This week, I have been able to have a number of conversations that have drawn on my teaching career and life experience in general. One of these was in the context of special educational needs and “inclusion”. The term inclusion rightly became a significant part of political and social life within the past twenty years, but I have always wondered if the label itself, defined as a state of being included, implies an “outsider” who has to be incorporated into a group, which in turn has to adapt to the new person; “Please can I be included?” It reminds me of playground games; who’s chosen first and who’s left until last?

That people are different is easily understood.

The differences can, at times, be exaggerated at the expense of similarities, to the point where accommodation is deemed impossible. This, in education terms, can amount to a form of exclusion; you don’t fit us, we can’t cope with difficulties like those.

However, finding the right educational setting for defined needs is key to success.

 My career has shown me that capacity creates capacity, in that schools which find themselves able to accommodate individual needs find the capacity to adapt to the needs of all children, so making themselves desirable and valued by parents and children. Schools operating in challenging areas, taking every child who comes through the door, often because they simply have space, with a positive adult workforce, can transform children’s lives. For the first time, some have space to grow, even if, from time to time, they rail against the system. Children are little humans and have, at their age, perhaps less self-control than adults are supposed to have. They make errors of judgement.

For eight of the past ten years, until two years ago, I did substantial work with Inclusion Quality Mark. This came up in conversation this week, as a Twitter acquaintance proudly told me that her school had recently received confirmation of the award. As I had been instrumental in developing the audit in use from 2015, I was aware of the qualities that the school would have displayed, as there were significant common themes that ran through each, although there were contextual adaptations to evident need.

It made me have a look at bits that I wrote during that time, after visits to schools. The following is an extract from one summary, anonymised.

To move from Special Measures to Outstanding in three years suggests that something special happens in London Primary School. Whilst working with the same staff, the school has seen a rapid turn-around. The principle can be easily stated, as Personalisation in everything, holding to the Every Child Matters ethos, although the practical aspects are more complex to describe. London encounters virtually every identifiable barrier to learning, seeks to identify root causes and then to find solutions which allows each child to feel valued and to develop self-esteem, from which learning needs can be addressed, as children have the skills to cope when errors are made. 

Passionate, articulate, hard-working, engaged, analytical, purposeful, creative, inspirational and visionary are all adjectives that can be attributed to the London staff. It was a pleasure to spend quality time in their company.

Equally, if I could nominate a school where Inclusion is lived and breathed, it would be London. It permeates every aspect of school life, perhaps, as the Head of School commented, “With so much need, we have no choice but to use inclusive approaches”. But inclusion at London is more than that statement; it is the raison d’etre, like a stick of rock, sliced anywhere, the word Inclusive would be seen, hearts, minds, bodies and souls are dedicated to the same aims. Although the end of term was in sight, there was still and energy and vibrancy to the school which belied its Victorian building, although even that had been imaginatively used to enhance all aspects of teaching and learning, from Nursery to eleven.

I came away from this visit to London Primary with two thoughts that summarise its outlook:-

 The staff give above and beyond what one can reasonably expect of them.
 Nobody is left out, child or adult. All are valued for their unique gifts and talents.
Two quotes from a parent and a teacher add to the summary:-
“Like a big family.”
“We offer a glimmer of hope in their lives. We are here to make a difference.”
While an external view was that:-
“The school makes excellent links with the community and other schools to deliver a high quality of service to families”.

The school aims for every child to have a happy and active primary education in an environment that is caring and supporting. It provides a stimulating and structured environment in which every child will be encouraged to reach their full potential.”

Teachers, at all levels of experience, take their responsibilities very seriously, working hard to improve themselves through personal reading and regular networking, where this is easily available. Some are prepared to spend part of a weekend at conferences. They want to offer the best of themselves, so that every child receives the best that they can offer. The best teaching context is collegiate, with expertise willingly shared.

External judgements on the system, schools or individual teachers often creates a negative image; for seemingly thirty years it has often been found wanting and “in need of improvement”, to use an Ofsted judgement, while children may be judged to “not be at national standard” at SATs. Some of these children may well be told this throughout their schooling. And yet, we are, as a profession, acutely aware that labels hurt children (people), this being one of the arguments for removing levels, but we’re in a cultural period where no-one quite knows exactly what to expect of children’s outcomes, as there isn’t, as yet, a common expectation that can be articulated and demonstrated. Teacher insecurity can lead to insecure advice and guidance. We are also at a point where long serving teachers are retiring, to be replaced by younger, less experienced staff. A recent post looked at different stages of teacher development, where less experiences professionals may be more likely to be concerned with getting structures right than the details of specific needs.

Collegiality, quality mentoring and high quality communication are key to safeguarding educational opportunities for each child.

Inclusion is a personal and school wide ethos. It cannot thrive in isolated pockets, without frustration creeping in. Poor communication and inaccessibility engender parent and teacher annoyance with each other. Frustration, on either side can lead to rapidly diminishing relationships, which then have to be tackled before the needs of the children can be addressed.
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I’ve included again, the general outcomes from multiple visits to schools to look at Inclusion (above) and also a link to a post that looks at the underlying principles of inclusive practice.
 
 
It can be a salutary experience to really take a look at yourself first.
 

Have you ever had the experience of "corpsing" or "bottling it" during a public performance? How much rehearsal is "enough" or possibly too much?

​Some years ago, personal relaxation time was provided through plating in a performance folk dance group band, from which, occasionally, we morphed into a barn dance ensemble for special occasions. In addition to playing the Irish drum, the bodhran, which I'd played in France in front of an audience of 3000, I also stepped out from the band to sing folk songs appropriate to the occasion.

​This was fine, until the day that I literally froze mid-song. I’d sung this particular version of “As I walked out, one bright May morning” many times, but for some reason, the beginning of the next verse eluded me. In front of an audience of 100 people, I was stuck. Fortunately, the band discretely started to clap, as if the song had finished and I slunk back behind my drum. The experience was so stark and devastating, my confidence so dented, that it has stuck with me ever since.

We’re into observation season for ITT trainees. They are, during an observation, on show, demonstrating their current abilities. It’s very public, with an audience of children adding to the adults in the room; the TAs are as much part of the audience as the class teacher and, occasionally, an external tutor.

This has also heightened to me the ways in which we ask children to perform, every minute of every day, changing their focus from one lesson to another, often with just a few minutes’ hiatus. Some lessons are highly performance based; PE, dance, drama, music and art come to mind, but reading aloud could be seen as performance, as can being put on the spot to answer a question. It’s the immediacy that can cause a tension in an insecure child required to respond, perform and achieve. Where there is the potential for responses to be right or wrong, the insecure child may take time to respond.

