far from cultural centres to require coach hire, even for Portsmouth or Southampton. London was a minimum of a two-hour coach journey at £450+ for a class of thirty children; Southampton could cost £300 and that meant building your day within school run timetables. It was often the case that the cultural experience had greater potential if bought in; a writer, poet, artist, drama group visit.

One such that will remain in my memory, was a six-week project for year six, where I was able to ask a former London teacher to create a Hindu experience using his contacts. This involved art, drama, music, dance, art and a visit to the Southampton Hindu temple. The quality of involvement throughout was a delight to experience, as the children encountered the specifics of the culture through interaction. We were able to repeat this for a number of years, with different partners. Real people sharing their culture, making it a part of the children’s world.

Cultural capital should enable children to interact with the world as they experience it, to orientate them to their locality and to be aware of the people who inhabit their area.

Schools should be facilitators of this, offering the “best of what the area has to offer”… which can lead to the best from further afield and in time.
 
Pic below; a visit to Southampton art gallery, to learn how to "read" a picture.

As a school Governor, I am involved in staff appointments. We are currently looking for an Assistant Head Teacher for Teaching and Learning; Curriculum Development, our previous, very good AHT having been promoted in another school. What such an activity does is to create opportunities for broad and deep discussions about the details of teaching and learning, particularly in the context of the school and its point of development, both before and during the interview process. It was during one interview that this thought was generated.

I have touched on this idea before in a blog entitled “Tribal memory”, where staff loss can be debilitating.

Teaching and Learning and curriculum development have been the bread and butter of my whole career. You decide on a range of “stuff” that you consider children need to know at particular points in their lives, then decide the best approach to making sure that it “sticks”. Knowledge is broad and the accompanying pedagogies are equally broad.

Schools therefore have had to make strategic decisions. Some of these are likely to be general, in that the “knowledge” in different curriculum areas has been relatively consistent throughout my career, in Primary this can be broadly summarised as variations on Maths, English (R,W,S&L), Topic (H,G,Sc lead, Art, DT interpretation), Music, PE, RE, MFL.

In school and curriculum development terms, the key can be the availability of colleagues with appropriate background to be able to, at least, map out curricular development statements, if necessary, drawing on broader collegiate expertise within and outside the school. This may be particularly acute in smaller schools.

One interview raised the question of personal ambition as a potential drag on development. It is conceivable that, after a period of leading development in one subject area, an experienced teacher might be asked to then oversee an area that had received less attention, in so doing relinquishing responsibility to another. Equally, another teacher might be brought into a school and will wish to “make their mark”, with an eye to their own future promotion prospects. In either case, there will be a hiatus, as stock is taken and proposals made for “improvement”. This could be seen as “change”, a regularly used word in education.

Whereas improvement implies a strategy, unless a comprehensive strategy is articulated, change can become distracting; wholesale change can mean abandoning what went before. As a result, nothing gets fully understood or embedded.

This can be as a result of Government decisions. I'd quite like Government to hold back from initiatives, allow teachers to take stock, to be able to plan securely, in order to put in place structures that can stand the test of time, by allowing consideration of improving parts rather than wholesale alterations every few years. 

​I would still contend that much of the 2014 changes wrought on education were change for change’s sake. After five years, the impact has led to poor implementation in SEND and Ofsted altering their 2019 approach to look at the broader curriculum. Strategy is complex, a bit like a Gaia principle of “wheels within wheels”. Knee-jerk alteration in one area has a knock on into another, often causing unintended, or unforeseen consequences.

School managers need to plan development with care, mapping clearly how different elements work together, seeking to avoid duplication of or wasted teacher effort.

Distraction destroys continuity. Continuity and progression were by-words of my school career; progressively building from one phase of education to the next, within an overall aspiration for all children.

To illustrate this, I now draw on the “Learning and Teaching” policy that was my school’s articulation of purpose. It was set as a central plank that supported developmental colleague dialogue, enabling discussion of detail without distorting the whole, or the proposed learning journeys through a child’s life at the school.

While no statement is perfect, it gave clarity to teachers appointed to the school. Communication is key to development, from overall strategy to the detail of a specific area. If teachers are informed, they can support the strategic direction.

The "class of 1993"; stability supported development, embedding qualities that survived change.

Learning and Teaching Policy (first articulated 1993, developed to 2005)
A Statement of School Vision

Everyone involved with the educational process at X School is a partner in progress
This, in terms of children, is encompassed in the motto Thinking, Working, Playing Together.
Educationally making guided progress, through individual and group effort.

Our Aim
A typical child leaving X School will have these attributes
Confidence in themselves, as people and learners.
Awareness of the world around them, locally and wider, showing sensitivity, an enquiring approach, and a developing sense of awareness of themselves as spiritual beings.
Capable of working in many different ways, with different grouping of others, and be able to sustain effort when required.
Solve problems with different, but developing, levels of independence.
Think creatively and reflectively when appropriately challenged, organising their needs, and being able to talk clearly to anyone with an interest in their activities.
Accept guidance to achieve the best they can, with a clear understanding of their strengths and areas for further improvement.

A policy for learning, achieving the vision
Children, their thinking and learning, are our core purpose, within the context of a broad, balanced and relevantly challenging curriculum. They are to become active producers of learning, rather than passive consumers of teaching.
Children will start as information gatherers, capable of clear description.
Children will progressively become problem solvers, applying a range of relevant skills, able to articulate clearly in speech and then writing, the detail of their learning, and to have a developing repertoire of presentational skills through which they can show their ideas.
Careful consideration of information, and logical thinking, together with the ability to explain their thoughts, using 2-D or 3-D models, will lead to secure links in learning.
Learning processes will be clearly articulated to children, who should be able to explain what they are doing, and why.
The processes through which the children will be challenged will be known to teachers, parents, support staff or any other assisting adult.
The potential for learning across and between different abilities needs to be maintained, to ensure that children derive learning from as many sources as possible.
The taught curriculum will be well taught, with teachers working to improve their personal skills and practice across the curriculum.
ICT in all its forms will be a central tool of development.
The school and each of its constituent parts, will see itself as part of a wider learning community, deriving information and good practice from sources that complement our own developing practice.

Putting the vision into practice
Teachers at X School plan to ensure that the vision and aims are put into practice, employing methodologies outlined in the policy for learning, through an approach summarized as Analyse, Plan, Do, Review, Record, Report.

Analyse… Teachers will receive information from a range of sources about the prior attainment of each child. This will provide a framework upon which to base decisions about working arrangements, suitable objectives for learning and tasks to achieve these.
​
Plan… Teachers plan over different timescales, annual, based upon allocated topic specifications. It is for individual teachers to use these specs creatively to provide a dynamic approach to learning.

​Contributing to school level Planning Detail; see blog on “Planning”

Whole of National Curriculum interpreted through School-based Topic Specifications for each topic within each subject.
Literacy and numeracy frameworks.

Planning at different levels (teachers)
Content
Learning needs
Space, timescales and resources

Do… Tasks given to children will be creative, challenging and engaging, leading to anticipated progress.
Task design. Tasks will have a definite purpose in progressing an aspect of a child’s progress, known to the child and any assisting adult.
Activity presentation. All activity will be clearly presented and understood by children before being active.
Independence levels, skill, knowledge and attitude will all be considered when devising the task parameters, as the different learning attributes of individuals and groups should be encompassed in the task challenges.

Children as learners
Understanding task… Children will have a clear grasp of what they are being challenged to achieve, be able to discuss and articulate purposes when asked.
Task behaviours… Children will be expected to demonstrate appropriate approaches to tasks, developing persistence to achieve.
Team working… Children will be challenged to operate as collaborative, independent learners on tasks specifically created to allow for qualities of cooperation to be developed.
Oral skill…Children will develop appropriate descriptive, analytical, exploratory languages to communicate clearly to a peer or interested adult.
Recording skill, written, pictorial, mathematical…Within any learning experience there will be opportunities for children to use different forms of recording to help them to remember sequences of events within an activity.
Evaluation… Children learn about learning by doing, by reflecting on the process and activity, and evaluating changes to approaches for future reference.
Review… Children will develop as primary evaluators of their drafts. Peer reviews will be developed over time, with the teacher giving informative feedback to help with the next phase of development.
By being given tasks that they will need to discuss, decide on action, carry out, review, re-evaluate and repeat, they will develop an insight into the ways in which adults work and solve problems.

Outcomes..Review
Teacher as reviewer and quality controller…Any piece of work from a child is the current draft capable of being reviewed and improved. Ongoing oral feedback should support the child within the learning process. Marking should provide opportunities for advice, and an overview of quality.
Feedback to children…should enable each child to review their own needs in learning for subsequent pieces of activity.
Room for improvement… advice on areas for development.
Objective and subjective…Correcting spelling or an aspect of grammar may be clearly objective, whereas a commentary starting “I liked…..” would be subjective.

Moderation…At intervals it is clearly good practice to share views on achievement. Moderation allows a consensus view about a discrete piece of produced work.

Record… Teachers will keep records which assist them in progressing learning for individual children.

Report… At half year and year end, teachers will write reports to inform parents about achievements and room for improvement.
​
Review, Recording and Reporting, especially individual needs
To colleagues
To parents
Significant others

The pictures above are from holidays to Alicante.

Why do we take and keep photographs?

In some ways, it’s an easy answer, because we want to remember someone, some thing or a place that we have visited. In other areas of life, we might make notes or lists.

They are memory joggers, aides memoire, because life’s busy and we forget things, often the little details, which are then remembered in detail because you’re looking at a specific photo. Remembering appears to be the new definition of learning. The amount of information that passes by us in the course of even a short period of time can be lost, or, more likely, replaced by subsequent imagery and associated experiences. We are sensory beings, from birth.

This week, the idea of imagery has cropped up in virtually every conversation that I have had with ITE students, uni and SCITT. This has been prompted by interrogation of lesson purpose and the value of the imagery used.

If one assumes that a teacher is the keeper of the lesson narrative, this, in turn develops the notion of the keeper of the images. The images in a teacher’s head are translated through talk, diagrams, pictures, artefacts or direct experiences; the pedagogical choices of each lesson. This is now being shared as a concept as dual coding, but I would contend that this has been a truism for every generation of teachers. One significant change over time has been the technological improvements that enable an ever broader range of imagery to be shared in a classroom, such as video enhancing the stills to moving images.

Learning to “read” the images presented is a key element of early learning; description encouraging reflection, similarities and differences, inference and deduction, working towards hypothesis and imagination. The whole, if supported by an engaging talk element, discussion within a small group, dialogic discourse with adult lead enables a broadening of vocabulary, embedding concepts more firmly in memory.

Imagery impacts on overall planning, as teachers “conceive” of a learning journey or narrative, that then becomes a scheme of work that ensures each lesson “chapter” has significant “sub-headings, that then can be reviewed before moving to the next chapter. The images at the head of this blog were taken in Alicante. In order to driver there, I ensured that I had a mental map of the journey, with the sub-headings as the key towns that we would encounter en route, so could reflect on choices and adapt to any deviations away from the sat-nav directions.

Teachers need to “narrate” a coherent story, in every subject, supported by carefully chosen images that amplify the story.

It’s a bit like an early reading book, where the pictures add significantly to the written storyline. Interrogation of both add to the overall experience.

Open the pages carefully, sharing appropriate images in order, use quality modelling of language and the whole learning story becomes available.

