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Raising the Bar: Ambition and Technique

RAISING THE BAR

From my perspective, a number of recent discussions and policy initiatives have missed the target when it comes to tackling the issue of educational under-performance in our schools. Even where I agree with the diagnosis, the prescribed medicine doesn’t seem to match.  At classroom level, where it counts, there are a number of reasons why ‘raising the bar’ might appear to be required in some lessons in some schools:

The curriculum standards are too limiting: this could be the curriculum framework determined by an exam board or the National Curriculum.  I find the ‘dumbing down’ argument extremely simplistic and partial but there are certainly situations where we could be raising the bar. As an example, when I worked in Jakarta, the top maths students in Y6 took the KS3 SATs paper and many scored L7. We think it’s bold to have a L6 paper but this material could be embedded earlier. My Y6 son’s teacher is excellent but he’s only had some L6 sessions recently, almost as special treats.  At KEGS we’ve found the AQA iGCSE Certificates in the sciences significantly more challenging and interesting than the GCSEs we ran before: more maths, less fluff. The bar has been raised. However, note, it’s only the top end that experience this issue in some areas. For the majority of students the NC does not limit them at all and harder exams will just be harder.

The ‘enacted’ curriculum is too limiting (to borrow from Joe Kirby via Michael Gove) : this might be a shallow interpretation of a text or topic or a mis-judgement about age-relevance. Here are some bad examples I’ve witnessed: Y11 BTEC Science students copying out the electromagnetic spectrum from a text-book into their folders and getting ‘signed off’ on their assignment sheets for ‘completing research’ without understanding anything they’d written; Y11 IT students writing single word descriptions of key website features, watching an IWB, sitting at desks with scraps of paper. In both cases the syllabus authors had rather more in mind! (Mr Gove’s Mr Men History lesson was rocket science compared to this…and, yes, it isn’t very convincing to base an argument on unrepresentative oddities; I think my mundane examples are more prevalent.)

The pedagogy is inadequate; teaching methods are leaving too many students behind or not providing sufficient challenge for others. The teacher may not know their subject, may be pitching the work too low or they may not have the skills to engage the students in the learning process. (Let’s be clear: engagement IS a pre-requisite for any learning; it IS part of a teacher’s responsibility to engage their students but that does not mean providing ‘edutainment’ or enforcing a crude ‘shut up and listen’ culture. )

Aspirations and expectations are too low: this might be on the part of the students who do not bring the level of commitment to their own learning that other more aspirational students do and continually fall short.  They may have low self-esteem, a negative view of their employment prospects and live a life of low ‘cultural capital’; they may just be switched off in general.  It might also be the teacher who settles for too little every step of the way..inch by inch allowing students to slip below the trajectory that they are capable of following.  In scenarios like this, the teacher might be projecting their own academic limitations and insecurities onto their students….portraying maths as hard or accepting a crummy cut and paste paragraph with pictures when they could have written something with real depth. It could be institutionalised mediocrity that no-one even notices.  For example, at KEGS, students get tons of homework from day one, they are pushed hard each day and teachers are very demanding; students of the same ability at other schools I know are never ever pushed as hard; the expectations are lower.

Students’ basic literacy skills are insufficient to succeed with the work they are set: too many kids leave primary school with very low literacy.  This is not a case of failing to recognise a noun phrase or a subordinate clause; I mean they can’t read confidently or fully understand what they’re reading, don’t read for pleasure and very often have sophisticated masking and avoidance strategies to compensate.

Behaviour is poor.  Sometimes it isn’t the teacher’s fault at all but sometimes it really is.  Failure to tackle persistent low-level disengaged disruption is one of the silent killers of achievement…it’s rarely about wild hoodlums wreaking havoc.

Without being unduly negative about the system as a whole, all of these things are real enough.  Too many lessons for too many students across the country are like this. So, clearly we need to turn things around.  We need to raise the bar.  But how do we do this? Firstly, let me rule out some policy contenders.

It’s not about the National Curriculum content... To me, this discussion is often deckchairs-on-the-Titanic, fiddling-while-Rome-burns territory. We can debate the content of course; we all have our pet loves and hates in our subjects.  However equating ‘raising the bar’ with an imposing a particular view of the core curriculum or a specific definition of a ‘good education’ is mistaken; the idea that the new NC somehow represents a ‘return to a knowledge-based curriculum’ is a false claim. As if the current curriculum isn’t packed with things to learn….

 It’s not about which books we read at school:

Books everybody should read. Says who?

I studied  My Family and Other Animals and The Woman in White for O’Level…. and the Penguin Science Fiction Omnibus – short stories. We did Henry IV Part 1 which we enjoyed… although the only quotes we learned were the fillers such as ‘We shall sup tonight at Eastcheap’.  It was an odd collection; I’d have killed for a bit of Of Mice and Men….but we were taught a range of texts well and we enjoyed doing it. Of course some books are more challenging to read than others but I’d still argue that whilst the potential depth of learning might differ, the bar is not necessarily raised merely by being prescriptive about text selection; similarly ‘engagement’ is not a dirty word.  (Tricia Kelleher’s post is excellent on this).

It’s not about which approach to History we take:

Professor Robert Tombs’ view of history.

There is an interesting debate to be had about the most effective balance between depth study of a point in history and the need for a broad overview across centuries.  Robert Tombs’ view is that we don’t give enough coverage over time so the depth studies become incoherent. It is true that the current vogue in history exams is to give analysis and source evaluation very high status over recalling historical narrative.  How far do we go in evaluating the merits of the Churchill-Harris area bombing of Dresden? What exactly does anyone need to know about the Siege of Drogheda?  My history O Level was based on the Industrial Revolution 1750 – 1900. I never studied Hitler, Stalin or Vietnam but I’m up on Blind Jack of Knaresborough, the great C18th road builder and Arkwright’s spinning jenny and, in doing so, learned some skills I’ve used since to learn about other eras. Isn’t that more important? These are debates for historians and history teachers and no doubt every Secretary of State will have their own bias.  But is this raising the bar?  No, it isn’t.

It’s not about formal grammar,

One of the sample L6 SPAG tests for Y6.

I don’t have an issue with learning this stuff. It’s arguably useful for writing – although I must confess that I have never really understood or needed to think about subject/object/past participle and so on.  My son finds these questions quite easy.. he thought this was in the English SATs anyway.  BUT, let’s not be under the illusion that the SPAG tests are going to raise standards of literacy in general.  Michael Rosen makes good sense on this and I find the way he is pilloried by Michael Gove and others rather distasteful.  He makes a good case that warrants serious consideration and it is all too easily sniped away at, reducing the debate to Grammar Good vs Grammar Bad.  As with other issues – if the bar is already too high, making it higher doesn’t help you; this only benefits those who are already succeeding.  There is risk that this provides a veneer of rigour for the few, without doing anything for the many.

It’s not about trendy progressive teaching techniques either.  I’ve watched hundreds and hundreds of lessons in many different contexts.  Amongst the many joys, I’ve seen some truly awful lessons. However, almost none of these were bad because the teacher was doing something too trendy and progressive.  I’ve seen a lot of deadly one-way traffic teacher droning; I’ve seen some terrible attempts to explain concepts; I’ve seen a lot of noisy and chaotic discussion or practical activity which a teacher was trying to talk over….  To me, attributing low standards to a caricature of progressive teaching methods is missing by a mile.

It’s not about teachers needing financial incentives to buck their ideas up...None of the weaker teachers I’ve ever known would have been better if they were paid differently. It’s that simple. I’ve written on the whole PRP issue here. Wrong diagnosis; wrong solution.

High jump technique has evolved with significant gains.

Raising the bar is primarily a question of effective pedagogy.  Within that one word ‘pedagogy’ I would pack in everything we do in the classroom: explaining, asking questions, giving feedback and maintaining a strongly positive work ethic. Almost all the issues that there are around low standards, where the bar needs to be raised, stem from here, including the ‘enacted curriculum’, the setting of appropriately challenging goals and the development of the basic tools for learning: reading and writing.

So, educational bar-raising is fundamentally about improving how teachers teach and worrying less about what the curriculum has in it.  This should suggest a colossal nationwide investment in training, in continuing professional development and in developing effective leadership of CPD in schools.  We’re largely getting on with that ourselves at the moment but at times it is hard.  We need a major culture shift away from defensive barriers to teacher observation towards repeated and sustained dialogue around improving practice openly and directly. (I’ve never known a great school where teachers were resistant to observations.) The movement to set up a Royal College of Teaching is promising and CPD is moving up the agenda.. but there is a long way to go, with no extra money to pay for it. Recently I’ve had to consider whether £1000 was too much to spend on joining a fabulous looking CPD network… it’s peanuts; but peanuts that schools don’t have.   And, as I’ve said elsewhere, we don’t need PRP to tackle underperformance; we already have robust capability procedures and we shouldn’t mess around tolerating mediocrity.

There are other issues: Raising the bar is about giving ALL students progression pathways that build on success and put them ‘in line of sight of work’ (a phrase I heard recently that made immediate sense.) This area has been a dog’s breakfast with an increasingly fragmented system.  Hopefully the Headteachers’ Roundtable model, with the support of others like Whole Education and colleagues in FE and HE, will help to direct policy makers in a more sensible direction. Hopefully… if they listen.  Certainly there is a need for a general breadth of curriculum across and within subjects but the specifics of that are less critical than the quality of delivery of each component and the coherence of the whole framework.

Raising the bar is also about enabling more children to build up to reaching it….To me this suggests intensive support for literacy intervention at KS1 and KS2. Why are we not talking more about this? I’d argue for giving every penny of pupil premium money to primary schools to ensure literacy levels are tackled. We need a ‘what ever it takes’ approach to this, working with families around support for learning, support for reading and raising aspirations.  We need to get in early to stop those gaps from emerging as I argue in my ‘The Gap isn’t getting any narrower’ post. Parenting for Learning? SureStart with an educational focus? This is how to raise the bar for those at the lower end of the attainment ladder in a fundamental manner.