Desert Island Discs interviewee on 10.3.17 was Jimmy Carr. Most people will know of the seemingly brash, confident comedian, prepared to say the unsayable. It was with great interest that I listened to him talking of his childhood that was marked by late diagnosed dyslexia that left him unconfident in class reading lessons. That he went on to exam success and to Cambridge was down to teachers later in his career who believed in his abilities and focused him in the right way.

Wait time; helpful or not?

I watched a class lesson, based on bible reading, with the teacher reading aloud from the bible, while every child had their own copy and had to “read along with the teacher”. For me, there were a number potentially issues built into this activity from the start; the readability level of the text and the reading ability of the class as a whole. While the additional adults were deployed with the readers with greatest need, there was no guarantee that the children were reading with any accuracy, or with understanding. Wait time is a useful technique, allowing a child a bit of thinking time before responding. Well used, it can be the difference between offering an answer and becoming tongue tied and unable, or unwilling to answer. When one of the struggling readers was asked a question, the pressure to answer was great and became more so as the wait time progressed. Fortunately, the teacher offered an opportunity to think longer by going to another child. An alternative would have been for the child to talk with her supporting adult, who could act as advocate for ideas.

Rehearsal time.

When I was a class teacher, the prevailing orthodoxy in reading was to hear individuals. Where this was planned, it was possible to think ahead and “line-up” readers, who would be called, by offering them time to come out of the activity that they were doing and allow some time to go back over a few pages of already read material, so that they were prepared to move onto the next few pages to be read aloud. This preparation, or rehearsal, was very valuable for vulnerable readers, for whom reading aloud can be sufficiently great to diminish their performance, meaning that they might receive less than flattering feedback.

Where any form of reading aloud is envisaged, I would always advocate a period of time where the children could do some personal practice ahead of the reading, especially if they have moved from one subject to another. Where an additional adult is available, some children could do this out loud, while others, if iPads are available, could record themselves reading aloud and listen back.

Responsive teaching.

Watching for the nuanced responses of children is a key element of responsive teaching. Spotting and responding to evident need in timely fashion is an example of quality teaching. It is very easy to miss tell-tale signs, especially if the teacher is in training or in their early career. As I wrote in an earlier blog, inexperienced, developing teachers move from structural considerations to more holistic, child-evidenced decisions.

Not everyone is a naturally outgoing personality.

We hope in schools, that we offer a safe environment where it is possible to make an error, in any aspect of life, without it being blown out of proportion. Should it become so, it can have a long term detrimental effect on future effort and outcomes.

Insecurity in any form can become debilitating. It is the teacher role to minimise the potential for learning opportunities to add to present insecurity. Children know if they struggle with learning; they don’t need it exaggerated. We need them all to be active participants, but not necessarily in a starring role.

In this regard, I do have some concerns about some 1:1 teaching; are these children potentially under too much scrutiny?  

​Images are of "Octan" playing and rehearsing for the Truffe de Perigeux; Chris Chivers, Paul Fane and Nick Manley.

Deconstruction of Walderton farmhouse

When Shakin’ Stevens sang “Ain’t gonna need this house no longer, ain’t gonna need this house no more, ain’t got time to fix the shingles, ain’t got time to fix the floor”, he obviously hadn’t met with the people who run the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum at Singleton, near Chichester. Their mission is to save old houses that otherwise would become derelict and their historical heritage lost.
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These houses are painstakingly taken apart, marked, measured and mapped, so that they can be repaired as necessary and then put back together in such a way that they are accessible to a very large number of visitors during each year. The team also reconstructs buildings of archaeological interest, recently building a Saxon Hall from evidence of a 950AD structure from Steyning in West Sussex.

​When my children were young, being naturally inquisitive, they regularly asked “What does that word say?” The response was the whole word, with perhaps a side order of sharing the first letter sound. Children want to understand the world around them, and awareness of words is a significant part of that. For deconstructing, in current parlance, read decoding, the new orthodoxy. Young children don’t necessarily want to know that “Road” says “R-OA-D”, or worse “R-O-A D”; or perhaps try “Crescent”. They want the word, perhaps because they are also naturally seeking meaning, to make sense of the world. That they are aware that a written road name “says” something is a step to note, in itself?

I have already said that I can see great benefit in deconstructing to determine the parts that can then be put back together. A large number of words conform to rules according to how letters are linked together; equally, there are many that don’t. Listening to children read who are over-reliant on decoding can be a painful business, especially if this is their approach to each word. Reading requires some fluency, to enable sentences to create an overall meaning, which, in turn, requires retention of whole words, or significant chunks of words that allow rapid construction of the less secure parts.

To my analytical mind, deconstruction (decoding) leads to reconstruction (encoding), then to retention, for rapid retrieval when required in context, by definition the reconstructed word, in memory becomes a (recognised on) sight word, a form of word matching.

I can remember the pleasure of playing with words, within “word families”. Having learned a simple word like “at” beginning to add letters to make additional words: - bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, tat, vat, or “it”: - bit, fit, git, hit, kit, lit, mit(ten), nit, pit, sit, tit, wit. Coupled with learning nursery rhymes and simple songs, words like this and the idea of rhyming allowed children to be explorers of words.

I have worried about the potential for approaches advocated since 1997, with the National Strategies and Assessing Pupil Progress (APP), that the curriculum, as a whole has become disjointed through deconstruction, requiring the learner to make sense of large parts of the journey, without a clear picture of where everything fits; a bit like trying to make a complicated jigsaw without sight of the picture.

I made this point, in this way, to Lord Dearing at a local curriculum review conference, because teachers were finding themselves in a similar position. The current curriculum approach has an even greater feel of an incomplete jigsaw. In fact, at times, it feels like someone decided to throw the bits out and ask people to find them first; not much fun playing an incomplete game.

A lack of overall narrative, or breadth of knowledge and understanding, allows smaller elements that are in place to assume greater prominence than each perhaps should have, as busy teachers seek to cement some simplicities into the complexities of the curriculum demand. Some schools seek to simplify further by giving some subjects greater prominence at the expense of others, diminishing the conceptual and vocabulary base.

Much mention has been made recently of the need to memorise, thoughts in working memory leading to storage in long term memory, with the potential for cognitive overload and dissonance thrown in for good measure.

There is the idea that the current simplicity ensures no cognitive overload, that working memory is only put to a particular use and that this is then stored and retained, for easy recovery when needed.
If only life and learning were that simple, we’d have been doing that forever. The narrative of sharing ideas with learners often leads, in the telling, to the leader making links with other ideas, some of which are aroused in memory simply in the telling, a link having been made by the use of a word, or seeing something in an image that jogs a thought. These tangents can sometimes be seen as new insights, which arise as much within discourse as in “deep reflection”.
This, for me, is one reason why teachers need to be excellent storytellers and children need to talk their ideas, in discussion with an adult, who can offer appropriate additional linked asides that add value to the retelling.