Teaching minus images leaves talk, with mental imagery totally dependent on stored images which may be incomplete or may not exist, so disables the learner from participation.

If they can’t “see” it, they can’t manipulate it. Let’s make “seeing” and enhancing talk more overt.

There is a truism in natural history;
​
You probably don’t know what is currently becoming extinct, because you’ve never see it. Reports of the demise of animal and plant populations may not affect people who don’t spend time outdoors, nor know what they are looking at when they are out and about.

And it can be a case of if you can’t see it, or name it, it probably can’t be very important.

But, every minute living entity has developed to adapt to it’s surroundings, sometimes becoming part of a broader food chain.

And, when it’s gone, it’s really difficult to get back again, especially if the special habitats required are altered or damaged.

Extinction can be caused by one-off catastrophic events, or, perhaps given the current climate debate, slow changes that gradually alter life patterns.

In many ways, it’s exactly the same with schooling.

Schools are habitats where young organisms spend a part of each day hopefully soaking up the knowledge and life skills that enable them to fully participate in the world. Inevitably, like all organisms, plant or animal, they grow and develop at different rates. While that is something that nature caters to, school organisation and external “quality assurance” can sometimes give the impression that the fledgling is somehow of a less than adequate standard. Given the complex nature of the human organism, being deemed in need can, in itself, become a further depressant on future achievements.

Unlike nature, school habitats are created and controlled completely by adults. What the adults choose to put into the school environment demonstrates the values that they hold; broad, balanced, rounded experience, or narrow and very focused on a specific end point.

There was a time where organisation was completely controlled by local needs and available expertise. There was a focus on maths, English in it’s different elements, talking, reading and writing, but also topics for interest, covering history and geography. Science, in the 1950s was often limited to nature and phenomena, like shiny things; playing with knives and spoons. Music was from the radio, PE was outdoors on the tarmac on rush mats. There was an art and making table, which is the source of many of my earliest school memories.

The 70s were developmental years, introducing some additional structures into experiences, led by thinkers such as Zoltan Dienes in maths and Seymour Papert in early ICT (Logo). Science education grew stronger, with schemes like Nuffield Science 5-13, offering structure, background reading, knowledge and pedagogy. Other subjects also took on greater structure, as various advisory teachers brought their expertise to bear on generalist colleagues, through twilight sessions at local Teachers’ Centres, or you just chatted with one of your colleagues who explained what you wanted to try.

Working in Hampshire, a broad, balanced, structured, relevant curriculum was developed and in place across large parts of the County in 1986.

“HMI were also supportive of developmental thinking. Curriculum Matters was a series of 17 booklets published by HMI between 1984 and 1989. They were intended as a contribution to the 'Great Debate' about the nature and purpose of education which Prime Minister Jim Callaghan had called for in his Ruskin College speech on 18 October 1976.”
​
You can see more of the “Raspberry Ripple” series at http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/hmi-curricmatters/

​The 1987 National Curriculum, therefore, when audited, provided a 95% correspondence with existing practice. A few tweaks and we were “good to go”. We kept most of our experienced teachers, so systems were not compromised.

Subsequent revisions put pressure on schools yet again, but, this time, as a result of change, some experienced colleagues decided to leave, rather than spend another period revising plans and working approaches. It took a lot of effort, from 1990-2005, to hold the breadth, balance and quality of what we were offering. As people left, new colleagues had to be inducted and mentored into the breadth on offer. This was, for some, particularly after the introduction of the National Strategies, an extreme challenge, particularly as their training had been based on that approach, through Government requirements.

In 2005, the last full year of my headship, we achieved SATs scores in the 90s, (L4+ with 50% L5 in some subjects) across all tested subjects. Talking with that class’s year 6 teacher recently, we reminisced about the full year that they had had, with a nod to SATs from around Easter. The breadth and depth of their varied studies had prepared them for reading and answering questions, across each subject.

Then came my catastrophe, the death of my first wife from cancer, a teenager at home requiring support and so I became extinct in that role. It required a bit of nurturing to re-establish myself in school habitats, in a series of support and advice roles. A bit of a use for ageing experience?

Of course, a significant systemic catastrophe (my thoughts) occurred in 2014, with an almost seismic alteration to seemingly every aspect of education. It was not an evolution, as whole swathes of prior working were cut down dramatically, leaving schools with the tattered remains of what went before, seeking to understand the new requirements and every school independently having to rapidly create structures that ensured curricular stability.
An analogy would be the wiping out of vast areas of the rainforest, with commensurate wildlife damage. See the potential demise of the Sumatran Orangutan, as a result of a dam project.

The 2014 vision for the curriculum was so heavily maths and English focused in Primary schools, that more “minor” subjects were marginalised, from their earlier place as “foundation” subjects; to me the word foundation implies that on which the main structure is built.

In 1970, James Britton said that “Reading floats on a sea of talk”. You could extrapolate this to talk floating on a sea of experience, with someone to help, guide and tell...
This has impacted my whole career, in that the broader curriculum has offered the areas for exploration, for conceptualisation, for thought; playing with ideas. In so doing, building vocabularies that can then inform what is being read, if the words are to evoke imagery in the reader’s head. A rich curriculum offers the potential for a rich vocabulary, which, in turn enables engagement with further spoken and written challenge.

Giving children something to think, talk, read and write about, to me are central to learning. Passing children from Primary to Secondary with a love of learning is key to future success.

By putting the wider curriculum back to the foreground, it has highlighted the demise over a relatively short period, of the Cinderella subjects. The next period will be one of sharing knowledge and expertise across the board, and, in some ways, social media can be a great help, rather than seeing each school making everything up from scratch.
Like all things that are bordering extinction, it will take the identification of need, the recreation of supportive habitats, appropriate resourcing and regular oversight and nurturing, if subjects are to re-establish themselves in the Primary experience.

And it may need a period of play by teachers seeking to reacquaint themselves with areas that they may have allowed to become rusty through less use.
How about we set the first challenge to make every teacher as good in each subject as the best in a school, cluster or area? Share ideas; collaboration not competition.

Let’s rebuild the foundation.

Ps. I could have used the story of Winchester Cathedral, whose Norman foundation was on tree trunks, which needed to be excavated and replaced to avoid the cathedral falling; foundations are essential to strength, rich habitats are the foundation of successful ecosystems.

2.3.19
​
Suella Braverman,
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

Reference democracy and a public forum.

Dear Ms Braverman,
For the first time in my voting life, I was moved to attend your open meeting at the Kings Church in Fareham on 1st March, mainly because of the impact that Brexit will have on the lives of many current family members and certainly my children and grandchildren for longer than for me, through the loss of Freedom of Movement.

I have to say at the outset that I was disappointed by the organisation and tone of the meeting. While I can accept that it was an attempt at open democracy, out of a 75-minute meeting, you spoke for 40-45 minutes, seemingly in self-justification of your personal choices on this issue. The subsequent questions enabled a reprise of many of the points already made, and in doing so, essentially encouraged a body of opinion, which ultimately was prepared to shout down any dissenting questions. You may not be aware that your own tone, initially presentational, with some attempt at demonstrating understanding towards alternative views, became hectoring towards any questioning of your position during the Q&A session.

Your factsheet, placed on seats before the session were covered during your 40-minute speech, but, in both, economy with the truth enables part fact to be seen as gospel. With a son-in-law who is also a barrister, over time I have been able to see how narrative can be created to suit any purpose, whether or not the speaker fully believes it or not. This is the current state of British politics. While I accept that life is often a judgement call, your allusion to your crystal ball at different points during the evening is probably as good as mine.

For anyone who follows Edwin Hayward or Steve Peers on social media, the detail and complexity of Brexit are laid bare. For it to be reduced to a few routine sound-bites is demeaning.

The NI backstop is there, not because NI becomes a third country, but because the UK becomes a third country, with a hard land border with an EU nation, which is then subject to international laws and treaties, not least the Good Friday Agreement. You wouldn’t want your neighbours hopping over your fence to take a short cut, which effectively is the ERG argument; we can get around this…

The WA is an agreement to leave a “contract”. Leaseholders and mortgage holders are tied into contracts with another party. To leave either early results in a penalty to be paid through the loss of earnings from the rest of the lease. The £39 billion is a release clause payment. It is interesting that your much-vaunted “Malthouse Compromise” suggests paying £10 billion a year during any transition, which may be compromised by WTO details.

The Political Declaration is a statement of intent to carry on talking should there be an agreement, with some general areas to be discussed, not pinned down in detail, as that is what the Government representatives, including the Prime Minister signed up to in late 2018. It is deliberately vague, to allow future discussions to be necessarily broad.

Freedom of Movement is fast becoming a rhetorical red herring, in that, at no stage has the Government organised a registration system, despite being reminded on numerous occasions that it was for us to do so; three months grace, no job, no benefits, as with other EU countries. As a result, a relatively easily sourced workforce, highly visible in many front-line industries, is fast disappearing, causing business distress, closure and relocation, while immigration from non-EU countries is still rising, despite being in the Government’s “control”.

Malthouse no deal “transition” may well end up being yet another pipe dream, in that it has already been rejected by the EU, but, while words are played with in Brussels, we may well be offered a fudge, which superficially satisfies a few extra MPs. It seems less about the future health and security of the country and more about sustaining the Conservatives in power.

Your own Government produced a series of impact papers, a summary of which was recently published. Every Brexit related scenario showed negative impacts on the UK, with some areas extremely hard hit. Brexit, in part, is responsible for swathes of industry relocating into the EU to ensure business continuity.

Your “myth” busting, like all myth busting, creates more myths, in that they are potentially small truths elevated through your political need to present a particular argument.

Dover-Calais, port entries. The chairs of port authorities can be overridden by the regional and national governments, so, while there may be good intentions, there are no guarantees.

Your repetition of technological fixes to the NI border is a direct myth. No border has a “technological fix”, although there are computerised systems that enable tracking of goods. These are not currently in place, nor will they be on March 30th. Checks still need to happen at borders to avoid smuggling in various forms. In extremis, this will slow queues, leading to disruption.

Your mention of agencies charged with guaranteeing various qualities of goods in transit. Given that the UK agencies currently work closely and under the auspices of the EU agencies, ours would have to go through a process of validation to agree standards. One notable issue is the use of vets to validate meat exports.

The UK, through the current EU agreements, is enabled to sell goods freely with around 70 countries, including the EU 27, under agreed terms that are better than WTO, including now Japan. This offers huge potential, that will disappear in 27 days’ time. At the same time the EU is negotiating with India, so the vast proportion of the world is available to us, if we are EU members; it’s the benefit of a membership fee. You get cheap general access, not having to pay piecemeal. It’s interesting to note that Germany already export more to China than we do, under the current rules. Maybe we just don’t make what they want or need?

We may well be about to throw away access to over half the world, to have to seek to replicate all those current agreements, in search of agreements with significantly smaller countries, who will probably come into the EU umbrella in due course. In the meantime, as a much smaller entity, desperate for trade deals, we will be taken to the cleaners by larger countries, who will use their economic muscle to tighten any future deals; eg the recent US announcement on agriculture. It’s a pity that the UK government and MPs don’t listen to the economics of farming. One thing we need is food.

After thirty-three months of “negotiation”, based seemingly solely on the premise that the EU will “blink first”, we are twenty-seven days away from the first self-inflicted wounds ever recorded. There is no country in the world that only operates on WTO rules.