Finally, we also need an accountability system that we can trust.  Michael Gove is excited by schools teaching 19th Century novels instead of the ubiquitous Of Mice and Men… but he shows no awareness of just how deep the risk-averse culture has become  – one that the accountability system is fuelling where there is almost no incentive to deviate from a tried and tested text backed with tons of resources. I’d actually welcome an aspect of the accountability system that required schools to detail their curriculum offer.  Let schools make a case for their choices… and let the outcomes do the talking.

headguruteacher is one year old.

A whole year has now passed since I set up this headguruteacher blog.  And what a year it has been!  The whole world of twitter and blogging has turned out to be far more rewarding, both professionally and personally, than I ever imagined.

Blog stats….on the day it reached 150, 000.

I am amazed that, just in time for this first anniversary, the blog has had 150,000 hits and I’ve gained 6000 followers on twitter.  This is far, far, beyond my wildest expectations. The twitter-blog universe has had a significant influence on my thinking about education, has provided numerous professional opportunities and has brought me into contact with lots of great people. It has also allowed me to believe that I can actually write…..something that has taken me by surprise to no small degree.  100 blogs posts later, I’m still working on it and there is still so much more to say!  The democratic, self-publishing, self-editing freedom of blogging is so liberating… it is wonderful not to ever worry about seeking the approval of a newspaper or magazine editor with their own agenda; something I have never managed to do.

Here is a list of my top-rated posts:

The headguruteacher Top 20

This shows the range of issues that have caught people’s attention: marking, behaviour, homework, various pedagogical ideas and a few leadership issues: accountability, evaluating teacher quality and, one of my personal favourites – Rainforest Thinking.  It’s no surprise to me that my two top-rated posts are reports on great ideas from other people: Closing the Gap marking from Saffron Walden High School and Bill Rogers’ behaviour strategies.  Generally, ideas for posts arrive more or less randomly, although I did make an attempt to put a sequence together with the Great Lessons Series:

The 10 Post Great Lessons Series

The list  of countries is quite remarkable… now over 140.  Some arise from random internet searches but, nonetheless, it is quite a thrill to know that people from around the world can and do engage with some of the ideas.

Hits from 140 countries

It is an interesting period for our education system and I am grateful to all the people who have followed the blog and made comments.  It is the dialogue and discussion that make blogging so compelling.  I doubt I will sustain the output or the hit-rate but you never know…….

I would like now to register my gratitude to a few people who have helped me along the way, taking things in chronological order.

To begin with, I want to thank all the students and teachers at KEGS. I make endless references to the amazing things that they do and, without them, I wouldn’t have much material! I’m especially grateful to the students in my physics classes who tolerate being photographed and posted on twitter on a regular basis…

Then, Alan November, @globalearner.  In May 2012, he ran a conference for Heads and others in Essex. He showed how powerful twitter and blogging could be, explained how a deck could help to organise tweets and how anyone could connect to anyone, regardless of status…  I was sold.  He also told us about David Mitchell @deputymitchell and his inspiring work with blogging at Heathfield Community Primary School in Bolton leading to superb class blogs like this one.

I had already been using twitter for my school @KEGS_Chelmsford.  This is a one-way information feed that I use to report news to parents and interested parties.  However, in June 2011 I set up my own trial twitter account playing with the Indonesian phrase ‘saya guru’ (meaning I am a teacher) as a twitter ‘handle’.. to form headguruteacher.  After just one week of hearing what Prof Brian Cox had for breakfast, I gave it up as a stream of trivia.  Fortunately Alan November encouraged me to resurrect it.. and things went from there.   Here are the other people I want to thank:

@VicGoddard: Fellow attendee at Alan November.. but already a twitter big-shot following Educating Essex. He sent me a tweet saying ‘I’m your 50th follower’…. I was chuffed to bits. He’s a legend….

@vicgoddard on a visit to@KEGS_Chelmsford

@LearningSpy: David Didau’s  ‘year in the life of an English teacher’ blog was an inspiration, leading me to explore his back-catalogue. Wow!  He was the first blogger I encountered that modeled genuine intellectual rigour with a bit of no-nonsense tell-it-how-it-is challenge.

@RealGeoffBarton: Re-tweeted one my early posts, taking me over 3000 hits. I was so grateful. Geoff subsequently led the extraordinary GCSE fiasco challenge with great vigour and continues to be inspirational.

In July David Weston @Informed_Edu came to visit my school just at the start of his big leap as head of the Teacher Development Trust… and he’s continued to be one of the most sane and knowledgable people out there.

In the summer, @Edutronic_net:  Chris Waugh left a comment on my post ‘What makes a great teacher‘? Ever since we’ve been in communication, met a few times and shared some great ideas.  Chris’ comment was the first time I felt my blog was making some kind of sense… and that blogging about general ideas was valuable. Chris’ own work with Edutronic.net and the Blogsync initiative has been amazing and I was keen to feature him in this blog: Joy.

With @Edutronic_Net in his wonderful classroom

In August, I started following @TeacherToolkit, one of the mighty figures in the twittersphere for education. Shortly afterwards I discovered that this was actually the very humble Ross McGill, a former colleague I’d worked with in Haringey for five years when I was Deputy Head and he was Head of DT. Amazing coincidence.  Ross’ big-up doubled my follower count from 300 to 600 in about two days. Meeting Ross with David Didau was a great moment, heralding the birth of #SLTchat shortly afterwards… I remember Ross sharing his idea with great enthusiasm.

@LearningSpy, me, @TeacherToolkit a Hornsey cafe

Following Mark Anderson @ICTEvangelist, was an early indicator of the sharing power of twitter. Hearing about TeachMeets – notably #TMClevedon – from Mark inspired me to want to run one in Essex.  Martin Burrett  – the magnificent @ICTMagic and Andy Knill @aknill, responded to my twitter call-out and our very own #TMEssex was born.

Throughout the autumn, the blogs by @johntomsett and @huntingEnglish (Alex Quigley) became my chief source of leadership and pedagogical inspiration. Amazingly, they both work at the same school – it must be such a great school!  I met them both at separate conference events… and continue to work with them on different projects.   A blogging highlight around this time was when John Hattie himself commented on my blog about what Hattie says about homework….

Meeting John Tomsett at Heads’ Roundtable, Passmores.

Through headguruteacher, and an initial recommendation from Ross McGill, I’ve become a contributor to the Guardian Teacher Network and I’ve joined the Headteachers’ Roundtable group, which has provided a superb forum for taking forward ideas about our qualifications framework.  I’ve also started working the SSAT on their new Vision 2040 Group and with the Labour Skills Task Force alongside the super-savvy Director of the Institute of Education (@Director_IoE) Chris Husbands.

Alongside all these professional opportunities, the great joy of the last year has been meeting and sharing ideas with members of my virtual staffroom: Helene O’Shea @hgaldinoshea  and Kev Bartle @kevbartle, who manage to combine being incredibly supportive, interesting and challenging all at once; plus Pete Jones, @pekabelo and Russell Plester @plestered and many others who feature on Pete’s twitter tube map.. so many incredibly interesting people!

@pekabelo’s tube map

I’m extremely grateful to all the people who follow the blog and leave comments, especially Nick von Behr (behrfacts.com)   who often leaves extremely encouraging comments and asks some good probing questions.

So…that’s it.  Thanks all.  More to come.    I am actually trying to write a book (more about that another time) and that is taking up a lot of time… and going very slowly…. but hopefully headguruteacher will tick along in the background.

Career Progression: More of a winding road than a ladder.

Very often I’m asked for advice from teachers applying for jobs, either colleagues or friends.  Each person’s context is unique to them but the messages are usually the same so I thought I would share them.  As a Headteacher, getting the right people into the right roles within my school is one of the most important things I do.  Over the years I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews and probably read thousands of application forms.  In my career I’ve also applied for plenty of jobs myself, both as an external and an internal candidate…with only partial success. I’ve had my share of rejections, been ‘pipped to the post’ a few times (so they said) and these knock-backs have always taught me something.  So, taking what I’ve learned from both sides of the interview table, here is my guide to getting a job that you really want.

Before you start, it is important to recognise that recruitment is a two-way process;  it is more akin to match-making than a straight contest.  I always say that it’s hard to get a job you don’t really want…if you have doubts, it shows.  If you really want the job, the aim of your application and interview is to show what you could do in the role in general terms but also to demonstrate how well suited you’d be to the specific job on offer. Different schools and roles have niche requirements that you need to tune-in to.  I

My ideal candidate looks something like this:

They understand teaching and learning and talk about it with knowledge and passion.  They can articulate what a great lesson might look like, what an effective series of lessons might require and how students can engage in the process to maximise their learning outcomes. I want it all: rigour, challenge, joyfulness, passion, solid dependability, originality and flair – and I’ll look for the best I can find.

They have a strong knowledge base including subject knowledge, approaches to pedagogy,  important policy issues including recent changes, effective assessment practices.  As well as their responses at interview, my assessment will be influenced by their record of CPD, their academic background and the range of relevant professional experience they have.  I want someone other colleagues might learn from and someone the students will be inspired by.  Preferably, I want someone who offers flexibility in terms of subject teaching and other activities.. but that is icing on the cake.

They have positive attitudes towards students, parents, going the extra mile, showing initiative, embracing inclusion and teaching more able learners and they project a general aura of professionalism. This is hugely subjective of course but it is there. Enthusiasm goes a long way.. but, obviously, isn’t enough on its own. The ‘extra mile’ isn’t a case of selling your soul; it’s a legitimate expectation.  Schools rely on people contributing to the community beyond the classroom, doing whatever it takes to support some individuals and taking professional development seriously.