We don’t know the capacity of a child’s working memory, nor do we have any idea about their long term mental organisation, but we can assume that these will vary. Unless there is very good modelling of ideas in a framework that makes sense to the child, they will be struggling cognitively. As an adult, if you have been in a lecture and found an idea interesting or challenging and spent time reflecting on that, is that at the expense of the next few minutes of the talk? I know that I have, probably on many occasions.

Learning can be hard.
The problem, for a learner, in a deconstructed environment, where they have no clear map or picture, nor signposts to how things link together, is that they then have to try to put things together for themselves. It is not surprising if many find this very challenging; some may be experiencing working memory or cognitive overload or, in extremis, stress.
It can be made even harder if it isn’t articulately presented and effectively scaffolded, through appropriate concrete and visual modelling and examples that encapsulate the concepts that are embedded within the subject specific vocabulary and processes being espoused.

Learning is often hidden in the language used.
The teacher is, at times, an interpreter, even in a home language, where extended vocabulary needs to have a developmental relationship to earlier forms. This may be specific within subjects, but needs unpicking if gaps in learner understanding are to be bridged.
 
Deconstruction, without reconstruction, leads inevitably to gaps, as bits are not picked up and put back into place. If the gaps are in the teacher element, it’s not surprising if the learner demonstrates those gaps.
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Put your learning jigsaw together with clarity, share the overall picture, then unpick the pieces as they become relevant during the journey.
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Walderton farmhouse, reconstructed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presenter

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holistic approach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Task Setting (What’s the challenge?)

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

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

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

Knowledge and Skills

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

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

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

Active Processing- Making Sense of Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the outcome good enough?

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

Plotting and monitoring are key teacher skills.

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

Target setting.

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

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

An alternative approach is to

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much stretch does an elastic band have?

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

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

Continuing my thinking about improving teaching through moderation and mentoring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Schools Week, on 27th January 2016, ran a story by Freddie Whittaker, about Government plans outlined by Jonathan Slater, the DfE Permanent Secretary, to introduce a post graduate scheme, to be called an apprenticeship route into teaching. This is being designed to run in line with the apprenticeship levy, soon to be introduced into schools, top-slicing funds to then be claimed back if apprentice teachers are developed. There is some discussion whether this will replace the current School Direct route.

Post-grad routes into teaching cost money, whether PGCE or School Direct, with the latter occasionally offering a few candidates a salaried route. The majority pay the £9k university fee and fund their living. It will be interesting to discover whether the apprenticeship is a salaried route and whether university fees are paid by the school, the Government or the trainee.

Trainees currently have to pass an English and Maths test before starting training, are required to have at least ten days in-school experience before their compulsory interview.

Current routes provide periods of training, interspersed with in-school experience, with clear guidance on what should be experienced within these periods. The training has to be at graduate level, whether in a university setting or a school-based approach. Trainees, on both routes, have assignments set by universities which are marked by university staff.

Both routes have systems of Quality Control, with external staff monitoring the quality of experience being offered. This is in addition to in-school quality controls, where trainees are supported by mentors and senior school staff.
There is a current need for teachers undertaking training for teaching, that experience must be had across two key stages. This can mean, in Primary, key stage one and two separate experiences, in two different settings. One is the substantial setting, the other is a minimum of six weeks experience.

But, there is always going to be variability in a human system.

·         Selection of trainees, will depend on the quality of the people available.
·         Will potential new trainees be subject to interview and have to pass the skills tests, as now?
·         The training sessions will vary with the person leading the session.
·         Mentoring can vary widely, from limited to extensive. Mentors can vary from untrained to Masters level training.
·         Schools as a whole range in preparation. By taking a trainee, they become a de facto training school, with every member of staff taking a training role in developing the trainee.
·         The variability of school settings can be the cause of concern with the second, shorter experience, where the trainee has to demonstrate quality skills rapidly.

This then raises questions.

·         Who will select the potential apprentices as trainees?
·         If individual schools, how will quality selection be assured?
·         Will they be subject to interviews and the skills tests as now?
·         Who will provide the training sessions, at the appropriate level?
·         Is the school prepared as a whole staff to undertake training of an apprentice?
·         Will there be a nominated senior training member of staff, with status and time to oversee and coordinate the process, including regular developmental and quality control observations?
·         Who will sign off on achievement?
·         Will there then be the NQT year as now?

If an apprenticeship route into teaching is to be successful, therefore, it will need several new layers of bureaucracy, in the same way as should exist for all other routes into teaching. This would need to be at national and regional level, linked to the available universities. There would need to be a coordinated training army of teacher mentors, for subject specific and pedagogic training, together with secretarial backup to ensure that training spaces were available to need. There would need to be management training, as quality control and to have specific staff designated as coordinators. Mentors would have to have time off-timetable, to be able to undertake training and also to create quality development time to work with the trainees.

If future teachers are to be trained in-school, starting as apprentices, then the current situation of every school creating their own systems across all aspects of pedagogy would also need to be questioned. At a recent meeting with SD mentors, I asked each to describe their current approach to assessment. Within nine mentors there were seven systems, including four variations on the local County scheme. This, in itself, causes trainees difficulty in their second experience, as they have to get to grips with significant system change, as well as new children and current expectations of them. They are far less nuanced in their decisions on the second experience.

Mind you, the same could be said of many teachers changing schools in the current climate. It’s not surprising that there is so much talk of burn-out and workload issues. Ever changing systems add to the day job considerably.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, everyone has to start somewhere. It’s a truism, but, if a new generation is to take on the mantle of becoming teachers, the systems that lead to them doing so have to be clear and understandable, on order for them to be enacted successfully. It cannot be left to chance. There is too much at stake; someone’s livelihood and children’s life experiences.

Related blogs on mentoring…

http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/the-importance-of-being-a-mentor
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/on-mentoring-schools
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/mentoring-can-be-excellent-cpd
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/personal-development
http://chrischiversthinks.weebly.com/blog-thinking-aloud/teaching-is-a-team-game

​

Teaching is a multi-dimensional puzzle. It takes a certain amount of lateral thinking to coordinate all the aspects which go to make up a good or very good lesson. Being very good at one aspect may not ensure excellence in another. It is the holistic visualisation of the dynamics of the lesson which allows the teacher to extemporise, to go off-piste and follow an idea, knowing how to get back to the main path. Inevitably, there will be some element of personal interpretation, which some commentators describe as bias, but that can be addressed through moderation activity.