The biggest danger to this country is the loss of easy access to security cooperation. While NATO operates at a supra-national level, the police and other security services have warned of the dangers of no access not data files. This may also include the Galileo satellite system.

Under your much-vaunted no-deal, using my crystal ball and my historic gypsy heritage, on April 1st, when markets open, there is likely to be a significant run on the pound. Speculators who have already moved their wealth to a safe currency, will then be able to return with even greater wealth, in order to buy up assets cheap. Reduced FoM will decimate agricultural labour just as planting season starts. British lamb farmers, currently lambing, will have excess stock, as they may not be able to sustain 40% tariffs. By the end of the first week, if there have been hold-ups at the docks, supermarket stocks will dwindle, causing panic buying. It was recently reported that supermarkets are talking with police about protections.

We are entering a period of such uncertainty and potential insecurity, unprecedented in my lifetime. There are more dangers than bright spots. Brexit is an unnecessary political act. We currently enjoy a disproportionate representation in the EU parliament. Had this been used to effect, the need to reform aspects of the running on the EU has been long telegraphed. Being a part of discussion is a stronger position than sitting outside.

Speculation has been behind some of the recent 33 months. Movements in currency allow speculators to take advantage of moving money from one currency to another. The example of Crispin Odey, a Tory donor, making significant amounts after the referendum is a well-publicised case in point. It is even speculated that during the referendum night, Nigel Farage announcing loss or winning caused market fluctuation.

My concern, as I said at the beginning, is the future of my children and grandchildren. If it takes ten or more years to regain our current status, I will hopefully have reached 76. However, it will last the whole childhood of every one of my grandchildren.

Twenty-five years ago, following my first wife contracting breast cancer, we bought a very small cottage in France that became a “life dream”. I have kept it, following her death, as a place of escape, available to the whole family. My sister retired to Spain, buying a house and living on her NHS pension, with the ubiquitous bad back, which had necessitated many hospital visits. Living in the warmth of Spain, she can exist on low dose painkillers, swim and walk to enable a healthy lifestyle. My step-daughter is married to a Spanish national and lives in Portsmouth and both speak Spanish when out, for her to practice after her Masters’ study. Recent reports of attacks on others for “speaking foreign” are very concerning.

This is your “yellow vest”, Brexit Britain. If you are right, then everything will go swimmingly. Your assertion that “it may get worse, bumpy” runs counter to your colleague assertion that it would be “easy”. If it goes badly, as I and other remainers fear, it affects everyone, apart from those who have been able to ring fence their wealth, or who have made money from speculation.

The public are impotently watching the politics and in-fighting, holding our breath. Staying in the EU would mean current stabilities. Every other scenario holds the prospect of damage to the country, socially, morally and financially. Satisfying a small group will ultimately potentially lead to the rise of populism that you sought to minimise through quoting Italy and Greece, two very different economic scenarios. However, with reports that the Northern League are being investigated for Russian money interference, it rather demeans your argument, if people like Carol Cadwallader is to be believed, that our own politics is being infected in the same way, but potentially from the US with their own agendas, as highlighted by the US ambassador this morning and recent pronouncements on the NHS.

I hope that, by April 5th, you will be able to hold another public meeting and face whatever the new reality brings. This is in your hands.

Yours sincerely,
Chris Chivers
 
 
 
 

I am just back from a day of visiting students on their final teaching experience and have spent the day considering the idea whether trainees should plan their own lessons, from a few elements that arose.

I would have to say that this has exercised my thinking at different points in the past thirteen years as a link tutor, for universities, Teaching School Alliances and a SCITT.

This thinking has been premised on a relatively straightforward notion; how does one get better at thinking about being a teacher? Teaching is a multifaceted set of demands, beyond the personal attributes of professionalism (TS8), behaviour management (TS7), having expectations (TS10) and subject knowledge (TS3).
​
It’s very hard to describe a dynamic event in a 2D diagram, but a while ago, I sought to describe the idea of impact, to help trainees explore the thinking elements of teaching in a way that would fit with their day to day experiences and came up with this…
​

Trainees often find themselves in a 2 or more form entry school. On occasion, these schools allocate specialist responsibilities to each other to write the plans for the year group, which suits a settled team, especially where the plans are reviewed in the light of previous experiences. However..

·         Plans are a distillation of broader thinking.
·         An experienced teacher should have the capacity to interpret the narrower plan into a more holistic whole and add personal value to the plan.
·         An inexperienced teacher or trainee may take the plan as a whole and find themselves in difficulty if children start to demonstrate that they are insecure in learning.
​
Trainees and NQTs are learners and need support, as per this diagram.
​

Trainee placements are in disparate schools, with variable approaches to planning and other school elements. The best that a training organisation can do is to provide generic advice on these, with the understanding that the trainee will encounter different realities in different schools.

They therefore need mentoring into planning in the school style and will still do so in their NQT year or even as a new appointee. The assumption that anyone is “ready-made” is misplaced.

Trainees, at the end points of their training may be offered the opportunity to plan a theme over a period of time, where they can explore all the different dimensions, but equally it is likely to be already decided. They still need to be taken through the process to fully understand the pre-determined lesson plans, in order to extract the essentials for their own lessons.

It shouldn’t be a magical mystery tour through someone else’s planning idiosyncrasies.

They also need to know the children to be able to calibrate their challenges and to be able to consider when children may not understand something.

Rather than argue that trainees should be following detailed school plans, I’d argue that both the trainee and the mentor gain a great deal from the reflective journey of mentoring and coaching, reviewing the school approaches.

Schools need to talk with trainees about their planning approach.

​It’s the bread and butter of their existence, but should be capable of review, even within the learning journey of a trainee. It should be based on easy to understand concepts.

Order and organisation (TS4) is fundamental to good teaching for progress. Disorganisation or lack of understanding of the nuances of the intended plan have more often been reasons for a trainee receiving negative feedback from an observation. Where they have receive the plan from a colleague, they do often feel aggrieved or let down. 

 Evidence of Impact? Rational thinking...
​

I would want to suggest, in this blog, that system leaders should, as a priority, look at the demands made by their system and adjust accordingly, to reduce or ameliorate external demands where possible. Workload has an impact on well-being and work-life balance.
​

I’ve spent the past 47 years in schools in some capacity, so have a lifetime’s experience of workload over an extended period. I’ve written some blogs about this in the past and the links are at the bottom of this post, for anyone interested.

A Twitter question in passing led to me offering some thoughts on the needs of a first time headteacher.
·         Start from a clear, preferably audited, description of where the school currently is.
·         Strengths/areas to develop.
·         Essentials/priorities.
·         Aspirations.
·         Create a map for development, term, year, 3 year.
·         Projects; what, who, when, how much?
·         Evaluation schedule.
·         Communicate fully.

When I reflected on these, it gave rise to broader thoughts on the workloads of individual teachers and the demands that can be made by management.

Workload has always been a relatively simple thing to express in terms of work; expectations and available time.
The time is a finite element, in terms of the teaching load and associated expectations from disparate parts of the system, planning, preparation of resources, marking and assessment and any necessary meetings.

Expectations are also personal, in that each of us is aware of the need to ensure that our knowledge is appropriate for the teaching that we have to do. I have never met a teacher who didn’t want to d a good job. Maybe I have been lucky in that, but with teaching being a thinking job, thinking doesn’t stop at the school gates. In addition, it is probably a truism that a less experienced teacher will take longer over planning, preparation, marking and assessment than an experienced teacher.

System demands vary between schools; some expect x amount of planning, while others might need x+ or x-. This may be as a result of school insecurity in a world where external (Ofsted) validation is needed.

System and personal demand can alter from one year to another, especially in Primary, where total responsibility for a year group can alter from year to year. If this is coupled with a change of school, contextual differences can be significant. This is very evident when working with ITE trainees moving to a second key stage in a different school; earlier confidence from the first placement can soon be dented.
​
Ok, so what can be done to seek to support this variety of needs and avoid teachers looking like this?

As a headteacher of a one form entry Primary, I was very aware of these different aspects as I regularly taught as first line supply cover, which in some cases was extended periods. Organisational demands need to be capable of achievement within available time.

·         So, as a school, we looked at planning demands. There is a need to look at the planning needs over different timescales, long, medium and short.

·         Every subject area developed subject specifications for each year group, showing what was anticipated as a minimum level of understanding to be developed during each topic. This took place during staff meetings, closures or bought in cover time. This was occasionally supplemented by taking finalists ITE students, which enabled a small amount of extra release.

·         We eventually settled on an annual plan to show the coverage of the whole curriculum for the year. The structure changed with each new teacher, who could look at the overview and see their own linkage to get best advantage from successive learning. It allowed some element of creativity and utilised personal expertise. This was then captured within topic spec reviews.

·         This was developed during half of a closure in late June or early July, before the summer holiday. It included a two-week topic of the teacher’s own devising, which would be the only detailed planning that would be needed during the summer holiday.

·         On the second Friday of the autumn term, we had a closure, half of which was administration, the other half given to refining the planning detail of the rest of the term, based on the teacher knowledge of the new class. These plans were the teachers’ own plans and would only be referred to by others in development discussions, only on one occasion with reference to capability.

·         School resources were sought to needs, especially after Local Management of Schools (LMS). Every February/March, subject leads were asked to list those things that had to be replaced or updated and a list of those “nice to haves” that would enhance the school offering. These lists fed the budget decisions and gave each subject lead their allocated budget. Resources were listed on the topic specs.

·         Staff time was bought before PPA became an expectation, through the employment of PE coaches and a music teacher. In addition, I took the school, as infants and juniors for a half hour singing session, so that each half of the school could have a short meeting. How PPA time is allocated and then used to good effect is important.

·         The timetable of meetings was decided largely at the outset, in general terms, with additional demand such as parent evenings or reports leading to no staff meetings in those weeks. Closure plans were linked to staff meeting schedules, so that follow up could be more effective; retrieval practice for staff meetings? Closures and staff meetings were largely devoted to subject development, once a month for admin, or a ten-minute noticeboard, to need.

·         The NQT or newbie will need some support, so partnering or mentoring may be necessary for both, if there are not to be avoidable issues. A bit of help at the right time can be all that’s needed. A school where help is generally available, rather than “someone’s job” is better, in my opinion. Everyone a mentor would be my maxim, but I accept that for some purposes a single talk partner is needed, even as a headteacher.

·         It’s also a need for every member of staff to be the eyes and ears of the school, looking out for each other, seeking to avoid the inevitable additional demands when a colleague is off.

       There is one overriding question that everyone should continually ask; why are we doing this?

                                    Collegiality and communication are key components.

More on workload
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/on-workload
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/workload-thoughts
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/education-house-of-cards-workload
On planning
https://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/planning-learning
 

It’s interesting having a perspective on working in education and learning that now spans 48 years from walking into Training College. There have been many changes and challenges along the way, but, in essence, there is much more in common across the ages than difference.

Let’s start at the very beginning
A very good place to start.
When you read you begin with ABC
Let's see if I can make it easier

As a parent of three, step-parent to three and a grandparent to eight, I have had a lot of opportunities to view children growing up; the current span is from 15 months to almost 15 years. Each of the family settings varies, in place, parental jobs and therefore available time and in disposable incomes. These variables inevitably play some part in the opportunities that are available to each family and therefore on the cultural potential made available to each child.

The children grow and flourish through their parental love, diet and their spoken language, with appropriate encouragement to make marks and to enjoy books.