They have personal presence appearing assertive and confident but with a bit of humility, charm and humour; someone you can imagine working well with students and staff, prepared to offer challenge but also able to form warm, positive relationships.

Their career history supports what you see:  Ideally I want evidence of success (professional or personal), a commitment to career development and to seeing things through. I’m interested in interesting people  – variety is really healthy – but I need a good explanation for someone who has been chopping and changing, moving jobs year after year or for someone who appears to have been static doing one job in one place.  If people have a complex story to tell, I want them to tell it, not expect me piece it together.

They have leadership capacity or potential...  In any role, ideally I want people who can analyse the problems and offer solutions, have a vision for what could be achieved, the power to motivate others and the organisational skills to back it up.  I’m looking for the capacity to balance a systems approach with subtle people skills; I want people who can recognise complexity but can face it with a ‘can do’ spirit. I can live with a few solo operators but ideally I want people who value collegiality and can harness the energies and idea of others.

So, the recruitment process is all about working out how well each candidate fits.  Each school will have a similar list.  So, how do you show you’re the person they’re looking for?

How do you stand out from the crowd?

Before you apply

If you’re planning a career move you need to build up a portfolio of experience in the work you do now. Not only does this help develop your skills for the next job but it also gives you real things to talk about at interview. Look for opportunities to gain skills beyond the routine of school life:

• writing schemes of work, developing resources that you share with others, organising events, any number of small-scale projects that show initiative and a desire to engage with issues beyond your own classroom.
• teaching well (obviously) but perhaps supporting another colleague, an NQT, getting involved in peer observation and feedback…anything that gives you experience of working with another teacher, engaging in improving how they teach.
• for pastoral roles, be a great form tutor, take assemblies, work with the inclusion team, learn about Child Protection and local support agencies, mentor ‘difficult’ students, attend or organise a Parents’ Forum, be hands-on at parents evening, in the playground and in the canteen.
• for leadership roles, set up or lead a working group on an aspect of teaching and learning, run a CPD session for staff, write a policy paper on a whole-school issue (literacy, behaviour, homework, the KS3 curriculum,) and present to SLT, observe an SLT or middle leaders meeting, attend Governors’ meetings, take assemblies and, for internal jobs, be highly visible around the school.
• engage with the latest OfSTED guidance and the RAISEOnline data for your school. Like it or not, these things are a major pre-occupation for most schools and it can only help you to know how they work.

Application Forms

I usually suggest that people pick out four or five areas from the person spec and set out headed paragraphs for each one that do two things: a) set out your ideas looking ahead and b) provide examples to show that you have experience and success in each of these areas.

For a teaching role, I’d suggest things like: effective teaching and learning leading to strong outcomes; formative assessment;  differentiation and inclusion; curriculum planning and innovation; engaging in the wider school community.

For a middle leadership role: creating a team spirit; establishing high expectations of staff and students; curriculum development and innovation; raising achievement and inclusion; tackling underperformance – staff and students.

For a more senior leadership role: Ethos and vision; staff development; securing outstanding outcomes in inspections and examinations; creating a culture of excellence in learning; partnerships with community stakeholders; managing resources.

There is a danger in trying to do too much, over-egging your past glories and of blagging:   Avoid writing a giant long list of everything you’ve ever done; drop anything that is ancient history – however impressive it once was and don’t just write a list of what you will do in the future without any evidence that you know what you’re doing based on past experience.

Every school is different…adapt and adjust accordingly.

Interviews

No two processes are the same – some have more hoops than others – so this is just general advice about the questions you can prepare for.

Classic interview questions.

“Give us an example of……”

• a  lesson you’ve taught recently that was a success. Why was it successful and how could you tell?
•  a scheme of work you’ve developed that you and others have implemented. Was it a success? How could you improve it?
• a situation that you found challenging that you then overcame.
• an individual student or a class that you have had particular success with.
• an initiative that you have led involving other members of staff.
• a successful approach to raising achievement / improving attendance / improving behaviour that you’ve been involved in.
• how you’ve supported or challenged a colleague who was causing or experiencing difficulties.

The examples you choose need to be tailored to the school you’re apply to.. make it as relevant as possible. For example, don’t focus on your C/D borderline group if the school wants a top end A/A* A level teacher.. and vice verse.  Prepare these answers in advance but adjust to the nuances of what you pick up at the school you’re going to. Clearly, the more real experience you have of these things, the easier it will be to give good answers.  I can’t stress this enough.  For example, a ‘difficult colleague’ could be someone you worked with at the Football Club… but you dealt with it; it was real and you learned something.  That is far better than talking only about hypothetical future scenarios.

Other common questions …

• what are the key challenges facing teachers/ facing this school/ facing young people / in your subject?
• how would your colleagues/ students/ Headteacher describe you?
• what are our strengths / greatest achievements ?
• what are your areas for development?
• why do you want to work at this particular school?
• how do you manage change effectively so that people are brought along with you?
• how could data be used effectively to support you in this role?
• how can you engage ‘hard to reach’ families?

In preparing for an interview, it is wise to think through in advance.  Don’t appear surprised by these questions.   The data issue is all about setting high expectations, monitoring progress and feeding back so that actions are taken to re-focus learning and so on at a class-room level.  Get to know the data tracking system you have and be prepared to evaluate it.  There is no correct answer on ‘hard to reach’ families but you need to have some ideas.

Across your answers, show you are aware of SEN issues, Child Protection procedures and try to mention parents and Governors as appropriate. Think in terms of good systems and the fact that people are in teams and shouldn’t work in isolation.

You’re likely to be asked about safeguarding. The key things are to listen to what children tell you, always be open to possibility that some form of abuse explains their behaviour, never to promise confidentiality to a child, to gather factual information without asking leading questions  and to involve the named Child Protection Officer if you have even the slightest concern.

The pitfalls.

A list of things that can undermine you….

Application errors: spelling mistakes, wrong school mentioned, unexplained gaps in employment, unexplained departures from jobs, bad hand-writing, Times New Roman (my pet hate), no mention of teaching and learning, overly soppy platitudes about loving children and wanting to save the world.

First impressions: looking scruffy; top button un-done, dirty crumpled shirt…. (arguably superficial, but why risk suggesting that you don’t care, for a job you want), giggling or being humourlessly unsmiling, not making eye contact, being over-familiar (I might offer ‘please, call me Tom’.. but don’t presume..), fussing and worrying about the details of the day..

During the interview:

• answers too short; suggests a lack of depth – try to be expansive, give full extended answers.  Use notes if you have to, rather than walking out with half your ideas unsaid.
• answers too long; read the signals, respect the timing of the process.  This applies to presentations too; if you’re told 10 minutes; don’t give them 15. It can give an unintended message..(note to self!)
• being out-of-date.  If the SEN legislation has changed and you’re talking about the old framework, you’re on a loser.
• talking excessively about stress, workload, difficulties, problems, barriers…. We all know about these things; you need to focus on how to overcome them.
• talking about yourself without reference to the team. So, for a subject leader, we’re not interested in your lessons – we’re interested in the quality of everyone’s lessons in the team; for a pastoral leader… we’re not expecting you to deal with every student – we want to know how your team will deal with students under your leadership.  And so on.

Interview lessons:

These can be a bit of a nightmare. You need to keep it simple. A key idea, something challenging, some input, some group discussion and activity, model some AfL methods, a bit of think-pair-share, some time to do some work that involves thinking, writing, problem-solving and then wrap up with a review or report back.  Ask for names, be assertive but friendly.. and finish crisply. Easy!? No… but possible, yes.

The pitfalls: over-running; talking far too much before the students do anything themselves; pitching the material too high or too low; allowing off-task chat to continue without any challenge; being timid; wasting time moving the furniture or giving out over-elaborate resources; not having a clear enough objective to assess against within the timeframe… not challenging errors and misconceptions, not responding to answers eg if students already know more than you expected.

In the end, if you’re unsuccessful, don’t beat yourself up; don’t be bitter…… learn and move on!

Ultimately it is a competition. There are hundreds of factors and employers are generally well motivated and keen to get the best people they can.  If you are unsuccessful, ask for feedback and learn from it. There will be a period of dejection after a rejection but keep going, keep expanding your repertoire of experience and, ultimately – if you learn from the feedback – a chance may come along where you fit the bill.

GOOD LUCK!!!

I’m celebrating writing my 100th post, which may be the last for some time, by trying to link together various posts relating to teaching.  I suggest in my post ‘How do I know how good my teachers are?’ that there are three key sources that contribute to my judgement of the effectiveness of my teaching staff:

• Data – the measured outcomes from assessments and examinations
• Observation – those artificial snapshots of teaching that are over-loaded with significance in the OfSTED process.
• Knowledge – the drip-feed of micro-feedback gleaned organically from multiple sources: Essentially this is what I mean by Reputation.

So, whilst ideally we shouldn’t worry too much what other people think of us, in the context of being judged as a professional teacher, having a strongly positive reputation is a great asset.  It may be the most accurate indicator of the impact we’re having on our students and, actually, our reputational standing is the area over which we have greatest control day-to-day.  This is my guide to success in building a reputation as a ‘great teacher’ that will help you ride-out the fickle storms of formal teacher-evaluation processes.

The agile teacher… responsive, risk-taking, juggling continually.

12 steps to a ‘Great Teacher’ reputation.

PART ONE: In the classroom.