Outstanding practitioners can do this with relative ease and may be at a point in their career where informed instinct/intuition governs reactions, based on thought processes that have already been rehearsed and honed many times in many classrooms.

Essentially, good teachers think through every aspect of every lesson;

·         within their planning;
·         as they share essential information at the beginning of the lesson, interpreting difficult ideas and vocabulary through modelling and synonymous, appropriate word use;
·         within their in-lesson interactions, tailoring responses to individual children, whose neds are well known, or become evident;
·         then in post-lesson evaluation, to determine where they can next take the class learning.
·         And every aspect of this is based on their judgement, which refines over time. In other words, teachers spend their time making judgements or assessing situations.

For NQTs, teachers new to a school or for developing teachers, all of whom are picking up a great deal of information very quickly, practice may still seem like a series of structures or activities to be accomplished, each part being seen as separate, so having reduced impact on subsequent decisions. This could be seen as a structural phase.

Working alongside ITE students, it is very clear that they are trying to put together the pieces so that they make sense. In this situation, it’s also possible for inexperienced teachers to seek to shortcut the thinking need, as time is pressured and to adopt bright ideas from more experienced colleagues without fully understanding the processes behind them. This can lead to poor delivery, poor experience for learners and poor outcomes, which are then demotivating for everyone concerned.

Preparing for a group of School Direct trainees recently, I had to present ideas on assessment. The previous week, as part of the SD programme, I held a meeting with the trainee mentors and explored background issues facing the trainees on their second experience in a new school. High on the agenda was assessment, with nine mentors articulating seven different approaches to that issue, including four variations on the local County scheme. All had “tweaked” the system in some way. So it became clear that assessment (essentially tracking systems) was very much school specific. None was confident that they had finished developing their system.

In many ways, over the past few years, the certainties that had held sway for nigh on thirty years had been overturned by the arrival of the new National Curriculum in 2014, with associated SEND changes. The fact that there was no integral assessment element within the NC was to enable schools to develop their own models, as if they wouldn’t be hard pressed to embed the curriculum and the SEND changes at the same time, while still teaching from the older curriculum…

While, to some, there was a need for change, for a large number, losing the securities of the past was a cause for concern. It is interesting that a visit to a local special school today, recently achieving an outstanding Ofsted grade, had decided to keep levels as a better descriptor of their children’s progress.

There have always been a number of strands to any curriculum, the essential knowledge within a subject and the skill set needed to be able to use and apply that knowledge in appropriate contexts.

The knowledge base starts from early stages through to post-doctoral levels. Young children, coming to some knowledge for the first time, will need time to familiarise themselves with the novelty, then seek to compare this with other things that they know, hanging ideas together, as similarities and differences. They learn the vocabulary to go with the knowledge. In fact the vocabulary begins to embed the knowledge. Words like dog, cat, rabbit and bird become generic descriptors for sub-categories of the broader group of animals. Later, ideas such as terrier, bulldog, Chihuahua might build additional detail into that classification.

So, to some extent, there is structural knowledge, which might be something like a timeline in history; knowing that the Tudors came after the Normans, with associated date parameters. Knowing about William the Conqueror and Henry VIII is likely to embed specific details. How much detail is appropriate can be a matter of decision for the teacher and this can even vary within any class. Sharing knowledge is not the same as acquiring that knowledge.

Teachers need knowledge, in general and specific terms, particularly for those subject areas that they teach. Some will organise this  as knowledge organisers, aides memoire for teaching. The approach and challenges that arise will be determined by the teacher in broader plans.

When I was a head, every subject had age appropriate topic specifications, developed with the County inspectorate, that showed the essential knowledge, the potential questions or challenges that could be developed and the available school resources, including teacher guides.

Within the specs, we also included key skills associated with the knowledge, to combine the two elements within practical tasking.

What we developed, essentially, was a curriculum map, covering reception to year 6, with every subject mapped from early stages, with year group specific, knowledge based themes, appropriate to the age group, but with the addition of extension challenges to ensure that every child could be engaged appropriately.

In addition, we had organised exercise books and personalised writing and maths targets and records that also doubled as aides memoire to the child and the adults in the classroom. Where these were based on the level descriptors, they could just as easily be developed from the new curriculum KPIs. These allowed real-time tracking of children’s achievements.
​
The holistic system also supported assessments at different points, of a developmental nature, but also, where needed, as a summary.

Teachers are the lead thinkers and decision makers in a classroom:-

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

If teacher-think is the essential component of enhanced learning opportunities, there needs to be consideration of the barriers to this thinking. There will be more for each list.

Personal barriers:-
•             Subject or pedagogic knowledge.
•             Extended experience with a specific age group or ability range. (New school, new year group)
•             Personal order, organisation, record keeping, reflective practice.
•             Self-confidence, possible status with learners.

External:-
•             Demands for planning (thinking) in a particular format.
•             School specific, preferred approaches to teaching and learning.
•             School specific schemes, with limited opportunity to adapt to class need.
•             School organisation demanding whole year approaches.
•             School resources, including the availability of support.
•             Work space limiting some approaches.
•             Regular changes to practice to accord with external influences.
•             Local context issues, such as parent demands, children arriving at school with social or personal issues, behavioural distractions.
•             Changes at National level, particularly where there is an extended period of uncertainty about policy interpretation.

Fear:-
The greatest impact on teacher-think is the fear of being judged as ineffective and found wanting. There is a need to quality-assure teaching and learning is a school. It is naïve to think otherwise, but the systems in place can add to the stress of being observed, both at school and inspection level.

The value of feedback from an observation is to retell the lesson narrative, highlighting significant points, as a basis for discussion and development. Internal observations should always happen on this basis, not as a numeric judgement, in the same way that feedback to learners to support future learning is better as description than an arbitrary grade.

Teachers work within human systems, which can appear sometimes to be less than humane. The best systems look out for the individuals who make up the team, providing support and guidance to colleagues in the same way they do to children. Even the best practitioners can suffer a dip in performance when life offers personal challenges. Thoughtful, reflective management breeds thoughtful, reflective, autonomous teachers and independence in learners. 
​
Teaching is a great job, but free the teachers to think, that’s what they are paid to do.
​

Meaning
Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own judgement, initiative and perceptions rather than a pre-determined plan or mechanical aids.

Origin
This is early aviation parlance. Aircraft initially had few navigation aids and flying was accomplished by means of the pilot's judgment. The term emerged in the 1930s and was first widely used in reports of Douglas Corrigan's flight from the USA to Ireland in 1938.
​
That flight was reported in many US newspapers of the day, including this piece, titled 'Corrigan Flies By The Seat Of His Pants', in The Edwardsville Intelligencer, 19th July 1938:
​
"Douglas Corrigan was described as an aviator 'who flies by the seat of his pants' today by a mechanic who helped him rejuvenate the plane which airport men have now nicknamed the 'Spirit of $69.90'. The old flying expression of 'flies by the seat of his trousers' was explained by Larry Conner, means going aloft without instruments, radio or other such luxuries."