The environment that surrounds young children today is different from that which I enjoyed. Not in terms of the natural world, where there are still plants, animals and natural features; in some cases just… but perhaps their opportunity to engage with it, with an interested adult able to point out the different elements and to provide the names of things. There are also the distractions of the digital world. Whereas as a child, I was more au fait with string and a penknife and den making, today’s young have early access to screen distractions and can very soon work their way into desired apps.

I have long worried that a school cannot rely on a child’s ability to identify easily with the elements of their locality to support their speaking, their reading and their writing attempts. Having spent time as a volunteer, leading wildlife groups, it was clear in the 1980s that it was a minority interest. Education does still rely, to some extent on a child’s experience beyond the school gates.

How does a child describe the feeling of walking on sand in bare feet, paddling in the sea or lake, getting caught in a rain storm, walking through long grass, the sound of leaves being walked on or kicked, and so many other things, if they haven’t had the opportunity?

Can we build a strong curriculum and strong education on missing experiences? Is experience the beginning of “knowledge rich” education, in that it provides a base for things to “stick” to?

What’s school? People, places and things

Organise rooms, which used to be defined as 55 sq m for a group of 30 children, or a currently defined infant classful.
Supply desks and chairs; this has varied over time, with discussions about the amount of table space needed.

There’s also been wide variation on whether to supply personal storage space for books; should children be responsible for their own exercise books or should they be centralised? Either decision can cause logistical issues when books are needed for a lesson; either movement of each child to find their one book, or teacher/monitors to give out books. This can be pre-empted between lessons, getting out books on entry to the classroom, or someone must give them out before the lesson; assuming places are known…

Classroom resources need a retrieval and return system that can facilitate whole class lessons as well as intermittent needs; variation between age groups, from picture clues to written headings.

Space, resources and time have always been the variables within a school and teacher’s organisational control.

Space…

How much space is available to support the learners, and how is it orientated to support the teaching that is likely to happen?

How desks are arranged, to allow sight lines, ease of movement around the classroom, for children and adults, but also to facilitate different areas of the curriculum. Alteration to the needs of different subjects and teaching may need to be easily accomplished; I have seen whole classroom reorganisation within a couple of minutes, accompanied by a piece of music. “I can’t do x because of the way tables are arranged.” does not seem to me to be a reasonable response. Where there’s a will…

Resources…

Throughout my teaching career, there have been shelves of resources that have been bought at some stage, because they seemed a good idea at the time or because the sales patter was irresistible. They gathered dust through lack of use, often because newer staff were unaware of the potential of the resource. There’s a significant need to keep on top of learning resources, to ensure that they are up to date and do the job that’s required of them. Collated and identified, they are more likely to be used than if they are just in a pile somewhere.

There’s probably a similar kit of resources in every classroom, centred around the stationery, which also needs some organisation. Painted tins and glass jam jars were a feature of my first classroom. Today there’s a variety of plastic tool boxes (scissors, erasers rulers), cutlery drawers (paint brushes) or cutlery holders for pens and pencils. Classroom desks can also sometimes be awash with SPaG reminders, or similar prompts.

Maths, reading, writing, art corners might be created, as resource bases, with topic resources brought in to need, from a central collection.

Time…

It’s sometimes easy to forget that time in school is under teacher and school control, but, some organisational elements can exert control over the available time that puts pressure on lesson dynamics, especially for some vulnerable learners who can’t quite get things finished. If it’s clear that a child has worked hard, for them, and needs a bit of finishing time, does this mean part of a playtime lost, or can the teacher allow a few extra minutes in order for the child to finish?

We have been in a period where maths and English have seemed to dominate the curriculum. Some organisation of this, sets for example, impose a timetable need. This can mean that some children might not be able to access the learning in the available time, but, in a classroom setting, perhaps the teacher can make an executive decision to add a few necessary minutes to a lesson, to bridge a playtime and allow children some “finishing off time” rather than rushing and not completing or not being able to show their best efforts.

It’s also possible to find many examples where tasks/activities are chosen to fill the set time, rather than being able to challenge all children, limiting some.

School time is often extended through “homework”. At Primary, if homework is to be seen as a useful adjunct to school work, I would prefer to see talking homework, eg a question or an image to discuss, with the outcomes of discussion feeding back into lessons. Click on the blue title to open a linked blog.

 Primary Curriculum; a child’s world?

There have been great similarities across my career in the curriculum offerings of every school. For a start, there was always mathematics, more often than not supported by a bought scheme. The strictness of adherence to the scheme varied from school to school, but, in all cases, we were required to use the Teacher’s Guide as our methodological “bible”, to ensure consistency of approach.

English varied more from school to school, with the majority drawing heavily on the topic curriculum for stimuli for talk and writing. Reading, from around 1975 was supported by the Cliff Moon colour coded system, with different layers of books available to the children; one at teacher level, where there might be a small number of errors, and one at more fluent levels, to read in free time or at home, with or without a parent. Most of the schools in which I worked in the 70/80s also had a Home-School reading diary, with parents encouraged to record their thoughts from hearing their children read. It was very much individualised and we were encouraged to hear children read regularly. Writing was collated into excellent practice during the National Writing Project 1985-8. It mirrored what good schools were already doing, but also gave the basis for conversation between schools about what constituted good writing experiences.

Topic work enabled science, history and geography to lead investigation, with music, PE (dance), DT and art to be used to interpret the outcomes of the investigation. This element of the curriculum provided the opportunities for report writing, letters, note taking and a range of genres with imaginative narratives. The school library was a source of investigation through reading non-fiction texts, using the index and contents list to find out facts for themselves and to share with their classmates, often producing a glossary display; an alphabet of…topic.

It is interesting to me that the 1987 National Curriculum was a 95% correspondence with that which my and other local schools were doing. It meant small tweaks rather than big alterations.

I am finding the current discussion on the broader curriculum a little stilted at times. There will be significant similarities across time and there will already be a lot of good practice that can be retained.

Topic titles allocated to year groups.

Planning is essential.

Topic details; essential knowledge to be shared; key questions to be explored; resources available within the school or locally. When I was a head, we developed “topic specs” in around 1993.

Link opportunities between the topic and spoken, read and written English, or mathematics; using and applying knowledge from each to benefit the other, making appropriate links.

Timescales allocated and the order of study, to enable learning from earlier topics to impact on subsequent learning.  

Organised into an annual plan, it’s possible to ensure coverage and also sufficient opportunity to explore specifics in depth, knowing that the year was planned.
​
It’s useful to have an end point for each topic area, maybe a small museum, a display, a performance, piece of art, music or drama/movement, with the potential for an audience to provide the spur for higher quality outcomes.
​

​In many ways, it is sad that we have reached a point in our education history where we are having to reinstate that which was already there in many cases. The 2014 curriculum changes were such that elevating maths and English to such heights distorted teacher efforts, in schools and across training providers who have to follow Government expectations. It takes time and effort to develop curriculum, to articulate a school approach, to embed this into daily practice and then to evaluate and refine, with a constant need to revisit when there are new staff who will need support and mentoring.

For interest, here’s my school KS2 science overview from 2004; based on 7.5 hours per week, blocked time to need.
​

In the meantime, while this development is actioned, five years on from the changes, another generation of children passes through the school, potentially fed a diet limited by the school interpretation of it’s needs at that point in time. Data in maths and English define external judgement. If a school feels vulnerable, concentrating on what is measured can seem an appropriate course of action, but is can also lead to a diminished learning opportunity, which, if coupled with a diminished home opportunity can doubly exclude children from wider life opportunities.

There’s much talk of cultural capital. We need to look at life experiences, too…
​
Is showing children pictures the same as being there?

Thanks to the good offices of Simona McKenzie whose Twitter handle is @signoramac, there was a gathering at The Alexander Pope hotel in Twickenham to discuss Early Years issues. By no means an expert, I wanted to avail myself of the collective expertise and I wasn’t in any way disappointed.

There was Sue Cowley (@Sue_Cowley), Dr Lala Manners (@MattersActive), Ali McClure (@AliMcCureEP), Bethlyn Killey (@StarlightMcKenz) and June O’Sullivan (@JuneOSullivan). It was good to see Sue and Bethlyn again, after significant gaps between events, but equally interesting to hear the view of a broader group of speakers.

Sue Cowley gave a barnstorming opener for the day, as she put it, a bit of a rant, particularly about the general direction that it can appear that even early educational experiences are talked of in more formal terms, with testing and more structured “delivery” models being interpreted as “what’s wanted” from the “powers that be”. That this is external and top down can give the pronouncements greater weight, which in turn becomes interpreted into localised approaches, which, whether “liked” or “disliked” by the inspection regime, inevitably becomes the stuff of the local grapevine with other local providers changing to anticipate the needs of their next inspection, simply because no-one wants to be found wanting.

Topicality is the stuff of young lives, something that they have seen, heard or found and want to share with others. Equally, the adults will also want to bring in items of interest that will generate interest and inquiry. Sue spoke of “door handle planning”, in this context. Sue has a healthy scepticism of what is asked by others without the expertise in the age group.

Lala Manners is a professional who has links with Government decisions in the area of Physical Development (PD). With Sue, Lala shared the values of physicality in young lives, with specific mention of avoiding obesity at young(er) ages. In this regard she made reference to the need for EYFS professionals to be role models. One would think that getting children to be active would be one of the easiest things to organise, but the discussion moved to packaging of approaches, so that they required some form of preparatory training in order to deliver the programme.

While space can be an issue for some settings, there are many ways in which PD can be enhanced with limited equipment. Running and jumping are probably the easiest, dance can be supported by music and movement, as it was for many generations of children. General movement can be directed within a space, perhaps with floor markings helping instruction, or even masking tape, as a “balance beam”. Putting out scaffold boards, with bricks to enable them to be raised, can add to the balance challenges. Throwing stones or other natural objects (fir cones), balls, bean bags into a bucket. In many ways, it’s often limited by teacher imagination.

In my own mind, I linked physical development with literacy. I wonder how many teachers have considered that movement PE provides some of the oral base for many verbs and adverbs in describing movement that can be drawn into reading and writing?

Ali McClure worked with a wide range of ideas drawing from her career. She is a practising SENCo, as well as EY specialist and EP, so brought ideas about brain development through stimulus. While some colleagues might have argued with some interpretations of the internal workings of the brain, the idea of stimulus and vocalisation leading to some kind of mental schema organisation was central to Ali’s discourse. Using the term “Anchor of Attachment” made me think about the place of educational settings on the lives of children. For a number, the order and organisation of the setting may well be one of the few oases of calm in their lives; settled staffing, room organisation, resources and opportunities and understanding their place within the organisation can be stabilising factors.

Bethlyn Killey is well known to Twitter, as a strong questioner of SEND legislation and opportunity, or the lack, within the broader system. Bethlyn use the example of her son who had had nine settings by year seven. He’s now in a much better place, thankfully. The process of getting to this stage has been effectively analysed by Bethlyn, utilising the skills drawn from her work life. It is a salutary experience to listen to someone trapped in the complexities of EHCPs and the endless seeking of access to the relevant specialists, or advice, then to find school settings capable of addressing identified needs, but also to be aware of the potential for further diagnoses. In an education system that is gradually losing expertise, even staff in senior positions might not have had experiences that enable them to fully adapt their approach to the new needs. The system established in 2014 is complex, appears to offer a great deal for children with needs, yet often lacks the essential external expertise to support non-specialist staff. It is also budget constrained, as is regularly evidenced by contributors on Twitter.