1. Teach great lessons consistently

This is obvious isn’t it?!  In fact, you could argue that this is all you need – forget all the rest below.  In writing the ‘Great Lessons‘ series I tried to capture the essence of the routine habits teachers need to develop to teach great lessons day after day:

1. Probing  2. Rigour  3.Challenge  4. Differentiation 5. Journeys 6. Explaining  7. Agility 8. Awe 9.Possibilities 10. Joy

They’re all important and blending these ideas together is the core business of being a great teacher; sustaining them over time is the key to building a great reputation.  In truth, much as many teachers reject the falsehood of a snap-shot OfSTED-style lesson observation, it does allow people to turn on the style only when needed. However, there is no escape from the ever-present judgemental eye of your students or their capacity to talk about their lessons with you. The feedback from lessons that permeates into the fabric of school discourse is crucial in the reputation stakes.  It demands variety (see Balanced Diet of Learning and Teaching) and consistency overall but because students are tolerant, it allows you to have off-days, to engage in a fair bit of slog and some wacky wild moments.

So, let me stress this: reputations are founded on delivering great lessons as often as you possibly can.  Please read or re-read the series… or download the pdf version here. Great Lessons Series pdf

2. Build positive relationships

A pre-cursor to teaching great lessons is to have established strongly positive relationships with your classes. My post outlining a Bill Rogers Top 10 Behaviour Management strategies gives ideas for doing this and To maximise learning, get your students RAMPed focuses on the starts of lessons.  Highly effective teachers are ones you ‘don’t mess with’ but you don’t want to be ‘soft’ or ‘strict’;  the latter is never a positive descriptor in students’ eyes – it just means you shout too much or treat people unfairly.  Sarcastic put-downs or a general softness in tackling low-level disruption are unhelpful.  Great teachers enjoy warm, friendly relationships with students, take maximum ownership of behaviour issues, follow through on sanctions and use whole-school systems properly without dumping on other people.  Almost always, there is a ‘controlled severity’ mode waiting in the wings that gets given centre stage every so often; every teacher needs that from time to time. Students respect it; in fact they expect it.

A potentially great teacher who is sarcastic, insists on having the last word, is inflexible or intolerant, can’t meet students half way to build bridges or uses their authority inappropriately – does great damage to their reputation as a great teacher.  They’re not a great teacher.

3. Give effective feedback

Even if lessons are great, students and parents also want to know how well things are going over time.  This is where the marking and other forms of feedback come in.  In truth, a lot of parents have unrealistic unreasoned expectations about seeing books that are marked. Parents often like the sight of the red pen; it builds confidence that  someone is taking an interest in their child’s work. In my experience, students are much less bothered; they just want feedback any way it comes. Strategies that involve all the students – like Think Pair Share and using mini-whiteboards – are part of the feedback armoury.  In general, making the spirit of AfL come alive can take many forms; it’s the basis of many great lessons.

I know teachers who have phenomenal reputations as great markers – and others with the opposite – independent of how good they are in the classroom.  This is where we need to get a balance and make sure we’re explaining to parents and students how our feedback systems work.  As I argue in Marking in Perspective: Selective, Formative, Effective, Reflective not all marking has impact and we need to take steps to minimise presentational marking that doesn’t make a difference to learning. My run-away top-hit post Making Feedback Count: Closing the Gap  describes a range of excellent strategies and one very simple idea for doing this.

4. Know your subject and use that to good effect.

Strong subject knowledge pays dividends in many different ways.  It helps to plan the curriculum, to devise good questions, to be responsive in lessons and to bring in the depth and detail needed to secure the highest grades. This is obviously not sufficient to be regarded as a great teacher but it often helps to get you started.  Certainly the opposite – having weak subject knowledge – does you no good at all.  In posts on Rigour, Challenge and Explaining, subject knowledge is a central component.   Do you know for certain what the A level or GCSE A* requirements are? Can you provide model answers at every level? Can you go beyond the syllabus and also make the complex seem simple? This is the path to a great reputation. So – keep up to date and keep learning your own subject… it’s going to pay off handsomely.

5. Lay a path to successful outcomes for your students

Excellent examination outcomes don’t happen by accident. Even though we might agree that they don’t tell the whole story, exam success is major element in building a strong reputation.  However, the link is stronger if students testify to a teacher’s role in the process.  Do you build confidence, giving students self-belief whilst setting them challenging targets? Do you provide them with all the resources they need to succeed?  I know teachers who write blogs or put superb revision guides or exemplar essays together; they use lesson time effectively to rehearse, to model success, to ensure that the exams are demystified.  It is so important to know your students’ exam structure, the content, the assessment objectives, the standards for each grade and so on – so that you can convey that to students in way that gives them the best chance of success.  In my experience, the best teachers usually feel there is more that could be done to support students in passing exams…; weaker teachers are more likely to suggest they did all they could.  (Admittedly a generalisation… but food for thought.)

6. Embrace a total G&T Philosophy

This is a theme dear to my heart as a learner and a parent.  It’s something I explored in this post: Gifted and Talented Provision: A Total Philosophy  I’ve known several teachers who would be well-regarded in every respect except in their capacity to meet the needs of the most able. This might link to subject knowledge but really it is a question of mind-set. A powerful source of reputational enhancement is feedback from the brightest students and their parents.  If you have them on your side, you’re winning. If you don’t…you’re going to struggle.  I still hold the view that, nationally, far too many students are systematically under-challenged every single day….but they don’t have to be in your lessons!  Teach to the top and the rest will follow in the wake of high challenge;  put a lid on expectations at your peril – and theirs!

7. Express yourself

All the great teachers I can think of are idiosyncratic in some way.  There is no mould or formula just as there is no one way to teach.  Teachers have great scope for self-expression; for doing things their own way; for being entirely autonomous.  Coupled with all the ‘great lessons’ ideas and positive student relationships, a strong reputation can arise from a great teacher’s character; their funny stories; their unique questioning style; their love of setting things on fire; the camaraderie they engender with their students;  their passion for poetry and reading aloud; their encyclopaedic knowledge of WWII battles; their witty critiques; their superb collection of YouTube clips; their love of cake; their tendency to go way off at a tangent ….. or whatever.  Be yourself…express yourself…. use your autonomy to explore your passions and don’t be inhibited.  This is all part of what I call ‘Rainforest Thinking’..let’s get off the plantation!

PART TWO: Beyond the classroom

8. Give time generously to students who need you.

Outside the normal flow of lessons, there are always going to be students that need extra help.  On the reputational scale, a teacher’s willingness to give their time generously is often a major factor.  I know teachers who have supremely high standing in this regard and others who really don’t. Obviously it is a choice you make.. but it doesn’t actually take much.  Students and parents are often hugely grateful for just a bit of extra support.. and that can make all the difference to them, pushing them along at the right time.  All the letters and emails I receive from parents who want to praise or thank a teacher focus on this aspect… the support given freely, beyond the call of duty.

9. Engage with parents

Teachers who take the time to reach out to parents or to respond promptly always gain from it – and the reverse it also true.  There is often too much unhealthy teacher-talk about ‘pushy parents’ or ‘nightmare parents’.  Actually, almost all parents want their children to succeed at school; they have their own view of what their role is and how much they can help; they have their own expectations and perceptions of their child’s abilities and aspirations.  We simply have to work with that.  Some parents may be excessively demanding in  your eyes but, actually, we’d be a lot better off if all our parents were pushy …even if that sounds like a lot of stress and pressure. Making a few strategic calls to give praise or share concerns is immensely powerful.  Breaking bad news at parents’ evening can be disastrous.. especially if the issues have been brewing for months.  If a parent says the homework is too easy, isn’t ever marked or that lessons are being disrupted (so they hear…) then don’t be defensive; it is far more effective to acknowledge their concerns and commit to resolving them whilst also giving your perspective.   A teacher who listens is one who commands respect and support; it’s a win-win.  Homework is  a superb vehicle for communicating expectations and values to parents, as I describe in this post: Homework matters: Great teachers set great homework.  Being a teacher who religiously sets homework in a variety of engaging forms, providing practice, challenge and opportunities for exploration, is always going to gain. A low volume of homework-setting is always undermining.

10. Get involved in the school community

Time and time again I’ve seen teachers grow in confidence and stature through their engagement with students and colleagues outside the confines of the classroom.  It can be a release from the normal routine and a great source of joy to take part in extra-curricular activities – but with the bonus by-product that students learn to perceive you as a more rounded person.  This always enhances a teacher’s reputation amongst students and helps build relationships for learning that might otherwise have taken much longer.  On top of that, these experiences can help develop a wider set of skills – planning, organisation, leadership, managing people – that can be an asset when looking to take on further responsibilities.  Ever since I started teaching, my extra-curricular work has been immensely rewarding; the motivational aspect of that feeds back into the teaching. You do need to get a balance of course; I’ve known teachers whose non-teaching activities have begun to impinge on their core role…but in general, a teacher who plays a wider role in the life of the school always benefits.

11. Maintain high professional standards

This will seem blindingly obvious I’m sure but it is worth stating because, too often, people fall down in this area without realising the impact it has.  Teaching and learning are clearly the priority – without question.  But there are some aspects of general professional life that can enhance or reduce someone’s reputational standing.  I’d include things like being on time for meetings, meeting deadlines, matching the dress code (top buttons done up if that is the expectation of students), sticking to email protocols, being disciplined with comments on social media at all times…. and so on.  It also extends to using appropriate language with students, alcohol and smoking, making spelling errors in formal letters, handling disagreements, maintaining confidentiality, modelling full commitment to equality policies….. a long list.  For me, these things are completely compatible with being an idiosyncratic, creative, maverick classroom practitioner or a more straight-forward conformist.  Homophobic comments in the staffroom, a public argument or an overly revealing late-night tweet can be very harmful. We’re basically under scrutiny ’24/7′ whether we like it or not.

12. Show initiative; offer solutions; be collaborative; be your own CPD champion

The people who command the greatest respect and admiration, to my mind, are those who contribute to leading the school forward at every level.  It is so great when a teacher comes forward to present an idea – something they’d like to try or that they’ve already explored but want to take further.  At departmental level, the collaborators and sharers are vital to taking teaching and learning forward.  You can’t really be a full-on ‘great teacher’ if you fly solo; you’re in a team. There are all kinds of pedagogical, operational and strategic challenges in school life…it is always easy to pick out the faults in the status quo. It is far harder to suggest solutions and harder still to commit to implementing them.  So, whether it is the marking policy, the curriculum structure, the lunchtime supervision rota or the behaviour of boys in 8F, teachers who have ideas or who at least can express concerns in a constructive manner always gain reputational credit. 