Of course, no teacher would ever enter a classroom without a pre-determined plan, or without appropriate “mechanical aids” would they? But, from time to time a reality check might reveal that the lesson is not going to plan or the mechanical aids, including worksheets, in the classroom are malfunctioning.

In both cases, the teacher awareness should determine the need for a different course of action, perhaps including a complete rethink to cope with the evident need.

Awareness and adaptation, brought about by teacher judgement, can be the encapsulation of teacher standards 6&5, within a lesson. This can be for the whole class, a group or individuals, any of whom can show that they are not accommodating the needs of the lesson. A rapid intervention to ascertain the issue could result in a small amount of in-lesson teaching or adjustment of the challenge. Equally, children who appear to be getting through work easily and finish well ahead of the others need to be accommodated with additional challenge.

Building awareness is something that takes a while, derived from reflective practice within and between lessons. Reflection that leads to alteration of actions within the lesson is akin to “seat of the pants” assessment. It is potentially also key evidence that may need to be noted, especially for vulnerable children, but also for high achievers.

The whole is premised on how well the teacher knows the children whom they teach. In the early days this is likely to be global, with a few highlights standing out for different reasons. Over time, this will become more refined, as the teacher works more and more closely to the class needs. When change occurs, as sometimes happens for the new academic year, or when a trainee starts a second school experience, this can mean a regression to more global demands again. Getting to know the children as quickly as possible enables a rapid recalibration of the teacher instrumentation, so that the main instrument available to the teacher, their power of thought, is operating effectively.

Some time ago, I developed a series of assessment tips, which I shared.

#assessmenttip 1 Watch what children are doing. Spot the difference between today and yesterday/last week/month. Identify and celebrate.
#assessmenttip 2 Get children to talk about what they are doing. Ask Qs to clarify and explore their thinking. Ask Qs to challenge.
#assessmenttip 3 Engage in what they are producing, both in terms of appropriate skill and also the detail of the outcome. Check, advise...
#assessmenttip 4 Keep records, be aware of outcomes that can show developing patterns that might require deeper engagement.
#assessmenttip 5 Ask questions that need answers to show clearly what a child "knows" (at the point of testing)
#assessmenttip 6 If in doubt, work closely with individuals, observe, talk, question, clarify, reflect, repeat as necessary.
#assessmenttip 7 Broaden your understanding of children's outcomes to balance your judgement, especially at the upper/lower margins.
#assessmenttip 8 Create learning challenge that enables children to demonstrate looked for skills and knowledge.
#assessmenttip 9 Know chn, plan challenge, engage learners, advise, adjust to need, check outcomes, know chn better. Refine next challenges.
#assessmenttip 10 Sit down, think of a child, sum up what you know about him/her and what you need to know next. Repeat for class.
#assessmenttip 10a Write a classlist. Who gets remembered early? Who gets forgotten?
#assessmenttip 11 Write down essential information, to collate over time, to determine patterns. You can't remember everything.
#assessmenttip 12 If you can’t remember all the targets and the details of what you want from each and every child, tweak your work books, so that they become personal learning organisers.
#assessmenttip 13 Recognise limits of your own skill. Use the skills, knowledge and experience of others to extend/enhance, to benefit learners.
 
Reality strikes.

A parent approaches you in the playground and asks after their child.

Do you:-
Say that you’ll talk to them after you’ve run a series of tests?
Give them an overview of their child’s current approach to school and some insights into their strengths and areas for improvement?

The chances are that the second is the norm, even if it is delayed until after school, by invitation; pop in after school and have a chat.

The conversation between parent and teacher will be informed by the teacher judgement, summing up the child’s efforts over the recent past. Both these conversations and the writing of reports, whether short and succinct or slightly longer, are examples of summative assessments. They are a point in time, a sort of child MOT, only good on the day, as the next day, hopefully continued progress will have moved the child on.

Security in knowing the child, in a rounded form and in relation to others, is key to all sound judgements. Knowing what is good, or good enough and how it could be even better provides the basis for decisions. Learning is a journey and a process, capable of being tweaked and altered to cater for need.

So why are we seemingly so afraid of assessment? Shouldn’t it be the hallmark of good teaching that the teacher knows the children sufficiently well to be able to sum them up in an instant? Just knowing the child enables in-lesson decisions from the teacher, even on the level of “they’ve got/not got it”, with instant next steps decisions made.
Life is full of snap decisions; teaching is no different.

Assessment is essentially how well a teacher knows a child at any particular point in time and the decisions that arise from that knowledge.
​

It ain’t what you know, but the way that you use it…

It’s been a bit of a week, probably a good one to go out and buy a hard hat, if you spend any time on Twitter. It wasn’t just raining, it was, on occasion, literally pouring. Bile ducts were seemingly emptied on the heads of a few writers willing to proffer views with were opposite to others; as if people can’t see things in a different light. If it wasn’t knowledge, which it largely was, it’s overtaken by some element of English teaching, but that invariably comes back to children’s lack of knowledge that can be utilised within their oral or written efforts or in their ability to decode the written word.

The two “camps” could be described as those who think they can impart knowledge by sharing a specific body of knowledge, within their classroom teaching and those who seek to develop this knowledge through a variety of linking experiences, including the spoken word.
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This can sometimes appear to be the divide between (some) Primary and Secondary practitioners, with the extended argument that Primary learning is all discovery and play. That the approach is sometimes different, I wouldn’t want to argue, it can become a moot point, but, in reality, it’s likely that there is more convergence than divergence. Whereas young children “play with ideas” through active engagement and sometimes concrete examples, older children, hopefully, are more able to “play with ideas”, so have greater insights from their developed vocabularies.
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There’s a small residual box of my “historical bits” in the loft, which I have reserved simply as keepsakes. There’s a glass plate negative of my paternal grandfather standing beside a biplane on which he worked before 1918. My father never knew his father, as he was born in 1919, while my grandfather died in the Spanish flu of 18/19. Flying solo was a metaphor for my father’s life, as well as my own, as a result of parental divorce.

Flying solo can also be a metaphor for development as a teacher. From the initial stages of learning the fundamentals of the craft, making errors and occasionally crash landings, gradually, controlling the whole class becomes easier, enabling the key messages to be developed effectively. I spend a great deal of my working year with ITE trainees in schools. At every step they are seeking to prove that they are not just developing as future teachers, with potential, but that they are offering opportunity at a good level.