When Bethlyn finished her talk, there was a collective gasp, as if we had all been holding our breath. It was more moving because it was her real-life experience.

June O’Sullivan was reticent to follow such an emotional experience, so we had a short break for refreshment or comfort.

June was another contributor who has the ear of Government. Her company runs a significant number of EY settings across London, including the House of Commons. Her brief was pedagogy and she took us on a journey that explored the philosophical background to pedagogies currently available. June is very down to earth, though and her approach is very child based; children doing, making, experiencing, exploring, discussing. She talked of dialogic reading as her philosophy, getting children into books. With over 100 languages across the settings, speaking is a key aspect; a mantra that I express as, something to think about, talk about, record (write?). In fact, the teaching and learning approach that she shared would have been seen in many successful mainstream primaries in SE Hants in the 80s-mid 00s. June’s organisation runs its own training for staff, calls each member of staff a teacher, so giving equality of status. It was always going to be the difficult “twilight” slot, but such was the knowledge base, delivered with humour and humanity, of June’s talk, that she held us over the planned finish time, yet the time passed very quickly.

As a first, Simona McKenzie can count BrewEdEY as a significant success. Thanks Simona.

All the speakers encouraged dialogue within their talks, so the significant collective expertise could be brought to the fore and available for everyone. Thanks to everyone for such a positive day; even on a Saturday… I was pleased that the Munster-Exeter rugby was still running on Channel 4+1 when I got home… even if it was a disappointment that Exeter lost…
​

Books to support writing development

I was fortunate to be able to share a couple of books from Bloomsbury Education with practising teachers in the school where I am a Governor and to get some feedback, which I thought I would share.

Teaching for Mastery in Writing, by Mike Cain had the greater impact of the two. The English lead used this extensively in looking at the writing process at the school, using extracts to supplement a broader PowerPoint presentation that had been supplied through an authority training opportunity.
​
Jacqui Hyde wrote; This book is a useful resource when reflecting on current school practice in the delivery of writing. It has clear guidance on the importance of feedback, self and peer assessment and how this helps to improve children’s writing. There are clear steps in learning, for each year group, which emphasise the importance of building on current skills and, if there are steps missing, how this will impact on a child’s progress in writing.

The steps for each year group were shared with all teachers at the staff meeting on mastery in writing and were particularly useful for NQTs who were not so familiar with the whole writing process. There is clear guidance on how to embed grammar and some interesting ways to edit and redraft writing. The staff meeting helped staff to reflect on their current practice and the broader school approach.

From the 100 Ideas stable, Rob Smith (@redgierob) and Katherine Simpson’s book on Literacy was seen as providing some useful reminders of activities that could be incorporated into discreet lesson planning. The teacher who used this book identified some of the ideas as having been shared on courses, so the book was seen as a distillation of very useful prompts, collated into one volume.

In combination, the two books would provide a very useful basis for any developing teacher to get to grips with the process and also to have a well-rehearsed set of practical ideas from which to be able to plan over longer and short terms.
​
The books were certainly recommended by the teachers.

For interest, personal blogs on writing.
​
Note making, not note taking...
Draft-check-improve/redraft
National writing project; revival time?
All writing in one exercise book?
Writing process; tweak your books
Exercise books as personal organisers?
 

Build a high-quality teacher; structuralist to holistic. Putting some flesh on the bones...
​
Much of my working life is spent working alongside developing teachers, at different stages in their careers. In 2012, the Teacher Standards changed, from 33 statements to 8 headings. It still surprises me that, after nearly six and a half years, many teachers still cannot identify all eight standards, even though they are supposedly working within them each day.

However, in my developmental roles, they can be very interesting, as it is possible to play with permutations of the standards that exemplify what it means to become a complete teacher, especially during university degree, PGCE or School Direct (shorter) experiences.

One of the things of which I am very proud is that, for the 2012 teacher standards, I created what has become known as the “Dartboard” at Winchester University and forms a part of every student record of progress. It is useful, in that it’s a dynamic and embeds action in a holistic framework which can be unpicked to individual needs. You may need to click and make the picture full screen.
​

​It did lead to much reflection on how the teacher standards are considered and whether the language might lead to isolation rather than purposeful combination. Teachers have to be good at a wide range of reflective, reactive and communicative behaviours, often exaggerated further when working with younger children or with children with SEND.

For information, the eight standards are

1)      Expectations
2)      Progress and Outcomes
3)      Subject Knowledge
4)      Planning
5)      Adaptation
6)      Assessment
7)      Behaviour management
8)      Professionalism

Plus there’s a part 2, which describes further the professional standing of a teacher within the broader community.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/283566/Teachers_standard_information.pdf

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

However, the headings are quite useful, in themselves, as supports for a narrative that seeks to describe teachers in development. I’ve given them nicknames where they might suit.

Presenter approach

34 – Not necessarily the ultimate age for a teacher, but this could describe, say, a wildlife expert, or similar, who knows their stuff and can put it across in a clear narrative to an audience, using age appropriate vocabulary and language structures. The chances are that children in the audience are with parents taking control of behaviours. As a local leader and County organiser for Watch Wildlife Groups, I often invited such people to present their specialist knowledge to the children. It's similar to inviting  special speaker into a classroom. They share their knowledge.

To some extent, it also describes some television presenter approaches, although they can take for granted that their core audience is watching. If people are also looking at a mobile phone, making a cup of tea, or are in any other way distracted, it’s not the presenter problem.

873 – A person of professional standing, who has the skills to control an allocated group, for a period of time, who can be trusted to get across some subject knowledge in an ordered manner.

This could be used to describe a teaching assistant, or other adult whom a head deems appropriate to lead an activity. They can work within any prescribed approach to behaviour, dealing with issues that arise appropriately.

Anyone in a professional role in a school is highly likely to have at least GCSE level education, while teachers will have a degree plus a teaching qualification. I would also expect Primary teachers to have at least five GCSE good grades and three GCE A levels, so they will have some subject experience across the Primary curriculum.

If they don’t, they can be expected to address this; teacher standard 8 talks of the proactive self-developer.

Structuralist approach; eg a trainee still making sense of the longer term organisational and learning needs.

8731 – Having appropriate expectations of behaviour and learning (TS1) raises the expectations of the adult, as the conduit through which some level of progress in a subject area might be accomplished.

It is often the case that these standards are the first and easiest to be evidenced for a trainee teacher, as, by and large, they describe the personal, professional persona of the adult, who knows their subject and can organise a classroom to get information across in a coherent form over time.

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

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

Holistic approach

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

It can depend on how you understand children making progress (TS2) and how you determine whether they have. If the definition is coverage - then test for memory, it might preclude analysis of the needs of specific individuals (TS6), leading to further engagement with them, undertaking adapted approaches (TS5). 

Interaction with learners, engaging with the ongoing learning and making subtle or more significant alterations to the expectations of some, responding to evidence within the classroom, TS6&5, are probably the key to ultimate teacher success, in that it is the sum total of progress of each child (TS2) in a class or cohort, that ultimately is the signal that the school is doing well by every child, whatever their needs.

See also 24652 blog

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

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

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

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

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

Many will use holidays as time to catch up on thinking. As a head, I often thought of the job as 24/7/365.
 
Getting better at getting better… personal development or CPD?

Building capacity breeds capacity

Variations on success breeds success? Or “Love the ones you’re with”, Dylan Wiliam.
Building Professional Capital, Hargreaves and Fullan?
This view was first put into print by Sir Arthur Helps, in Realmah, 1868: "Nothing succeeds like success." [Rien ne réussit comme le succès.]
And apparently even earlier in a different form: Success nourishes them. They can because they think they can...Virgil

The most damaging thing a teacher can say is “I can’t…” There is a need to consider the problem being faced and to come up with a solution within any available constraints. In my book, teachers are paid thinkers and solution finders.

As a headteacher entering my own school for the first time, one of the main tasks was to get to know the staff, as well as the children, to establish a view of the overall capacity of the staff and where each was in their personal development. This was an important first step, as I set to the task of creating out of the available “raw material” the future picture of the school.

This did involve a significant amount of reflection, from the staff and me, as each challenged the other to clarify thinking, so that meanings were clearer, enabling reflection that supported development. Some of that reflection meant that a few staff chose an alternative route forward. Living with challenge is not always a comfortable position. The school needed to be challenged. It was happy with itself, had create a comfortable existence for the staff, who did “nice things” with children. However, the general expectations were slightly too low and needed to be extended.

Challenge, time to reflect, within an articulated timetable, with resourced time, appropriate external support and internal evidence of momentum, through sharing improved outcomes, began the process of regular review, which ultimately was supported by release time for shared research, which further supported the collegiate approach and team development.

Internal moderation, or just sharing outcomes, became a regular feature of staff discussion, as illustrations of what was being expected and achieved.

Over time, the notion of success nourishing the staff led to deeper, sustained challenge, to staff and to children, with a further increase in outcomes, the achievement of which established much clearer expectations and benchmarks. The rich curriculum became richer, as teachers tried out ideas, with children feeling the pleasure of achievement, so improving their attitude and motivation.

Teachers had to adapt ideas to the context of the school. We were an open plan layout and areas were set aside for specialist activity at different points around the building, but each was within sight of a classroom, so every area could be overseen by a teacher, even if children were from another class. The “independence” being fostered could be put to good effect in supporting challenge in tasks, especially as the children got older. 

The past twelve years of school visits through a variety of organisations and for different purposes, have allowed me to see a broader base of evident practice. Improving outcomes, so that both the teacher and the child can see what the next step looks like is essential. For the teachers, this has sometimes meant advice to go and look at years above or below, to better understand what quality outcomes can look like.

Only by having a deep understanding of progression of learning within each subject, what success at different stages looks like and clarity in understanding where each child is in that continuum at any specific point, can a Primary teacher support incremental learning, as a combination of knowledge and capability.

Adaptability

It seems to me, after a lifetime in education, from the many initiatives passing my way, that every piece of education research is interpreted to the profession through a filter that comprises national and press reviews, personal interpretation of the original material, or the ensuing book and inference from an existing practitioner, as the original ideas are adapted to the circumstances of a classroom.

By the time a teacher presents “how it’s working for me”, in a staff meeting, a Teachmeet, or some other external talk, it has been through several layers of interpretation. It has been adapted to the particular circumstance of that classroom teacher’s views. Copying, by a colleague, in another context, may not get the same result.

There are three main variables in teaching in a teacher control, even assuming a common knowledge base; space, resources and time. A classroom has a set size and shape that determines furniture arrangement for ease of working and movement. Organisation and availability of resources, for ease of accessibility and return will affect practice, to a significant effect.  Limitations of timetabling, especially the need to move as a whole class for activity, is further compromised by grouping and setting for different aspects, all of which impact on working approaches, not least the need to complete tasks within a set time.

Personal self-limiting

An inability to adapt can lead to teachers saying “I can’t do…” which impacts on children’s development. Self-limiting should not be part of a teacher make-up. The teacher who “prefers” to stay in year 6, or EYFS, for example, if they do not then have opportunities to explore practice across the school, can become entrenched in their working methods and expectations.

Self-limiting can apply to schools as well as individuals, where they do not communicate effectively, especially if there is a form of “competition” between phases and prior judgements are not fully accepted. Collaboration and excellent communication between professionals enables smoother transition and transfer.