With CPD, the same issues are relevant.  It is unlikely that anyone is going to send you on a course..if you’re just waiting in hope.   However, if you see a course you want to go on and make a request or you have an idea for a project you want to work on with some colleagues…then doors begin to open.  Clearly the school systems and middle and senior leaders have a role to play; but their role is not as important as yours.  With any number of school based projects and initiatives, my feeling is – get on with it and then report back. If you wait too long for permission, it may never happen.

CONCLUSION

As I described in this post on Leading 21st Century Learning  there are so many ideas out there to engage with; it is an exciting time. A great teacher will be getting stuck in, reading the books and the blogs and trying hard to refine their thinking and improve their practice all the time. Despite the challenges we face with all the noise from OfSTED and the DFE, there is hope for a better system, especially because we have the power to do so much of what really matters ourselves.  In the same spirit, each teacher has a great deal of control over the reputation they great generate; OfSTED will come and go; exam results will go up and down… but your reputation as a great teacher can grow and grow. It’s really up to you.

Shanghai, China. The mega-metropolis.

I spent the first week of the Easter holiday in China taking part in the pre-departure training for 30 teachers of English due to spend a month in Essex later this summer. It was my third trip to China in recent years forming part of an ongoing link between Jiang Su Province and Essex.

Always humbling to arrive from Essex to cities with 10 million people and receive a warm welcome.

My school is partnered with the remarkable Wuxi No 1 High School and since our link began three years ago we’ve run exchange visits in both directions and received various delegations of teachers from Wuxi and neighbouring Suzhou, two cities inland from Shanghai.

The process is mutually beneficial as we all have a great deal to learn from each other.  The rate of development in China is well documented and it is quite breath-taking to see the scale of their vision in building the country’s infrastructure.

China has more Western influence than many people realise.

Education is a key plank of their overall strategy and the various levels in the Education Bureau hierarchy have huge budgets to invest; part of this is used to fund their international partnership work as internationalising education is one of their goals.  The approach to education is similar in many ways and much of the curriculum content is very familiar.  However there are key differences, often driven by the need for scale.  Chinese schools can be huge with primaries of 2000 and high schools with  5000 students.

Wuxi No 1 High School. 2000 students age 15-18. (Y11-Y13)

Class size is another key difference.  A typical class is 40-50 students, always in rows of individual tables where the students are based the entire time.

Two typical classes at Wuxi No 1. 8×6 rows or 7 x 7.

In our partner school, there is a lot of presenting from the front, but not exclusively by the teacher. Projectors and laptops were almost standard in the classes I’ve seen and teachers talk a lot about ‘p p t’ – powerpoint.

ppt’s in action. An English lesson and a Chinese lesson. See the books stashed in desks.

Primary classrooms are even bigger in general and the rows of desks are there from the start.  In the picture below, children learn the pin yin system copying an animated cartoon character… lots of IT resources are available for the teachers and we saw sophisticated visualisers used to model hand-writing. Importantly, Chinese Primary teachers are specialist subject teachers too. Maths education in particular is a specialist area from the beginning.

Primary classrooms.. with 50 students.

Another major difference is the working pattern for both students and teachers – at least in the schools we have visited. Mainly Chinese teachers only have 2 or, at most, 3 classes a day, with each lasting 45 minutes; typically each day is the same in a week. The rest of the day would be for preparing lessons, marking work from each of the teacher’s students (about 100 bits of work per day) and seeing some students to give individual help. Schools have a lot more teachers per student with each one teaching much less than their UK counterparts but doing daily marking in very high volume.

The Chinese students’ experience of school.

Students at Wuxi No 1 High School work incredible hours. Essentially they study all day long; they have to devote themselves to it.  In the more elite schools this is fuelled by parental expectations and by the intense competition to get into the highest status universities.  The curriculum in the High Schools is narrow compared to GCSEs but broader than our A levels with little choice – essentially two paths: sciences or humanities.  The state Galkao exams take place on two days in June every year – nicely efficient but very high stakes for the students.

Chemistry looks the same. English – the use of idiomatic phrases.

It is interesting that English is a core subject and it remains a part of most university programmes too. China is very much outward looking at this level.  The picture shows phrases from a baseball match report.  Schools often have specialist laboratories for practical science work..

A biology lab with interesting specimens. Look closely…yes, it is human.

The arts and sport are a feature of school life but not in a formal taught way in the high schools.  However there is still a lot of activity with large -scale drills and basketball and table tennis featuring prominently.

Morning exercise and afternoon eye exercises. Common features of daily life in Chinese schools.

The daily eye exercises are accompanied by some ‘relaxing’ music over the tannoy system with each class doing this in unison.  It has a similar status to acupuncture in terms of its efficacy.  The cultural exchange aspect of the visits is always so interesting. Chinese schools are full of slogans which, when translated, always sound very poetic and grand.. And there are some amusing by-products of translation.

Education should be directed toward the modernisation drive and the future; Keep a big smile on face every day. 

I particularly liked these poetic Keep of the Grass signs:

Keep off the Grass is so dull in comparison.

Part of the visit is building a relationship with our counterparts. I established a bond with Principal Hu, my opposite number at the time, and enjoyed some of the more touristy aspects of the trip.  For Chinese teachers coming to England, it is almost always their first trip overseas, even after teaching English for  25 years.  It means a great deal to them and inevitably sight-seeing is high on their agenda.

Ping pong diplomacy and bit of Imperial dressing up.

On a 2011 trip, I  went in order to brief the school officials in Wuxi about contemporary thinking in UK Education.  They were also very interested to hear about OfSTED.

Education officials and Principals from Wuxi.

Nationally, the Chinese are conscious that the narrow curriculum and didactic pedagogy is not generating a nation of creative thinkers, even though they excel in Maths, English, Science and Chinese. We had great fun introducing them to the idea of group work and student-centred learning.  They were not comfortable with it all but they said they could see the benefits.  There was a lot more discussion and laughter than we had in the majority of our sessions.

Introducing Headteachers and teachers to group work.

At KEGS, our link with China still feels as if ti is in its infancy and it takes a lot of energy to sustain it.  However, the rewards are significant.  Our Mandarin GCSE option is very popular and I hope we can keep it that way. China is opening up steadily and by exchanging ideas about teaching and learning we have a lot to learn.  At the very least, it is an excellent opportunity to reflect on what we do.  Smaller classes – but more lessons in a day…less didactic and less examination focused?  Would we swap that for the Chinese method? Probably not…but if we could bottle just a bit of that work ethic ??

I’ll leave the politics for another post…. but that is interesting and more subtle than I’d appreciated.

]]> http://headguruteacher.com/2013/04/08/a-chinese-education-2/feed/ 5 Screen shot 2013-04-08 at 00.15.18 headguruteacher Shanghai, China. The mega-metropolis. Screen shot 2013-04-08 at 00.00.16 China has more Western influence than many people realise. Wuxi No 1 High School. 2000 students age 15-18. (Y11-Y13) Two typical classes at Wuxi No 1. 8x6 rows or 7 x 7. ppt's in action. An English lesson and a Chinese lesson. Primary classrooms.. with 50 students. The Chinese students' experience of school. Chemistry looks the same. English - the use of idiomatic phrases. A biology lab with interesting specimens. Look closely...yes, it is human. Morning exercise and afternoon eye exercises. Common features of daily life in Chinese schools. School slogans. Secondary and Primary. Keep off the Grass is so dull in comparison. Ping pong diplomacy and bit of Imperial dressing up. Education officials and Principals from Wuxi. Introducing Headteachers and teachers to group work. http://headguruteacher.com/2013/04/03/educational-lab-rats-the-search-for-evidence/ http://headguruteacher.com/2013/04/03/educational-lab-rats-the-search-for-evidence/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 06:29:40 +0000 headguruteacher https://headguruteacher.wordpress.com/?p=2043 Continue reading »]]>

The recent wave of blogs and twitter exchanges that have focused on the evidence-base that underpins educational policy and practice has been fascinating. I am one of many eagerly anticipating the ResearchED  Conference organised by Tom Bennett at Dulwich College in September. This has been catalysed in part by the exuberant Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science. This is a must-read book ..and not just for its demolition of the credentials of TV diet magician Gillian McKeith (“…or to use her full medical title, Gillian McKeith”….a classic line!). If you’ve ever believed that those drops of Balsamum Peruvianum or alpine blackbird spit from the homeopathy cabinet made you better…..well, sorry….you’ve been suckered by the voodoo. Except in one respect…the placebo effect.

Ben’s book explores this in detail. It is truly amazing. Proper scientific studies have shown how powerful the placebo effect is. Positive effects from taking neutral sugar pills are reported in trials in all kinds of medical scenarios. The effect can be affected by the colour of the pills and the manner in which the pills are prescribed. For example, if a Doctor thinks the pills are likely to work or, conversely, are unlikely to work (pre- conditioned as part of a blind trial) ..this has a huge impact on the patient’s placebo response because of the consequent Doctor-patient dialogue. If the effect is convincing enough evidently even placebo knee operations can work! Homeopathy is essentially a giant exercise in distributing placebo pills and potions; people want to believe in them so they use them despite the fact that there is zero evidence for their efficacy that would survive a randomised controlled trial (RCT). The reason I find this interesting is because it highlights the complexity of the interaction between social/emotional effects and physical bio-chemical mechanisms even when evaluating a highly reproducible event: the taking of a pill.