Eventually, the trainee achieves sufficient status and then flies solo. They have to make appropriate preparations and checks before embarking on the journey, to have a log book that records what they intend. They need to learn to read the signals “in-flight” and take notice of potential hazards, without reference to their textbooks, or thinking “What would “expert name” do?”, making appropriate adjustments within the flight. Post-flight, they will evaluate the outcomes, learning for the next opportunity.

January sees many of the School Direct trainees embarking on their second school experience, moving from their substantive practice, where they have become familiar with routines and expectations, to a completely new environment where, within the six week half term, they have to again show they are good, as defined by the teacher standards.

In the best situations a trainee will have a well-informed, very involved mentor, prepared to provide coaching to the trainee, within and between the lesson.

A visit to the Discovery Centre (library) in Gosport yesterday brought me into contact with a small display. What drew my attention was a photograph of a biplane and engineer which was almost exactly like that with my grandfather.

The accompanying text detailed a development made in the Gosport engineering works around 1918, where a rubber tube with effectively a funnel at each end was used to link the trainee pilot with their instructor behind. This simple device avoided more accidents as the instructor could make the trainee alter their behaviour and engage in actions that would be more effective, or resolve issues before they became more difficult or dangerous.

This is a relatively simple act that can prompt behaviours in the developing trainee, altering their behaviour in the classroom context. There are systems now that effectively emulate the rubber tube and funnels, with digital in-ear coaching, while lesson study activities can further develop awareness.

Developing the next generation of teachers is the responsibility of the whole profession. Where schools, as a whole, share responsibility for development, the trainee benefits from the collective knowledge. Where trainees and NQTs are left to their own devices, it is not surprising if they begin to flounder and crash land. Opportunity to talk, to discuss successes and areas for development must be available. Too often, the mentoring role is given to an already busy teacher. This can lead to the mentor only operating in a judgemental role, diminishing the development of the trainee to simplified target setting and achievement. Helping the trainee to understand how to improve is as important as telling them what to improve.

This echoes every learning situation.

If you are a mento to a trainee nect term, the following might be a useful aide memoire to support your and their organisation and lead to early successes.

Considering Post Graduate and School Direct Short Placements.
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Being such a short experience, the six/seven weeks will fly past very quickly, so, in order to maximise the potential for a successful practice I offer the following organisational insights from previous experiences.

The first thing is to secure the professional standards as per this diagram.

#teacher5aday #nurture1617

Happy New Year; pass through your doors gently and be happy. Live each day well and be grateful for waking up!
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​For information, the artist is Bobby Bale. A broader collection of her images can be seen at her website.

It’s as “easy” as TIC, TAC, TOE; team inside the community, team around the community and team of experts. It's also a useful mantra for graduated SEN practice.

If you are old enough to remember the days before Local Management of Schools, LMS, you will probably recall the limited funds available for schools to buy “essentials”, such as all the consumables. If you were lucky, the authority, in the form of an adviser, might look kindly upon a project and offer a small pump-priming fund, usually supplemented by the PTA fund raising.

These were the days of twilight training sessions, often a series of five or six, at the local teacher’s centre, led by local teachers whose expertise was identified as worth sharing. If you were lucky, you got to do a “Gurney Dixon”; a weekend at the County residential centre. It was not as swish as it might sound. On a few occasions, I had to share my room with the caretaker’s stores, but it was taken as the norm; it was cheap training. The sessions cost the school nothing, but did demand a significant commitment to personal development. However, it did ensure that expertise was shared as widely as possible through the authority.

In-house expertise was equally generously shared, so that the “specialist” would be happy to spend time sharing ideas to help less experienced colleagues. I can remember leaving with ideas that I then went back to my classroom and played, or sat in the library and went through the available books. It was a time of self-help and self-reliance; make do and mend was the mantra. Pencil pots and other stationery containers, made from well-washed tins, covered in wallpaper, or if you were lucky, in sticky back plastic. Paper holders were adapted and covered soap powder boxes. Show boxes of the right size housed the cassette tapes.

LMS enabled internal decision making on school priorities, enabling often significant spending on quality equipment and staffing, especially if the school enjoyed a rising roll. “What would you like?” could replace “What do we need?”
Belt-tightening has been on school agendas for a while and may yet have time before the most difficult decisions have to be taken. Staff reduction decisions are always the most difficult for any school.

CPD could become a casualty, unless there are some changes in approach. To send a member of staff off site, to a central site for a conference could cost several hundred pounds, with supply cover, travel, the cost of the conference and perhaps food. It doesn’t take long for even a generous budget to be spent.

It has often been stated that there is as much discrepancy in practice within a school as there is between schools. What would be the case if every teacher in the community was as good as the best and how could that be achieved?
What do you do, though, to address the constant feeling of busyness?

TIC; Team inside the community. Are you a talking establishment? It’s well worth while looking at the mechanisms within the school that enable an appropriate level of discussion and information sharing that starts with induction practices and then continues. Has the school audited the skills of each member of staff to see where well-needed expertise lies? How are staff meetings and closure days used to support the dissemination of expertise? Is coaching time made available? Is expertise made available in written form? Is there a staff bookshelf, and is it actually used?

Short term additional “staffing” can become a reality within partnership arrangements with ITE providers, especially if final practice trainees are hosted. After a settling period, and a judgement of secure practice, the mentor can plan some time out of the classroom. Releasing staff in-house is a great deal less costly than sending them on a course.

TAC; team around the community. Do you talk outside you school; at all levels? It is really important for a school to recognise the limits of the internal expertise, and, when shared, this will become a reality. It is also essential not to feel alone in the enterprise of developing the school. Schools will develop to the level of the best, but, if the best is not as good as the best elsewhere, how can that expertise be accessed?

If the school works within a cluster, or a local academy group or federation, the expertise in one establishment could be deployed or purchased into a receiving school, to mutual benefit. This could be in the form of twilight sessions, as per the earlier model, or it could be purchased release to model and discuss aspects of practice. This is good CPD for the person delivering also, as they move into a training role.

In attending a number of Saturday conferences, Pedagoo, TLT16 and #LearningFirst (Bath) it has struck me that teachers want to get better at their job. This might prove an appropriate model for some. The #teacher5aday group has organised, and is organising another weekend CPD “retreat”.

There are many models that can begin to address development based on local expertise.

TOE; team of experts. How do you decide when you need a little extra? In some geographic areas, the availability of expertise may soon appear to be evaporated. At this point, or to make a significant impact on an aspect of school development, it may be opportune to buy in someone with acknowledged wider expertise. This could be from a local university, a local inspector, or one of the growing army of consultants. It is a case of “pay your money and take your chance”. The brief needs to be clear and concise and the expert has to have the skills to deliver. There won’t be many readers who have not sat through a training session that has not quite hit the mark.