“Novelty children”; apologies…

Within the idea of adaptability comes the issue of “novelty children”, those with needs that the teacher has never encountered. The SEND specific need, the travellers, the EAL child with a never before met language, the extra-talented (gifted) learner, in a specific subject. How to deal with the new issue is likely to depend on prior experience and the base from which decisions are made. These will therefore range from rough-hewn, to refined. A self-aware teacher will admit to shortcomings and seek colleague advice, from within the school, as in the SENCo/ABCo, or through available language/specialist support, where the LA or Academy chain has access to expertise.

These “novelty children” extend the boundaries of teacher knowledge and expertise, which, over time, enables further adaptation to circumstance.

Adaptability and reflection are precursors to personal growth.

Adapting to new knowledge is a large part of how we learn, through reflection, adjustment to circumstance and a new balance point, based on knowledge and capability.
​
The more adaptable you are, the more adaptable you can become. Seeing the need to adapt is the first step. Getting better at getting better takes thinking time and a bit of effort, but getting better is positively reinforcing, for everyone, as teacher self-esteem can be a fragile beast.
​

In reality for around six years now, but the title scans with the “Wild Rover” first line, the second of which is “And I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer”, which probably doesn’t sit well with the idea of Governance or good management.

I became a Governor in one school after a few years of waiting until I reached 60 and effectively “retired” from the front line, having been invited onto the Governing body a few years before. It was a body in need of bodies, to ensure that meetings were quorate.

I’d like to think that it was for my lifetime in front line education and continuing involvement in specific areas, such as inclusion and parent partnership, as well as initial teacher education. Governors bring a wealth of expertise into a school and can act as critical friends as well as supporting the school in the development agenda.

Getting a “good” after an Ofsted inspection was testament to the hard work of the staff and management, including the Governing body. It also bought further time for necessary continuous development.

After a few years, a second school identified itself as being in even greater need of support, so I did a transfer having worked with the recently appointed Executive Head and Head of School in my ITE role. We had enjoyed many interesting exchanges of ideas, which they felt would help their new agendas, in a school with a very chequered history.

As Governor with particular responsibility for coordinating with SEND and inclusion, pupil premium and vulnerable children, I have been able to spend quality time with different staff, enabling them to articulate their developmental focus and actions, clarifying our joint understanding where necessary and occasionally offering areas where additional thought might be useful.

All visits to the school in any capacity as a Governor are written up and shared with the body, to ensure everyone is aware of what’s happening.

Where I am still involved in education, I also buy, receive and read a wide range of books. Where these could add something to the school, they are offered and have evidently been of value. I would especially mention Paul Dix, Jarlath O’Brien and Mary Myatt’s recent books on behaviour and ethos as having been well-thumbed. I have struggled to get the books back on occasion…

Twitter occasionally throws up interesting reads, too, so these are forwarded for information. This did occasion the school’s involvement with the Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants process, led by Rob Webster, which over the past year has developed significant conversations within the staff as a whole.

The Governor role is an interesting one, in that, while Governors are included in the Leadership and Management area of Ofsted, we are always at one remove from the day to day realities, which is why I feel that my school visits are essential, to fit the imagery with the reportage. It would be easy to take everything at face value, especially if you value the management and their work. I know that both the Executive Head and HoS value the conversations and the challenges that arise. This has been noted in discussion with the allocated LA inspector.

For all that, though, I am probably one of the quieter members of the Governing body, preferring to reflect before speaking. Governor meetings can become reactive in nature, and we all know that “stuff happens” in schools, but a reflective Governing body is more likely to support progress, avoiding creating “busy work” and distractions from the day job for already pressed managers. A reflective body is also more likely to look at itself and the roles, to add some value to the journey.

The education system is a bit like an Airfix kit; the bits have to go in the right place, with the right amount of glue, if the finished model is to look like the picture on the box. As in many reorganisations in education, there isn’t always a very clear picture on the packaging, so bits are in danger of being put in the wrong place.

With an emphasis in 2019 on the school curriculum, keeping sight of the school picture will be even more important.

Strong Governance needs to be a part of every school, but it needs a strong local base, supported by a supportive, easily available, local centre of information. I’m lucky that my LA still retains a Governor Service providing up to date training opportunities.

Like all school development, it never ends, simply because it is a human system, subject to human frailty as well as strengths. It only achieves through the efforts of others. It’s my pleasure to be able to continue offering support and occasionally some mentoring based on experience.
​

An open book? How do you tell your story?

Do you offer children something to think, talk, read and write about?

It’s been a quiet Christmas break, which is how it is when you get a bit older. It’s usually making sure that younger generations have a good time; that they are fed and clothed and have presents to open. It has been interesting to drop in and out of Twitter to see what’s being discussed. It can be an eye opener, or occasionally a tablet shutter, as views pass that might elicit a type-delete response.

However, recent tweets about the curriculum suggest that Curriculum is the current hot topic, as Ofsted are putting it at the centre of their next round of thinking, and some commentators seemingly jumping on the opportunity to propound their “knowledge rich” agenda, as if it’s a new phenomenon.

My career in teaching started with training at St Luke’s College, Exeter, from 1971-74. Although Plowden was a high-profile element that was the new core of pedagogic reflection, the sharing of knowledge was central to the science course that I started and the Environmental Education course to which I transferred in year 2, providing a broad subject base for Primary, which became my passion.

It was based on knowledge, the interpretation of which into classroom narratives was left to us. We explored “programmed learning”, which was exemplified by exploring the stages of making a cup of tea or a piece of toast. This showed us the essence of embedded knowledge that is assumed in giving instruction or developing a narrative. It made us better “storytellers”; a mixture of substance and exploration. If you think of sharing a book/(his)story with children, their background knowledge inevitably impacts on their understanding of the whole; that’s Hirsch in a sentence.

We talked of challenge in tasking, with the challenge depending on our understanding of the knowledge that the children had already encountered; it was effectively tested through use and application. Within the task, when children encountered difficulty, it highlighted areas that had ether been missed or had not been assimilated effectively, so in-task teaching would occur. There were tremendous similarities to my own education experiences in the 1950/60s. It was also writ large in the available resource materials, such as Nuffield Science 5-13.
​
Knowledge and challenge were intertwined.
​

And, in my school experience as a teacher, it remained so throughout.

I still have a copy of the textbook that underscored my initial training; Environmental Studies, by George Martin and Edward (Ted) Turner, who was the course leader. For those who would wish to claim that knowledge-rich is a new phenomenon, I’d offer them this book, from 1972 as both a starter knowledge across subjects that sought to give an introduction to thinking practically about the world, supplemented in each chapter with an extensive bibliography for extended reading.

The premise of the course was to provide teachers with the background to introduce children into their world through three layers, Investigation and interpretation, communication, inspiration. Over time, this gave rise to my personal mantra of learning challenge as something to think, talk, and write about, leading to presentation, preferably to a known audience.

The course explored the living and non-living world; essentially chemistry, physics and biology with added geology; the past world around us, architectural features, local archaeological sites and using artefacts; rural and urban living, settlement studies, including use of materials for dwellings and other buildings; conservation, especially within an urban settlement; histories, especially from a locality perspective, but also within a national and international perspective. (Ted Turner took as his inspiration the notion of the Renaissance, especially Leonardo da Vinci. That allowed the summer field trip to be to Florence, at a time when it was possible to wander into galleries freely. However we also had to write about the other aspects too; planning how we would use the available resources to offer the broader curriculum.

Mathematics, of measures, counting and data, language, art and music were significant features.
​
It was a good basic starter, to which I later added two part-time Diplomas, one in Environmental Sciences and the second in Language and Reading Development.
​

Every school within which I worked, from 1974 onwards, had curriculum organisation, to differing degrees. Some had simply headings, of topics that had to be covered within each year, others had broad resource materials from which to develop the topic narrative, which was left to the classteacher to develop based on knowledge of their classes.

The 1987 National Curriculum was a 95% match with our existing curriculum; I was a deputy in a First School.
The subsequent Dearing Review gave a 95% correspondence.

When I became a HT in 1990, there was a need to create a firmer base for the curriculum, which could have been described as a little ad-hoc.

We had a mix of planning layers, starting with whole school and year group. This was premised on allocating topics appropriately.

Every topic had a “topic spec”, which was designed by the subject lead, ensuring that the NC expectations were clear, articulating essential knowledge, skills, challenges, available school and locality resources, plus reminders of quality outcome expectations (Level descriptors rewritten as descriptors of child capability).
​
Every teacher received their planning file in July, before a half day of a closure that allowed them to organise their planning thoughts before the summer holiday. A copy came to me as HT, so I knew in July what the next year “learning map” looked like.

The first two weeks were always designated as “getting to know and settling” weeks, with a teacher designed topic. The second Friday was always a closure, half a day given to planning the detail of the next (few) topic(s), including resourcing from school stock. Topics ranged from a week to several weeks, depending on the needs. The interplay of topics with English and maths allowed for topic generated information to be used in writing or to create mathematical opportunity that offered measures, counting leading to data, or shape and space exploration.

Because the year was based around revisiting areas, especially in maths and English, revision of ideas, aka interleaving, was embedded.

In so doing, we had a curriculum with meat, two veg and a good helping of dessert.

It was planned longer term, so that it had substance. It was broad, balanced and relevant, drawing from the locality as much as possible, to fully immerse the children into their community, as well as drawing from wider opportunities; we did take the children on local trips, but also to London, to the British Museum for Greek, Roman or Egyptian exhibitions. However, time was always against us for day trips, with at least two hours each way on a coach and costs getting ever higher. The IWB did allow us to bring a level of experience into classrooms, taking over from the video or CD player.

While “bright ideas” might be imported, these were always evaluated against what was already offered. If they added something, they were incorporated.

It was a cycle of constant improvement, supported by every subject lead having at least a half day with a County inspector to review the school offering as a whole.

The 1997 National Curriculum with the accompanying strategies, did put some of this under strain, especially when we needed to replace experienced staff. It was noticeable that some applicants were used to a narrower diet. However, personalised CPD opportunities, eg shadowing colleagues, allowed insights into expectations. Staffing stability helped with this; we held onto the “tribal memories”… see blog…

The breadth paid off in national testing, too, where English, maths and science scored highly. Every subject was valued, with quality outcomes celebrated throughout the school, with displays or presentations opening learning to others.

The 2014 Primary National Curriculum was always a worry to me, even though I was not school based, but working in ITE and with parents and inclusion. It articulated English and Maths extensively, while others were diminished. Listening to Tim Oates, early in the process, saying that it was designed to be easier to test highlighted an underlying political agenda.

As we are now a couple of days into 2019. Perhaps a chance for reflection and refinement?

I have no problem with a conversation about what children should be exposed to through their school experience. There must be a clear narrative to learning; it is after all, the school’s internal book.

Every subject can be explored by a 2-year old, a 12-year old or a 22-year old. Their ability to interact with the experience will vary widely, from an initial exploratory phase, which I would see as “play”, through to accommodating, reflecting on and reacting to, ever more sophisticated information. We are on a constant journey, carrying with us, at any point, the accumulated wisdom of earlier experiences. So a “knowledge organiser” as our “topic specs” can be seen today, will vary considerably for each age group, and should do so. It should support a developing narrative approach, not become a knowledge dump which an inexperienced practitioner might simply regurgitate.

Order and organisation are key to teaching and learning success, over different timescales.