Turning towards education, Ben Goldacre and others are suggesting that a more highly developed research culture would be a benefit to policy makers and practitioners. It is hard to argue with that. The big question, however, is ‘what kind of evidence do we need?’ What kind of research is needed in order to provide that evidence?. Given that no two teacher-student interactions are the same, no learning process is entirely reproducible, how are we going to use research methodologies to the greatest effect? As I argue in The Data Delusion even physical systems that appear simple (like dropping a bag of marbles) are actually too complex to be predictable as there are too many variables; we’re left with broad general patterns at best and a list of average effects (as with the Hattie effect sizes). If we throw in all the psychological factors that do their work in medical placebo effects, educational cause and effect is highly problematic from a research perspective. In looking for evidence, we must proceed cautiously with realistic expectations.

To explore this further here are some scenarios:

1) MA Research: Dialogue as a precursor for writing.
A colleague, Emma, completed her MA in Education at Cambridge with a thesis based on the process of students engaging in extended dialogue prior to writing an analysis of a text. Her methodology section was fascinating in itself. There is a large body of literature surrounding the validity and limitations of a wide range of social science research methods. In developing our thinking in the current debate, we’d be wise to engage with it; this isn’t new ground. Emma’s work involved a series of detailed interviews with three of her students – an established method. This enabled her to examine the effects of the dialogic exchanges on the subsequent writing in some detail; this narrow but deep method yielded insights but not data. Rather than tables and graphs, the thesis contains transcripts of student-teacher dialogues and the interviews. It’s a supremely interesting piece of work from which other teachers in her department have benefitted.

Questions to consider:
Does Emma’s research provide evidence that this teaching method could be applied in another context?
To what extent would the findings be more valid or more insightful if extended to a large scale trial?
Is it necessary to quantify the impact of the process in order to have confidence that it works?
Emma is an inspirational teacher in any case. Would another teacher have had the same effect with the same method? Would we find a similar effect on average if 100 teachers tried it? If the results from 100 teachers were positive on average, would that mean that this method ‘works’? What proof would be needed? In practice is ‘insight’ all we need as opposed to ‘evidence’ given all the variables?

2) Observational Experience: Think Pair Share
My blog post about the effect of students discussing in pairs before giving answers as opposed to the default ‘hands up’ method is one of my most popular. In my judgement, based on years of experience of teaching and observing lessons taught by lots of different teachers, it is immensely powerful. However, despite claiming it to be ‘the washing hands of learning’, I’ve never actually measured the difference in student outcomes generated by the two methods. My convictions lie in observing the quality of class interactions and the verbal responses generated. The learning process seems significantly more positive and engaging for all and I suppose I’m making the assumption that higher quality interactions and answers lead to deeper understanding. But, on that point, I could well be wrong…after all, plenty of students appear to learn well in didactic university lectures.

To find out if my hunch is valid or the dubious quackery of a charlatan, it would certainly be possible to conduct a trial: several hundred students could be taught with TPS as the default questioning mode and several hundred others using “Hands Up”. Understanding of some specific content could be assessed before and after the trial and the results compared. What would this show? If the data showed general support for my experience-based hunch, I’d feel vindicated. It would suggest alignment between the obervable interactions and measurable learning outcomes; all neat and tidy; q.e.d.

But what if the effect was small, neutral or, heaven forbid…negative? I’d have to re-evaluate my position and perhaps promote the idea a little less but I’d still use the method myself. Why? Mainly because no amount of data would override my sense that ‘Hands up’ is a poor process; I would argue that the testing process is too limiting; that the in-class interactions amount to more than that which can be meaningfully measured in a test; I’d impose my value system regardless. However, I could not promote TPS as a way to pass tests.

What does this say? It suggests that, in conducting research we need to be clear about what outcomes we place value on. If an initiative cannot be shown to have a reproducible, quantifiable effect in a certain direction, deciding what to do becomes more concretely a matter of working from our values; our gut instincts, biases and prejudices. At a school level is it not valid to reach a consensus on what the value-system is? Beyond that? Probably not. The DFE can’t dictate the values at play in a classroom..even if it wanted to.

3) Action Research: Co-construction.

As I have described in the post Research as CPD: CPD as Research, action research is a routine feature of life at my school. Every teacher is involved in a project where they are trying to find out about the impact of a particular teaching method. The findings are shared as part of our in-house professional dialogue and some teachers are involved with the Cambridge CamSTAR group, disseminating their work more widely. Each project is small scale, often limited to one class. Our focus is based on developing insights.

Should we be trying to scale these projects up or attempting to run them as RCTs? I’m not sure. The main purpose for our action research is to find strategies that work of each teacher in their own context; sharing the findings provides a source of reflection for others. The whole process is highly motivating, including the collaborative aspect and this in itself feels like an important ingredient in driving effective teaching and learning. There is often an organic consensus among a group of teachers about the value of a certain strategy but, at the same time, there are variations in the details of how each person implements the idea. It seems to me that an RCT or large scale trial would require a much tighter definition of the specific strategy in order for it to be valid.

For example, I have been working with a colleague to develop the idea of co-construction. We both use different methods within a common umbrella; this allows us to compare notes and learn from each other. However, we wouldn’t be able to state ‘co-construction works’ in any definitive sense. This is especially true because the value of the process is not in enhancing measurable content-based outcomes; it is in developing a range of other skills and aptitudes such as the confidence to plan and teach a lesson to your peers. I’m not sure we could scale up the trial without having to prescribe a lot of the elements of the process, thereby losing the spirit of it. At the same time, I wouldn’t ever insist that any teacher should adopt the method…. I don’t have evidence to suggest it would work for them; all I can do is suggest it might be worth trying with as much enthusiasm as the idea deserves. Is that not still worthwhile? I think it is. Small scale action research is immensely powerful in creating a culture in which outstanding teachers thrive; knock the value of action research at your peril! Size isn’t everythng and the results of a small local trial could well be more meaningful in that context than the transfer of findings from data-rich large-scale RCTs which average out the detail.

On the issue of measuring outcomes, as a cautionary aside, I often reflect on the sad fact that the very best exam results I’ve ever had for a class of my own came after we ran out of time and I taught the P3 GCSE module in about 15 lessons; we crammed, taught to the test in a mad panic and drilled on past papers. Bingo! A*s galore. Were they all that good at Physics? No. Were they well prepared for A level? No. Was it a good learning experience? No. But the data never lies! What this shows is that the testing process is limited and that surface recall gets you a long way; too far. We can’t always measure what we value and that is a key concern in conducting a trial.

With all that said, here are some examples of RCTs I’d like to see the results of:

• Does teaching about particles atoms and molecules before teaching about chemical reactions improve understanding? Logically it should…but does it? My hunch is that effective sequencing in the curriculum is an important area.
• Does extensive use of mini-whiteboards in class discussion during lessons provide Maths teachers with as good or better understanding of students’ capabilities compared to marking books after work has been completed? Does it have any impact at all? (My bet is ‘yes’ but only where the teacher engages with the responses…. Hmmm, how to control for that? )
• How does the improvement in students’ writing following peer-assessment using a given technique compare to the impact of teacher assessment…controlling for time spent and other variables? Related to this: does a student’s writing improve if they have regular opportunities to peer assess the work of others?
• If Year 7 was taught the identical scheme of work to Year 8, would they do just as well? (With obvious implications…)
• If, in multiple trials, teams of three teachers taught parallel mixed ability groups and then the same teachers taught three tiered abilty groups, competing to gain the highest progress score each time, which structure would yield the best outcomes?
• If students with level 3 in English engage in paired reading with a Sixth Former for half an hour every day for two months, does it improve their reading age significantly?

If these trials and hundreds of others like them were conducted, we’d certainly be in a better position. However, in my opinion, even here we’d still be working in the territory of ‘insight’. The results might influence some changes in policy and practice but ultimately I suspect that any changes would always be primarily driven by socio-political values as teachers and politicians continue to cherry-pick the bits of evidence that suit them. We might be in a position to resist the imposition of national policies that we don’t agree with and that would be a good thing for sure. In the end I would also bet that the greatest gains to students come from the reflection/self-evaluation effect of teachers engaging in and with research processes in their local contexts, regardless of the outcomes of the trials themselves. It would take a mega-meta-RCT to prove that!

A bold claim….

I’m convinced that our existing accountability framework is preventing schools from improving at the pace that they could be or in the way that they should be. OfSTED and Performance Tables dominate the thinking of too many Heads and teachers to a degree that is unhealthy, unnecessary and counterproductive.  I have written about these issues in several posts as have many others. For example, in Building a Trust Culture: it’s not all hugs I suggest that accountability and challenge within the system is vital – but also suggest that the prevailing OfSTED-driven culture is not helpful. We have a system a world away from the high-trust culture we need in order to secure improvement.

In offering a critique, we must be careful to have some balance. It is quite possibly true that, overall, OfSTED judgements correlate broadly to actual standards of education. It isn’t a lottery or a massive conspiracy against us and, yes, some schools and some teachers should be under pressure to improve dramatically. On the face of it the criteria for Good or Outstanding teaching or leadership seem reasonable.  So where’s the problem? Mainly it is that there is a lack of trust and a deep-seated fear of failure that drag the whole system down. (See also F.E.A.R and Plantation Thinking) .For me, the key issues are the mechanistic snap-shot nature of the inspection process and the over-bearing top-heavy intensity of the whole accountability system;  the process is deeply flawed and needs to change.