Local clusters of schools, banding together, can create significantly greater budget for a one-off event, which may be much more cost effective.

When it comes down to it, though, there is a significant simplicity. CPD is communicating the knowledge from someone with acknowledged expertise to others with a need to develop. Making some quality time to talk is therefore paramount. This can start from sitting in a classroom with a cup of tea after school going through an idea with colleagues. It does need goodwill and teacher involvement and ownership of their own need to identify and incorporate their training needs.

Learning to teach is a life-long need. There is always a need to accommodate to change, from a move to another year group, another school, or another curricular adjustment.
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Teachers need to remain learners. Learning should be a shared enterprise, or it could become three strikes and you’re out, of date…

In another school, I started the topic with an “I spy trail” creation project with the local Secondary art (photography) department support. Children, working in small groups, started at the “village” centre and went in one of six directions. They had to decide on and record (Juniors drew, Secondary photographed) twenty different features along the route. On return, they swapped drawings and had to follow the trail. On the return to school, the trails were interpreted as sketch maps, with written instructions.
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Within our locality, we also have the Iron-age Farm, which started on the top of Butser Hill, as an experimental archaeological site, developed by the late Peter Reynolds. This has been redeveloped in Chalton, south of Petersfield, still with an experimental brief, but more of a visitor experience. These early buildings were a source of great interest, with exploration of the basic materials, where they might have been sourced, reflections on how they were cut and prepared with very basic tools, moved from distance to where they were needed. Working at heights without scaffolding etc. Challenging their preconceived ideas. The experimental site introduced early textiles, food storage and other basic needs.

A mapping project in another setting, looking at the village development over a few hundred years of maps, sourced from the County archive, led to a drawing and investigation walk to the village centre. The Georgian fronts of the village centre, had been established as false “fashion” fronts to earlier tenements, where inhabitants were explored through earlier histories and census returns, which showed several families in each building. Some obliging local families opened their housed to show the features of the earlier houses that still existed. Finding Roman tiles used as a part of the local church was linked to one child digging up a tile in his garden; verified by the County museum service.

Sketching was a key element of each topic, used as a means to encourage the children to look closely.

Where possible, these were supplemented with photographs; much easier now with digital. Photographs were the basis for recall and retelling, which supported poorer writers to retain some order and organisation.

Basic pictures were given to support dialogue with each other and with the accompanying adult(s), who also had some additional information sheets to share.  

Drawing sketch maps secured some feeling of spatial awareness, extended with giving instructions to get from one place to another, inside school or within the locality, but also extensive use of local maps to aid orientation.

Written reports and instructions were developed, as were histories of some of the individuals who had made up part of the developing narrative; the local Lord of the Manor and his wife were buried in the church, while some of the local people’s headstones were in the churchyard.

​Clay modelling allowed making bricks and creating "dwellings", which in turn became the centre for story making.

​A museum of tools and building materials allowed exploration of modern approaches. Local builder dad talked about some of the issues in building a house.

​Making concrete of different consistencies in margarine tubs allowed some stress testing of materials. 

​Creating a 3d model of the "Village with three corners", derived from a reading scheme, alowed children to picture and develop storylines more clearly, using little model people.  
 
Just opening children’s eyes to what is around them can give them something to talk about with their parents, particularly if they walk the same areas together. This can lead to further personal exploration, which adds to the general stock of knowledge and shows that the child’s education extends beyond the classroom.

The #JustTellThem mantra implies an anti-group-based activities approach. Life is group work; thinking, talking, working and playing together is the stuff of most people’s lives and we need sociable, thoughtful, articulate people. The best staff groups are collegiate, ironing out differences between them, to provide a continuous, rather than a stop-start education.

The problem with movements is the creation of self-styled gurus, with a message that often, through interpretation, becomes ever more reductive. Consider recent political announcements, here and across the Atlantic. Simple message, repeated endlessly, develops a sort of cult, with significant “othering”.

What the system needs is ordered and organised systems and individuals, with knowledge and articulacy that enables them to share it appropriately with different groups (know-how with show-how), able to spot and pick up the signs that a child may be struggling with learning (or something else) and have the skills to accommodate to the evident need. They must be able to provide guidance, feedback and sometimes coaching and mentoring to need.
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Most of all, they have to be human(e) and able to develop high quality relationships with children.

A cautionary tale; stuff happens in life.

This weekend has been something of a promoting one. It started last week, with Black Friday deals appearing among my emails trying to persuade me to take a holiday, a hotel or to buy a wide variety of stuff that had been “reduced in price”. It was quite relentless; sometimes several times each day from a couple of sources. It was very much “in your face”. I’m loathe to stop following the different sites, because occasionally something piques my interest and it results in some research and a purchase.
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It felt a bit like that on Saturday, with a day conference linked to Michaela School, to incorporate their book launch. Again, it was somewhat relentless in the Twitter feed, with tweets being retweeted. I seem to follow a number of people linked to the event, and, for some reason, they seem to follow me, even an avowed “child-centred inclusionist”. But, even one of the tweeters did admit that it was something of a promotion event. It’s always an odd feeling to hear any school be quite so self-promoting. I remember the first local Grant Maintained Primary school, where the head entered assembly to “Simply the Best”, replete with monickered baseball cap; sound familiar?
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I recently wrote a blog, entitled Stability and Sustainability, in which I explored a couple of notions that could be described as the difference between “new build and retro-fitting”. This idea is current, as while I am writing, we are having solar panels fitted. This will require some dexterity and consideration when it comes to linking the wiring to the fuse box, as it can’t just be put in and covered up. It has to follow already determined routes, if we are not to have holes and wires visible.

In the blog, I proposed a formula:

Like all things, over time, from the original vision, curricular aims and objectives, bits will have been added to any original structure, all of which will be evident in the offered curriculum and the outcomes.

Depending on where the school is, the availability of staff will be a significant factor. Working in the south east of Hampshire, we occasionally went from feast to famine, dependent on naval staff stability and rising house prices. On some occasions, I would have in excess of 60 applicants for a post, while at other times this could be just a handful. Being able to hand pick a near-perfect fit to a role is a bonus.

I would suggest that most schools are in this position, with some in far worse positions than I ever was. I did often start the term, in a one form entry Primary, in a classroom, where movement late in the summer meant an inability to fill a post. Being a teacher at heart, I preferred to be in the classroom doing an 80% effective job, than having a series of supplies and fielding the inevitable queues of parents wanting to know why their children’s education was being affected.