I would argue that annual plans allowed teachers to ensure coverage while also developing each topic at depth. Colleagues also benefited from collegiate sharing, either one to one or within practical workshops.

At classroom level, each teacher planned in ways that suited them. They were personal diaries, only considered if there were question marks over children’s progress. Classroom teachers are paid to think. They need to think clearly, on multiple layers, always with children and their progress in mind. That’s why it can be tough at times.

When teaching becomes top-down, teachers start to look at what is expected, to second guess what “those above” are looking for. That this has, on occasion been subject to the management or Ofsted rumour mill, can’t be denied; one local school or colleague passing on their tips from their own inspection, so others copy.

To hold to your own course can be challenging, but it is your own school’s journey that’s important.

It’s your narrative, your history, your present.

More important, it’s your children’s narrative, their history and their present.

That’s your data; what you do for them and what they get out of it. It’s a mix of the obvious, the displays and the books, but also their attitudes in school, their capacity to engage in talk with others. It’s a story, based on words, not numbers, so that children can engage with their own developing narratives.

Children’s pleasure in overcoming challenges and learning…led by teachers who enjoy teaching.
​

Curriculum 1971-2014; broad, balanced and relevant.
Curriculum 2018; knowledge rich (or learning rich)?

Put simply, classroom learning is children, context, engagement, guidance and adaptation, evaluation of outcomes. The whole captured within communication.

Remembering always the maxim that education( life) is a journey not a destination. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement in the early nineteenth century.)

It’s strangely fascinating occasionally just to be a bystander to conversations on social media. There’s a current penchant for everything curriculum, as if it’s the next new thing that no-one has ever thought of before You can almost hear the sound of cash tills ringing with the book potential.

The recent Ofsted commentaries on curriculum are strangely reminiscent of earlier HMI statements, one series of which was dubbed the “raspberry ripple” books because of their covers. The September 2018 commentary suggested that there was a lack of curriculum development expertise. In some ways this is not surprising, as for twenty years curriculum and pedagogy has been engaged through ever tighter dictat, seemingly removing teacher and school discretion, whereas autonomy is the life-blood of a thinking organisation.

Forgive me for being old(er). I started as a classroom teacher in 1974 after three years at training college; my first Primary class will now be coming up to 55 years old. In that extended career, I never worked in a school without a curriculum in some form. Some were stronger than others. They might have been based on a scheme for maths and English, with Topics (now called the foundation subjects) being the area that was apportioned to specific year groups. Once you knew the topics, there was the search for the available school resources, or perhaps an investigation in the locality to seek out appropriate places to visit or people with local interests. We were, to all intents and purposes, organising the knowledge, supplemented by the County Library Service and, from time to time, museums and costume services. It was relatively easy to put together a package of essential knowledge that would be shared, sometimes with teachers making some kind of information book that was derived from the various sources.

In looking through my notebooks from my career, I came across a diagrammatic version that was the top layer of an early curriculum map. It’s not detailed, but an overview that enabled themes to be allocated to year groups, then further developed through locality resources and resource boxes.
​
In many ways variations on this have been a feature of my career. Start at the top layer, then work ever deeper, providing greater detail at different points to support teacher thinking in their classroom. This last layer might include agreed details that have to be structured into the theme narrative and retained for future use.

​These early thoughts were supplemented further with a very active inspection and advisory service and teachers centres that provided both courses and in-house support to school development.

From an earlier blog:

Curricula are usually written by experts, from the expert perspective, ensuring that information is delivered, whether or not it is appropriate for the learner’s current needs. 
As teachers, unconstrained by predetermined curricular expectations, we were able to assume the mantle of experts, reflecting on what the four year olds brought with them in the way of life experiences which would be the start points for school based experiences and exploration.

So history started as My story, based on storyboards created with a series of photos, then developed into His or Her story, with reference to parents and grandparents. Local walks to look at houses of interest started a link between History and Geography, with sketch mapping, drawing in situ or photos being taken (development time, much easier now?). Parents and grandparents came to tell their own stories, recorded onto c45, 60 or 90 tapes to be replayed and reflected upon. For homework, children were asked to telephone grandparents to ask a series of questions. Timelines were created throughout, so historical perspectives were constantly being revisited, as knowledge was added. And we got back to the Victorians with photograph based family trees, together with the accompanying narrative.

Building materials became the stuff of science, complemented by Lego or other construction material, as well as clay models of houses, made out of very small bricks, fired in the kiln. Trials with garden clay compared to the bought variety. One child brought in a tile found in their garden, which we took to the local museum to be told it was Roman. Visiting the local church we discovered even more tiles, being used as wall bricks and on the way back a local aunt offered the chance to have a look inside a house originally dating to 1580. I know, risk assessments, CRB etc. The Tudor context allowed exploration of timber as a building material. One idea often led to another, with settlements, including the Anglo-Saxon beginnings of the village being explored, with the support of the local history society.

In reality, what is a curriculum? It is a series of related contexts within which learners will enhance their understanding of the world in which they live, allowing opportunities for language acquisition, broadening communication, real contexts for writing and other recording.  The mathematics of measures and data creation supported the core learning at every age. So the basics were the backbone of topic work. The contexts provided the creative structures into which the relevant subjects could be fitted.

Asking questions and seeking answers were the basis for both library research and experiential science activity, which might be based on the notion of finding out interesting ideas to share with the rest. Every subject had value for what it brought to the child as thinking and learning opportunities. The art table was a permanent fixture within the classroom, with half a dozen children regularly interpreting information in picture form.

When the National Curriculum was brought in in 1987, I was a deputy in a First School. Our audit of the school curriculum against the NC showed a 95% correspondence, with a couple of tweaks to be effected.

This became a feature of revisions; small tweaks were needed to accommodate the update.

I came across my notes from 1987, when I had responsibility for science. I had grouped the sixteen attainment targets, yes 16, into three main areas; scientific processes, our environment, make it move/forces, and three supplementary areas; electricity/magnetism, sound and music and light. These might have been organised as larger, three-week projects, or perhaps a week of experiences.

It was not long before a reorganisation led to the sixteen ATs becoming four main areas; virtually the same content, but a reduction in areas for assessment, essentially materials, physical world, living world and scientific exploration.
When I became a HT in 1990, we worked hard on the curriculum, because, although the school had taken on elements of the NC, there were gaps which needed to be addressed.

The approach was refined over time and can ne read about in a blog on planning. There is a clear focus on layering.
In addition, as a school, we also looked at quality versus quantity in writing.

It was clear that children were being asked to undertake a considerable amount of writing, but that, for the most part, any writing in subjects other than English were of poorer quality.

We moved from this to identify the main writing approach for the week, which would be developed through different stages; modelled, organised and drafted, with occasional redrafting for display quality, for an audience.

The two-page approach to writing that we developed is shared as writing process, tweak your books which morphed through all writing in one exercise book, to using the exercise book as a personal organiser. This highlighted that writing is writing in every subject. It allowed for each week, or fortnight to be devoted to a particular project, perhaps a report from a practical experience, to letter writing, or imaginary story. As a head, I encouraged teachers to consider the use of time available for quality writing. This could be an hour by hour for essential teaching and modelling, note making or early organisation activities. It might be a morning to enable a range of drafting and evaluation/critique activities. Timetable flexibility allows quality to emerge, rather than unfinished work. Over time, the time frames reduced to emphasise fluency.

Topic areas, essentially the foundation subjects, were organised in different layers, as articulated in the planning blog. Topics lasted as long as was needed, but all allocated topics had to be shared. Topic themes were resourced by subject coordinators, with a topic specification and a collation of the resources available within the school. Book resources were sourced through the County Library Service.

Within these areas, we reflected on the commonality of learning themes and came up with the “Making Sense of Experience” model; a means of looking at deepening experience, at any age. The “Experience, explore, explain” mantra was central to the thinking; simple enough to remember, but embedding many different elements.

In 2014, the current NC was enacted. Having listened to Tim Oates, when we shared a panel, telling the assembled staff that the 2014 version was created to be easier to test, I started to worry. With it being maths and English heavy with testing in these areas, the next few years have shown that the wider curriculum has diminished, in some cases significantly. However, there is a strong argument for the curriculum retaining its breadth and depth.
​

So why are we where we are?

My simple answer would be estate-wide small thinking, more from the point of view of ever closer attention on the minutiae of teaching and learning, especially by some individuals who have made national and international names, and a lot of money from publishing, by a focus on small bits. The words that we use, such as differentiation, assessment, planning, writing, reading, phonics along with others, have been packaged and repackaged into formulae, then interpreted into book form, to be sold into the education spending market, which itself has grown significantly over the past 25 years.

A couple of the latest high-profile areas are “growth mindset” and research. Each has the potential to become formulaic, distracting and ultimately to be devalued. The former, to me is what teaching and learning are all about, otherwise what’s the point and the latter, as an investigative mind-set, is what I’d want from all teachers, seeking to refine their practice.

The issue with buying a scheme for doing the thinking for you is that you can stop thinking about the whole and how things fit together, and that’s what I’d say some have done. These schemes can dictate timetables, as children are packaged up into appropriate sized groups to undertake the specified activities, often led by the less well-informed members of staff, so that, although “coverage” might be assured, the depth of understanding might be suspect for many. These groups are, by default, mini sets or streams, so can become self-limiting systems. Time is also lost, as children move between areas of the school to be part of their small groups.

There has been successive reorganisation of priorities, with literacy and numeracy taking over from English and Maths, with a subsequent downgrade of other subjects, all of which provide the background information against which English and Maths operate in the real world. There is talk of the knowledge curriculum, but the knowledge areas of the curriculum, in some places and for some children are under some threat.

The small thinking arises out of a sound-bite need for politicians, to show that they are doing something to improve the situation. The Literacy Hour was not the be-all and end-all of the Literacy Strategy, yet it became the simplistic message given on the radio and TV every morning. For the past four years, we have heard phonics equals reading as the mantra.

The problem with both messages is that it can distort practice to the point where other aspects of each subject, which are equally or more vital, are diminished, so teachers and children lose sight of the bigger messages.

Levels became the bête noire of the system because they became distorted into data points, rather than remaining as the progress descriptors that they were in the beginning. From misuse, they lost their purpose and became distorting, as they became high stakes in showing progress. The number and the data point lost the accompanying words, but, at least in some of the foundation subjects, the words could still be a useful starting point for reflection on progression.

Like all things, I’d argue that a focus on detail is essential, but that at every stage any change in one aspect needs to be reflected upon across the whole learning system, otherwise it can be distorting.

It’s a little bit like an exercise regime where concentration on one part of the body can create a distorting effect.
It's got to start with the whole, consider the parts and then put the whole back together. 

And when it comes down to simplicities, the whole relies on effective communication in all forms, pitched to the audience, using words that they can understand, sharing images to supplement the words and to enhance the capacity to make links with earlier experiences.

It takes an aware teacher to be able to do that with facility. Teachers need subject and pedagogic knowledge. Thinking teachers sharing a thoughtful curriculum and supporting each other with their own knowledge and sharing successful pedagogy can significantly alter the curricular diet for every child.
​

A young man decided to become a teacher…

When I was interviewing for staff as a headteacher and when I am interviewing prospective entrants into the profession for ITE providers, I ask what on the surface is a relatively simple question; “What was the significant event that persuaded you that you could be a teacher?” This allows the interviewee to reflect on their past, but also to develop the theme through significant skills that they bring to bear on their role. This tipping point can be important to explore, especially where the candidate is a mature trainee, changing career course.