Here are some of the issues:

• Performance Measures include a raft of ‘cliff edge’ factors such as %5A*-Cs including English and Maths that create perverse incentives to introduce short-term quick fix interventions rather than to deepen the learning experience at a fundamental level. Schools and teachers are incentivised to LOOK good rather than to BE good; it feels like hoop-jumping rather than embedding better practice and it often is.
• The data-focus in our system of school evaluation is based on some flawed assumptions about the validity of the measures as indicators of learning or the quality of education overall.(see The Data Delusion). Despite this, OfSTED judgements are heavily driven by data analysis, reinforced only by snap-shot flying visits by people who have no prior knowledge of the schools. Even though a Head or Governor might take weeks or months to really get to know their school’s strengths and weaknesses, and a community of parents will place value on the education their children receive in myriad ways, OfSTED assume they can categorise schools meaningfully in a couple of days with a few rows of data from RAISEOnline.
• The system is intensely self-referential so that inspectors only make judgements around a narrow set of criteria limited to those things that can be observed in two days or determined by a few rows of data… if the true quality of education provided by a teacher or school is unobservable or measurable on those terms, it doesn’t count by definition. There is a consensus that ‘a great education’ amounts to more than the sum of what is measurable but the accountability systems don’t take sufficient account of this. And, let’s be honest; it works in both ways: some schools have inflated judgements that don’t match the day-to-day experience; others have a grade that does not do them justice.
• The prime driver of real improvement is known to be the quality of teaching and learning but this is judged through a series of snap-shot lesson observations; consequently, regardless of what the Chief Inspector says in public, the OfSTED criteria take on Biblical Tablets of Stone status in defining what learning should look like.. even though most lessons are never observed and even though learning can never be accurately or meaningfully measured during a short lesson observation. I am guilty of giving a teacher a ‘Good’ for a lesson on a technicality, even though they are one the most fabulous teachers I know and I don’t think anyone could teach their subject better than they do or get better results.  Madness.
• As I have explained in this post How do I know how good my teachers are? a full evaluation of teacher quality requires triangulation from a range of sets of information, qualitative and quantitative, over time – and this is not how OfSTED do things even if a Self Evaluation Form is written in detail. Heads know their teachers; inspectors do not – they can’t. They don’t know the schools either.
• The consequences for failure in the system are so dire (eg forced academisation, heads rolling – pun intended) that Heads and Teachers are unable to consider deviating from the parameters that they perceive to be OfSTED approved; a poor lesson grade or a poor overall school grade sets the improvement process back a long way before it moves forward again because the stakes are so high and the impact of a negative judgement is so demoralising.  Mea culpa; I’m currently responsible for some of this.
• The factory model applied to teacher performance – Performance Related Pay for example – does not provide incentives to improve and does not actually succeed in securing improvement. (See my views on this here: Wrong Diagnosis; Wrong Solution). Under-performance that exists in the system is diagnosed as resulting from teachers or Heads who are ‘enemies of promise’ or who are assumed to not be working hard enough.
• The entire enterprise breeds mass cynicism, builds a chronic defensive culture and de-skills teachers and leaders as it narrows their focus and removes any incentives to provide challenge from within. Schools I work closely with are registering their staff at £1000 a go in large numbers for formal OfSTED Inspector training. Do they spend this kind of money on CPD for developing teaching or leadership? No.

Sounds bad doesn’t it! Well, it is that bad. But it doesn’t have to be. In seeking to move things forward, I would suggest a few basic principles:

1. Accountability mechanisms need to reflect the complexity of the processes they are designed to evaluate: teaching; learning, leadership, attainment, curriculum, ethos – whatever is included. Simplification for the sake of communication or comparison is inappropriate if it unduly distorts the quality of the information or creates incentives to deviate from deep level improvement.
2. Public scrutiny of school effectiveness is important and it should be possible for parents and other community members to access information that gives a full and rounded picture of the nature and quality of the education provided at any school.
3. Effective accountability needs to secure positive engagement in the change process that will secure embedded, sustained improvement; this can only be done if the people concerned are central to the process.
4. Schools, teachers and learners need to be ‘known’ rather than merely inspected or observed in order to capture a true sense of their successes; their strengths and their areas for improvement ; this requires longitudinal wrap-around, on-going evaluation triangulating a range of quantitative and qualitative sources of information.  The snap-shot model is untenable and needs to be removed from the system entirely.
5. School stakeholders should have a say in defining the parameters for measuring their school’s success; this should include processes as well as outcomes in order to provide the fullest possible picture.
6. External challenge is essential to all accountability processes; complacency or tolerance of mediocrity cannot be allowed to go unchallenged so there is a crucial role for trained and experienced professionals with the skills required to work with schools to secure robust accountability.

How might this work in practice? Three ideas:

1. Longitudinal Evaluation of The Quality of Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning should be evaluated in terms of their quality over time.  Examination and internal assessment outcomes, observed teaching episodes, evidence of progress in students’ work and the quality of feedback  should inform any judgements alongside more general feedback about the learning experience from student focus groups and parental surveys. The process should be more formative than summative leading to a clear plan of action for further development at whole-school  and teacher level.  The notion of the ‘perfect OfSTED lesson’ would be replaced by ‘features of outstanding learning over time’.

2. The School Performance Report: Attainment and Progress Measures in Context

Data that gives an account of a school’s performance should be provided in detail.  No single measure should be used to rank schools or to set floor measures.  Recognising that the data itself cannot tell a story,  each year a full School Performance Report should be published where schools, working within guidelines, give an account of the data trends that result from public examinations or formal assessments.  Any contextual information that helps to explain the trends would be included alongside a statement of actions that the school is looking to take. Crude league tables would not be facilitated by the DFE; parents and other members of the public would be expected to read and compare the reports.

3. Three-year School Effectiveness Report:  Self-Evaluation, Partnership and Scrutiny

Schools should all have three forms of ongoing evaluation so that the detail of its strengths and weaknesses are known and agreed by all concerned.

• Internal self-evaluation involving all stakeholders, led by Governors and the Headteacher
• School partnerships with pairs or triads of schools working together as critical friends; the role of  ‘challenge’ in these partnerships would need to develop into a key element of professional discourse. Heads would need to challenge each other to improve whilst securing improvement in their own schools; it would be a professional duty to sign off on an agreed evaluation of a partner school.
• An allocated scrutineer in the mode of the HMIs of the past who would visit their schools regularly; they would know the teachers and leaders in the school; they would know how things were changing over time and what priorities the school was setting itself.  They would report to another tier of moderating inspectors and would ensure that the evaluation processes were conducted with rigour.  The time spent in each school might vary according to need.  Additional specialists could contribute as required.

At set-piece times, perhaps once every three years, a school would publish an agreed report for the community containing an account of the ongoing evaluation processes alongside the latest Performance Report.  All parties would need to agree the content of the report. There would be no window dressing, no complacency and nowhere to hide.  It would be more rigorous and more accurate than current OfSTED reports.

This would become a built-in, ongoing process leading to continual improvement, a sense of ownership of the accountability mechanisms and a greater confidence in the entire system.  I believe that many of the issues at the top of this post would be addressed.

There is another way…..

The final exhibition; the culmination of an extended learning journey.

I am in the fortunate position of being the line manager for Art at KEGS and over the last couple of weeks I’ve been involved in the Art Departmental Review.  This a process that involves observing everyone in the department, giving individual feedback then team feedback and looking more widely at achievement issues overall.  We are in the second year of the process so we are building on the ideas and objectives we set out last year.  I should also say that my recent thinking about Art has also been influenced by my daughter who is taking GCSE Art and finds it to be, by far, the most rewarding, engaging, challenging subject; the most work and the most fun.

During my period of immersion in the Art world, I’ve started to think that we have a lot to learn from the whole artistic process about teaching and learning and about the process of observing. Here are my thoughts:

1. Teaching and Learning

•  Art lessons are where students have the greatest opportunity to explore and to express their thoughts and feelings in an extended, deep manner; the conditions allow them to be very personal in ways that other subjects rarely do. Art teachers can learn a lot more about their students’ interests and idiosyncrasies because of the dialogue they engage in.
  

  Year 12 work that has developed from simple origins into a range of forms. The students love to tell their stories.

• In Art, students have a the greatest ownership over what they are doing – the process, the subject matter, the development of ideas over time; Art is the closest students come to experiencing  risk-taking ‘skateboarding lessons’ autonomy and self-direction over an extended period. This is where the seeds of creativity and innovation are sown…and we don’t allow enough of this in other areas.
  

  Mixed media; a highly academic student who loves the opportunity for personal discovery.

• There is an explicit process of learning from the ideas of others  – great artists and peers in the classroom.  I shared this in my Teaching for Creativity and Innovation blog, showing how my daughter had based a piece on her work of Sir Francis Bacon.  In the lesson shown below, students were showing their understanding of a portrait by recreating them in a photo; the resulting discussion about lighting, character, imagery and composition was stunning – in a Year 7 class.
  

  Showing understanding through visual representation.

• To an extent I had never fully appreciated, the technical skills are far less critical than the skills and confidence needed to explore, create, experiment, review, re-direct and so on… The technical skills are also important but are often not the source of the creativity..
• The learning is visible – not just visual. This lends itself to a wonderful range of feedback processes.  Teachers give concrete suggestions in sketchbooks or on post-its that can be acted on; group feedback can be engineered in a large circle or by asking students to offer suggestions individually or in pairs. Students can photograph their work as it develops or reference their work to that of others in order to self-evaluate and seek to make continual improvements. This process of continual reflection and refinement is wonderful. In writing-based subjects we are really just trying to get as close to this as possible.
  

  KS3 Art lessons where students’ ideas develop along with the confidence to put them into action.

• There is so much scope to be inventive with feedback modes. In a Y12 lesson students used Picasso quotes as feedback which generated excellent discussion about students’ artistic thought processes.  The role of the sketchbook is also really powerful and quite different to a typical exercise book because of the personal, exploratory nature of what goes in it, all building towards the ideas embedded in the larger pieces.

So….how could some of this transfer to other areas?

Could we provide more extended learning opportunities in other subjects?  In Physics the closest we get to this is the Y13 practical coursework where students design their own experiments and carry them out over 10 lessons or so.  They have the same sense of ownership and they learn a great deal about Physics as they wrestle with all the hidden challenges of real-world measurement.  I’m considering looking at introducing something like this at KS3…some form of open investigation. Is there an equivalent in other subjects? What about a personal historical study in Year 8 History or a Geography Town Study or a self-selected novel to explore in Year 9 English?