Every context is different. It’s that simple. Each context requires adaptable solutions, to resolve each issue as it arises. It’s not a case of implanting an orthodoxy onto the school and expecting immediate alteration of course.
Winning hearts and minds to the vision is an initial step.
·         It takes time to really audit the school provision;
·         To get to know each person well enough to be able to determine roles;
·         To deeply understand the school in it’s context, including community opportunities;
·         To determine an overview action plan, giving ownership of elements to key people;
·         articulating the brief and the direction of travel, with check points;
·         Creating the time and finding the finances to support them in making initial changes that begin the process through small achievements;
·         Evaluating and articulating ongoing successes, however minor, to sustain momentum;
·         Taking everyone with you. This can be the hardest part. Inbuilt resistance to change can be part of the human condition. Avoiding both “We’ve always done it like this” and “In my last school” discussions.

Schools are subject to change, which can sometimes be rapid and radical. This can be down to staff illness, movement for promotions or just relocation, disagreements with the ethos or a multitude of other reasons. Where replacements are not forthcoming, the effects are exaggerated with inevitable community questions, rumour and intrigue. This adds layers to the issues, which often create a momentum of their own. A school can appear to go from hero to zero quite rapidly. Schools can literally become “sick”.

I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Where I have seen this, during my career, it has caused casualties, often among people who were very good at their job. Teaching is a humane, human role; events impact on us. Schools cannot be totally immune to external forces.

If you are fortunate, school development is progressive (word used appropriately), learning is progressive (ditto), children make progress, teachers and parents are happy and everyone can be a little more relaxed and refined in their approach, adding still further to the sum of the parts. It is not the same for everyone.

Context is likely to be everything and demographics can be a significant factor.

Mind you, if the Government cannot sort general building and teacher supply, the whole system has a major problem and, however good the sticking plasters applied by heads to their schools, some patches will break, and become infections.
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One (self-proclaimed, for now) good school doesn’t make a good system.

My last blog looked at the more overt politicisation of education since 1997 and the development of “celebrity education”.

Who’s making money out of education?

Before 1997, I’m not sure that I could name anyone who was a civil servant or special adviser in the Department of Education. During the first phase of the 1997 Blair Government, Andrew Adonis and Michael Barber became more prominent as the backroom engine of change. Andrew Adonis and Michael Barber went on to other roles, Barber most recently with Pearson Education, but also operating on a global educational scale.

Ruth Miskin was an adviser to the Government when the National Strategy for English was being disseminated. At the same time, she was instrumental in developing a scheme (Read, Write, Inc) that fitted with the requirements of the National Strategy. She has also been very high profile within the Michel Gove-supported Systematic Synthetic Phonics scheme.

Michael Gove, supported by his Special Adviser, Dominic Cummings, introduced free schools into the school environment, as well as rapidly expanding the Academisation programme, increasing the number of CEOs and senior staff. Recent stories about heads of academy chains and headteacher salaries reaching astronomical levels tell a tale of personal benefit, even within schemes that are supposedly “not for profit”.

Lord Nash is both an education minister, elevated in 2012, and the head of an academy chain…

​Toby Young, another Gove supporter, despite being a non-educationist ran a Free School and is to be head of the New Schools Network.

Many of the above would no doubt claim not to be taking money out of education, but by earning, in some cases, significant salaries, they are certainly making money out of education links.

Michael Barber phoned me up…

I had written to the Department for Education outlining a concern that had been an issue since SATs were introduced; whether level 3, 4 and 5 meant the same things at Infant, Junior or Secondary School.

As levels were criterion based, in theory they should have been progressive and in Maths and English, I would argue that they were. However, the Governments in their wisdom, had chosen to extrapolate from the KS2 SAT results and determine expected outcomes at KS4 across all subjects, which led to many happy hours discussing this with Secondary colleagues, at transfer. We were active in moderation and, over time, colleagues within the cluster began to agree standards, especially in Maths and English. Of course, with staff change, often we had to start again, from scratch.

I was called to the phone one day by my admin support, to discover Michael Barber on the phone, wanting to discuss the issue and share thoughts. It was a very pleasant half hour, which indicated a closeness of thinking and an encouragement to keep working on our moderation projects.

And that was as far as it went… As a mere headteacher, I was just a minion, with an idea.

Textbooks and testing

These two areas are ripe for exploitation. There’s a regular income to be made from testing, particularly as this is formalised at 11, 16 and 18.

Textbooks came back onto the agenda endorsed by Tim Oates, group director of assessment research and development for Cambridge Assessment, who was also an architect of the current National Curriculum. Cambridge Assessment operates the university’s three exam boards. Tim worked with Sir Ron Dearing on the 1995 review of the National Curriculum, a very significant piece of revision.

Publishers like textbooks, especially as they are updated and reprinted regularly. It’s interesting to browse the University bookshop and see last year’s version of a required book in the second hand bins. Textbooks are regularly being argued as better than random internet searching, which is probably a good use of time, but prescribing sites to access and read would seem to be a good, free equivalent.

However, it’s not that long ago, 2013, that a publisher proposed every child having a pre-loaded tablet, effectively carrying around their textbooks.

The NC, from 1987 to 1997 was certainly very broad, balanced and relevant to children.

National Strategies altered the dynamics, as did assessment models such as Assessing Pupil Progress, developed through the National Strategies. APP was supposedly created to give a broader picture of a child’s abilities than the SATs tests, supporting Teacher Assessment. It was cumbersome, demand heavy on teachers and focused on such small changes that it diminished the curriculum. However, I always felt that it could be a useful diagnostic tool for children whose progress in learning was concerning. Identifying and addressing gaps is a significant aspect of that.

Developing, disseminating and evaluating Government initiatives costs money, that diminishes the available pot of money for the schools’ budget. Every novelty can become effectively a scam. It was recently reported that the free school budget, set up by Michael Gove, had overspent by £1 billion.

Today sees the allocation of £250 million for Grammar School expansion.

Employing CEOs and Executive Heads of chains also costs.

With Lord Nash and Sir Craig Tunstall costing the best part of the equivalent of up to 30 classroom teachers, and multiples of a Prime Minister salary, the scale can be quite mind boggling.

We have seen centralisation of thinking on a grand scale over the past twenty years. It can sometimes seem as if thinking, in education, is the remit of a few people at the top, with minions employed to do their bidding; a little like the Oompa Loompas of Charlie and the Chocolate factory.

And yet, the whole of education is premised upon a class of children working with a teacher, whose role is to be the minute by minute thinker in the classroom, leading learning and ensuring that each child is enabled to make the maximum progress within a time scale. We need them to be the lead thinkers in education and that sometimes needs time to think. Teacher thinking time could be bought from saving some of the costs at the top.

It needs something of a business rethink, to ensure that the money is effective in the classroom, not just at the top.

​We don’t need well paid “shadows”.