I have a vivid memory of one trainee who described how she had been involved in a summer residential scheme with a group of physically disabled children and supported them individually to overcome fears to be able to attempt to tackle a climbing wall. Another told of how he had worked in a refugee camp and learned that he could find innovative ways to help children learn without expensive resources. The insights and the obvious enjoyment of the experience came through and they both went on to become a very high-grade prospective teachers.

While some get into teaching through their interactions with children, discovering that they can communicate effectively and make relationships, enabling their charges to attempt challenge, others love their subject and sharing their knowledge. Marrying the two creates a whole, which is the purpose of teacher training; the what and the how.

Why did I become a teacher?

I had a job with ICI, in a biological research station, nestled into an old quarry beside Brixham fishing harbour. Becoming a “scientist” had been my lifelong ambition. The reality, of counting bivalves and worms in bottom samples that we sourced from the North Sea off Teeside and Whitby, palled after several months, partly because of the horrendous effects of sea-sickness and partly the counting. Finish one tray, record, start another. When looking at colleagues who had progressed to Experimental Officer, it became clear that I’d be doing the same for years to come. I loved the outdoors, the environment, entomology, history, geography; in fact I was interested in the world around me. Ok, I was probably a bit geeky, in that respect.

A mature team colleague at Paignton Cricket Club had just finished his teaching course at St Lukes College, in Exeter. After talking with him, he suggested taking the train to chat to someone about the possibility of training. There was a significant shortage of teachers, as the generation that had trained before or after WW2 were coming, en masse, to retirement.

As it was June, the campus was empty, but a kind receptionist tracked the head of science to his room and sent me along. We chatted broadly, across science, but also sport (St Lukes was a PE college) and after half an hour asked if I wanted this to be an official interview. Fifteen minutes later, I was sent to fill in the application forms and started that September. That is a decision that I have never regretted, even when the going has got really tough. I found my natural niche.

I did change course after the first year, moving from pure science to Environmental Studies, which was a brand-new course designed by the previous head of science to enable Primary teachers to be able to teach the breadth of the curriculum.  

Teaching practices in Totnes, year one, and Torquay, year three, meant digs for the first, during a winter of power cuts, so planning and marking by candle-light. For the second, I had a lift from two PE specialists, both of whom were on their way to international status, so the hour or so each way passed quickly.

The second-year experience was an extended study practice, where the entire teaching group was twinned with a school in Sidmouth. We would be paired with a small group of children, plan for learning, enact it, evaluate the outcomes and make subsequent decisions for learning. Getting to know the children also meant home visits. This entailed staying on in Sidmouth, walking to the family homes, having a scripted chat, then a long bus trip back to halls, which were six miles out of Exeter, unless someone with a car was around.   
 
It became clear during 1974 that the teacher shortage was coming to an end. At the same time, the James Report was considering the potential for offering teachers sabbatical time after a period of service. It was envisaged that this would support further training, perhaps to Masters level.

Both had an influence on deciding to get a job for September 1974. Even as a probationary teacher, I had a class of 39 mixed ability children. There was no such thing as a teaching assistant, nor technology. Resources were very limited, but there was a pleasure in creating learning opportunities from little, using the local environment as a significant resource, eg taking the class to the local graveyard to read the first chapter of Great Expectations…

Becoming a teacher was never designed to make me rich; perhaps comfortable was the best that could be hoped, and it was a career, which, in 1974, was still considered an asset. I started teaching in the year of the Houghton award, where teacher pay was enhanced after many years of very low pay rises. Four times that income, plus a small borrowed deposit, was enough for the mortgage that bought the first house; I could aspire.

Today, a teacher in similar position would need a mortgage ten times their income and a large deposit. That cultural shift will have a huge impact on life plans.

Teaching is teaching and of it’s time. It has always had to adapt to changing needs, but, over the past thirty years, we have seen revolution from politicians that have put pressures on the system, such that successful, experienced people left. This inevitably reduces the core of knowledge available, with new people having to learn from scratch how to make things work for them.

The fact that you are teaching one approach while a “new” version has to be developed and embedded is stressful and an additional burden.

Change has rarely been handled in an evolutionary fashion, apart from the first iterations of the National Curriculum, which largely described what my local schools were doing, with 95% correspondence. Managing “improvement” would reduce the stress burdens of people who are, at the core of their role, paid to think.

Governments often see change as synonymous with improvement and then have to twist and turn as consequences become apparent to everyone. It can be analogous to the cowboy builder; who put this up like this…?

I’d still encourage someone with aptitude to become a teacher, and also, in time to develop themselves towards headship. Both are great jobs and they are very much and always will be needed.

I sometimes think we need Governments to step back and let teachers get on with the job and to become the advisers in the system. Children, in every classroom, deserve teachers who enjoy their jobs, know that they are doing a good job and that their efforts are appreciated.
​
Leaders, at every level, from Government down, only achieve if each classroom is a space for learning.
​

The HMI report for 2018 includes a commentary about the teaching of and support for SEND.

​In many ways, I am not surprised. Working with Inclusion Quality Mark for eight years up to 2014, it was clear, from visits to and supporting schools, 2013-14, attending and presenting at conferences, that the complexities of the changes that were being wrought on schools in a very short time would be very difficult to achieve. That the changes also included system changes outside schools, at a time when austerity cuts were really beginning to bite, only served to exacerbate the situation for more vulnerable children.

Schools felt that they had to focus on curriculum and assessment, the latter having been put into free-fall by a Government unwilling to offer clear guidance. As schools would also be inspected on the new system, it became an imperative, especially for schools which felt vulnerable; borderline good, RI or SM.

Systems are still not yet fully effective in all schools. The sheer weight of requirement, especially for Primary schools, to embed mathematics and English, meant that the wider curriculum was sometimes given less prominence, to a point where this is flagged up as a concern for the 2019 inspection framework. It is also feasible now, after four years, that schools are beginning to see issues with their earlier decisions and are making adjustments.

One big structural change in 2014 was to put emphasis on the classroom as the prime place where good or better teaching and learning is seen as addressing the needs of all individuals. Therefore work has to be well planned, well delivered, activities engaged with, feedback given and supportive, developmental feedback afterwards.

In which case, the class teacher becomes the conduit through which SEND decisions are effected, with enhanced responsibility. Consider for a moment the position regarding Performance Related Pay (PRP) where a teacher can be held responsible for the outcomes of all groups of learners.

Teachers need to know their children very well, to be able to personalise interventions and commentaries. The deployment of available support, for specific purpose, with defined, checkable outcomes, will be essential. However, as the highest trained person in the classroom, the teacher may reasonably be expected to take the greater burden of the most challenging learning needs, while the support does just that, supports other learners.
All aspects need to be considered, starting with the appropriateness of the task, or the necessity to adapt, the need for support to achieve an appropriate outcome.

Within the task, the deployment of staff to be the eyes and ears, with the capacity to intervene appropriately to need will be essential. It will become an essential skill to spot and deal with issues as they arise to smooth the learning path. These interventions will need to be noted in some way. Therefore a methodology needs to be considered. In the first instance, the exercise book could become a part of the dialogue of concern, noting advice given, as well as clear, readable, understandable feedback. A secondary need will be to keep a track of teacher thinking, within and between lessons, through post it notes, amended planning, or diary format.

The teacher needs to get better at initial investigation of issues.
 
In addition, within the 2014 NC, the idea of levelness gave way to yearness. I blogged about this, from 2013, as I could see considerable potential pitfalls, especially for children who didn’t “make the grade” in the previous year. This may have been further exacerbated as teachers chose to stay in the same year group for a few years, to make use of their need to get to grips with yeargroup requirements.

Primaries are possibly in a much more difficult position, in that the new National Curriculum is very year-group based, with the assessment criteria as articulated, to know and understand the year group requirements. The use of the phrase “Secondary ready” cast an implied level of expectation against the achievements at year six. The rhetoric to date seems to suggest whole cohorts moving at the same speed. Topics are also relatively year group specific, which could cause issues if a child is either slower or faster than their cohort at learning in a specific subject. It is arguable that for Primary schools, level-ness has been replaced by year-ness.  So measurement of progress will be against year group expectations. Within the documentation, it is possible to infer the hierarchy of expectation, so schools may do that to ensure that their learners are tracked against the new criteria.

Where schools have been freed from the need to use levels and asked to create their own systems, those which have been shared through social media like Twitter have to date looked very much like levelness in a different form. And they always will, because the schemes shared have been recording sheets to keep a track of children’s performance.

And that’s my main issue. Subjects have hierarchical skills, which have to be introduced, practiced and embedded in produced work. Levelness articulated the hierarchy of skills and allowed this within whole class tasks and topics, with all learners challenged at a personal level, in the best practice. Level and grade criteria support expectation, planning, in-lesson interventions, reformulating of challenge to need, feedback, both oral and written, then food for thought after the lesson.

Year-ness will do that, but I have a slight worry that the articulation of achievement within the new system at Primary level has the potential to become a new system created barrier to learning for a number of vulnerable learners.
We had a system that could have been tweaked to make it more coherent, challenging, robust and acceptable through the system.
​
We may embed new issues. I hope that I am wrong.
​

 
All classes are mixed ability, even a set or streamed group, so creates an internal dynamic that needs to be accommodated; from prior records, simple starter assessments to confirm or ask questions, to seek to refine planning that allows appropriate imparting of information and learning challenges, both of which may be subtly altered in delivery through engagement with individual or group needs.

This is articulated in another blog; 65, based on the teacher standards.

Not all Special Needs get identified early. Some become more obvious as school challenges get harder. Some may have a source outside school, but which impacts in the setting, eg social and emotional needs.

Individual responses will offer challenges and cause concern. This may multiply over time, if established as a seeming pattern of response. Investigation and recording of the developing situation informs a discussion with the school SENCo. Not to do so might result in a request to do so over the next period of time. This delay can be the source of irritation in a teacher who wishes an immediate remedy.

From 2013
·         SEND is no longer “someone’s job”, it is everyone’s job…

Training is an interesting issue, in that there are and will be significant calls from all sides for “more training”. The availability of external staff is likely to be seriously strained in the near future, as all schools ask for the same personnel. I can see a number of options addressing these needs.

Local specialists (possibly including Special School staff) to create fact sheets available to all local schools, to address possible concerns across a range of needs, ASD, ADHD, SALT, OT as an example.

• In-house solutions 1. Some special needs in learning can be evidenced against the outcome of younger children. Therefore, by definition, the expertise is in-house. Exemplar portfolios will help with decision making, if they incorporate both a statement of what’s evident and a description of potential next steps. In “old money” a level 2 child in year five is operating on a par with an average year 2 child. By talking with the year 2 teacher, the professional dialogue will offer insights into routes. In a separate system, it may be necessary to make links with feeder schools.
• In house solutions 2. The school SENCo, if (s)he has undertaken the required training, should be in a position to offer the broad-brush explanations necessary for class-based colleagues.
• Planning for learning needs to look at the dynamics as well as the fixed points. The plan, based on expectation, should prompt thinking on the hoof, ensuring interactions that result on lessons being tweaked to the evident needs.

The basic principle of SEND, know your children well, and that would be my suggestion for the 2019 inspections; how well do schools know and support their children’s needs?

It could be that simple…