The closest we get to the Art experience in Physics. Individual investigations.. but why leave it to Year 13?

Should we see exercise books more like the artist’s sketchbook – more of a personal learning journal? What about exhibitions of work in other subjects? We invite parents in to see the GCSE and A Level work but why not for Maths, History or DT?  In general we need to do more ‘gathering round’ the students’ work so share it, critique it, learn from it and improve it.  This is what the Gallery Technique and other strategies deliver – we just need more of it.

2. Observing the Learning Arc: Moving away from the snap-shot. 

Something that struck me very clearly during this Departmental Review was that I don’t think you can judge an art lesson properly simply by looking at what is going on within the short time frame of one lesson segment.  Of course you can observe general classroom management issues – you could tell if things were going wrong – but, beyond that, the learning is almost always on a long arc, to use my Learning Arc concept.  When you observe an art lesson or talk to a student about their work..immediately you need to know the full story.  You need to know where their ideas started, what the inspiration was, where they took the ideas to before the abstractions began or what the cultural references are. Without this, the clay figure or the shoe lino cut or the elaborate fabric sculpture or intensely dark painting just seem to have no purpose. Once the back story is told, it all comes to life.  It also helps to know where it is all going too; where is each student going with their ideas? In Art, students are on a learning journey that takes time – and this is clear to see.

In this context, there is no value in saying that a 30 minute segment is ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’; what you want to know is whether the entire process is going to lead to Outstanding outcomes… which is an entirely different emphasis.  This requires the observer to go deeper; to find out more and to take a long term view. Of course it helps if you can pop in several times or see the finished work later on.

This bit of thinking, inspired by Art lessons, suggests to me that the same also applies to all lessons – or at least most lessons.  The learning arc in many subjects is long and slow; we cannot truly know what learning is happening during a snapshot. At best we get some clues.  I think we need to re-examine the entire notion of lesson observation judgements – because they do not do justice to the real learning process which is slower and longer.  In truth, this model applies not only to lessons but to the whole notion of accountability.  Snap-shots are false.  That is pretty much the end of it.  I will think more and write about just this in due course…  but the ideas will have been shaped by Lessons from Art Lessons.

With thanks to the Art students at KEGS and the wonderful Art Team: Helen, Helen, Rohini and Sue.  Thanks all.

So many possible ways for students to explore ideas….

1) Joyful but misguided approval:  data is all rubbish, we don’t need it… we’re off the hook… can’t wait to tell my Head/ HoD….    I’m actually arguing for a more sophisticated contextualised understanding of educational measurement and its limits which is different. Better data; meaningful data; data in it’s right place.. not no data.

2) Tsk, Tsk, Data is important, you’ve missed the point, it can be really useful to raise standards; some schools or teachers hide behind data-scepticism to mask under-performance and you’ve just given them ammunition.  My feeling here is that we have to have a debate about our basic assumptions (eg what a grade actually means..) without worrying that people might misunderstand.  If data-devotees can’t withstand a debate about what 6c means before they do the ‘levels of progress’ calculation, they’re not likely to be doing the students any favours.

3) Thankfully, plenty of people do get what I’m saying:  Assessment is complex… we lose the detail through over-simplification and averaging and mass-data systems run the risk of becoming so far removed from the source (the actual learning) that they lose meaning – so we need to try harder to be more sophisticated with data, more nuanced, more tolerant of uncertainties and so on, rather than merely taking crude data at face value.  We also need to face the reality that a lot of educational measurement is based on norm-referencing and that most school outputs are a ranking measure of one form or another.  Valued Added at KS4, for example, is really a measure of how much the students’ bell curve position has changed over time on average – it is a contest.

Some people have asked me what I suggest as alternatives.  Here are some ideas.  I’m not saying that these things solve the puzzle… but ,as I am fond of saying, if you don’t like an idea, you need a better one.

ABRSM Assessment: Grade, Score, Components, Feedback

ABRSM Exams

Look at the illustration:  A recent piano exam report from a Grade 3 Piano exam.  What I like about this is that you can drill down to various levels.

• John has achieved Grade 3 in Piano.
• John has a Pass at Grade 3
• John has 113 Points, which is  a Pass, just over half way to a Merit… at Grade 3
• The 113 points arise from six components….as shown: each piece, scales, oral tests, sight reading..
• Each component was scored with a written justification provided, against a published set of criteria. (see ABRSM website)

The student, the teacher and the parents can use this information to take stock of the performance at this level and use it developmentally to prepare for the next level.  Isn’t that fantastic!  The consistency in this process is high; these exams have credibility and the examiners have to undergo very rigorous training and moderation.

Imagine if our assessments or GCSEs were like that: An overall summary grade but linked to some criteria, detailed scores, and a justification to provide feedback .  What we get now is highly secretive; it costs money to get your exam paper back; there is no feedback or justification; there is a grade, and in some cases,  component scores.   Imagine if John just received: Piano Grade 3 Pass (or Merit)…..and then an official body averaged up all the students with Passes, introduced another arbitrary points score informing the teacher the average score per student etc…    So I am saying it this:  let’s have higher expectations of our public exam system and try to get closer to the ABRSM model.

Locally Defined Grades: KS3

At KEGS, which is a selective school, the National Curriculum levels have never helped to raise attainment.  We used to use them but when I arrived I found that there was quite a lot of inconsistency; no-one was quite sure what constituted Exceptional Performance or Level 8 or Level 7; some departments used A-E grading; some used %s for tests and only a few areas actually used NC Levels formatively.  It was impossible for us to use levels to measure progress.   So, to create a coherent umbrella framework for our context, we devised our own system.  The details of it are published on our moodle-VLE called KEGSnet:  http://kegsnet.org.uk/course/view.php?id=264

Essentially, we use a simple *,1,2,3 system to describe the learning expected in each year in each subject in a way that makes sense for the teachers in that area.  It only works because the boys are broadly aiming for the same objectives  – but the idea that attainment measures are defined in context is transferable.

Attainment in Year 8 History

Here is one for a specific Geography Assignment

Geography Attainment is specific to each assignment.

In Maths, the full Scheme of Work is published to parents and students and attainment is measured in terms of attaining certain %s in the tests consistently across the year.  In practice this is what teachers do to create NC levels;  here we just cut that superfluous information out and reference attainment directly to the specific content. eg a * reguires 90% where as 1 requires 65%.

We are into our third year with the system and it is working well. However, we are clear that it is just a general guide; there are no absolutes.  We need to review and develop the system continually but it makes a lot more sense than what he had before.  Each data point has specific meaning and that is important.  However, we don’t overplay it and focus more on attitude to learning and the micro of short-term progress across lessons in order to secure improvement.

Analysis of Examination Outcomes

We spend a lot of time at KEGS exploring our examination outcomes.  Each department produces a comprehensive post-mortem, in a style that suits them,  looking at exam components, break-down by teaching group, gender and various other factors.  We look in detail at RAISEOnline; we use the ALPS system for A level.  We have graphs plotting outcomes over time – by A/A*% or A*-C% or by total points or average points per entry; we slice and dice every which way.  There are hundreds of data measures to look at and we do all of that with rigour.

However, from all of that we are looking for two things:

1) Data that points to specific issues that we can address through specific actions.  This has led recently to tighening up some essay structure issues in a subject; spending CPD time looking at a Further Maths module where the content is quite challenging; re-jigging the timeline for delivering a science course and putting processes in place to support completion to deadlines in a practical subject with 60% coursework.   This use of data is essential;  nitty-gritty  analysis where the actions improve real learning.   Importantly, we often feel that, beyond a certain point, the data can’t tell you more.  We ask: will this extra analysis lead to any more actions to those we are already taking?  If the answer is no, we leave it.  Very often this applies to RAISEOnLine and ALPS – they do not indicate any actions that we are not already taking. The best information comes from exam board component scores where trends and patterns are the most closely linked to the learning.

2) Data that can tell the story of achievement to parents and the community. We recognise our obligation to report outcomes to the outside world – but here the balance is between too much (making it hard to access) or too little (making it less meaningful).  Even at school level, where you have the chance to write to parents with a full account -as I did this year – it is a difficult balance to strike.  When the data is presented at face value it is wide open to false comparisons and misinterpretation so I am inclined to give the detail.  I wrote this post last year after the A level results: http://headguruteacher.com/2012/08/16/the-folly-of-narrow-newspaper-league-tables/  We’re in a comfortable position I know – but the general point is the same; this information gets garbled all too easily.

My conclusion from this is that public data should not be presented raw; it is almost always misleading in some way and gives rise to a limited view of a school.  eg in my area of London two nearby schools have data profiles a bit like this:

• School A: 77% A*-C with EM; 15% A/A* VA = 1020
• School B 73% A-C with EM, 44% A/A* VA = 995

Which school do you want your kids to go to? Which is a ‘better’ school?..I might have my bias but obviously we need more information.

In the same way as an OfSTED report has a commentary alongside the grades and we don’t get league tables of grades published by the DFE, I think we should have a School Data Report – and not the pages of raw data.  Each school has a context; the data can tell a story – if you know it.  Parents should see a wide range of data points alongside an account of how these measures inter-relate and what they say about attainment outcomes, adding value and improvement over time.  The data on its own does not tell the story properly and we need to recognise that.

Headteachers’ Roundtable English Baccalaureate Framework.

I’ve been working with the HTRT on this model since January and I believe we’re on to something.  I won’t repeat it all here – but please do take time to read the proposals.  The transcript idea is a key feature as well as moving to points instead of grades, removing cliff-edge effects.

http://headteachersroundtable.wordpress.com/the-htrt-qualifications-framework-proposal/