leadership

Just gimme some truth

theprimaryheadLeave a comment

flyingcarpet

I’m sick and tired of hearing things

From uptight, short sighted

Narrow-minded hypocritics

All I want is the truth

Just gimme some truth

John Lennon

It must be a tough gig being a Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC). I mean, no one in education must ever want to talk to you. If I got a call coming through saying the RSC was on the line, I’d immediately order the shredding of my RaiseOnline and fax Justine Greening my application to convert to a grammar school, just so I could avoid talking to them. Their sole purpose, according to the DfE website is ‘to sack work with school leaders to make more academies take action in underperforming schools’. That basically means: if they need to talk to you, you’re yesterday’s news.

Still, that doesn’t seem to bother them much. In fact, you can’t help admire their single-minded visionary approach to education. It turns out anything can be solved by becoming a Multi Academy Trust (MAT). I genuinely did not know that. I knew that it was a Tory policy to transform any type of school into a MAT by 2020 but I didn’t know that it was actually the best thing that could happen in education. Until, that is, I heard the South West RSC talk to a group of Heads last week.

Rebecca Clark began her talk by saying that she believes MATS are the best vehicles for effective partnerships. I looked around the room, at all the Heads I have worked with over the years, and I realised she was right. For years we have been pretending to work together: turning up at cluster meetings, conducting peer reviews, taking part in moderation activities…and for what? Selfishly working with other schools to help our own. If only we were a MAT. Then we could really work together, rather than pretending to, and we could probably afford better coffee.

The nail had been hit. But, there was more.

For too long, Rebecca said, in this MAT-less landscape we call our home, any successes have been accidental. I scanned the room and I saw the shamed faces of my colleagues, all of whom had previously claimed that they had systematically improved their schools through careful and diligent planning. All they could do now was stare at the floor as they heard the truth: their improvements had in fact been accidents. But MATs are not accidents. MATs are planned. MATs are good.

And don’t start with some lily-livered lament about moral purpose. Everyone knows, declared Rebecca, moral purpose isn’t enough. Only a moral imperative works. And of course, that’s right. Heads only cared about disadvantaged children once they were given a budget for them and held accountable for their progress by Ofsted. I thought back to all those conversations I’ve had with Heads who talked about the only reason they’re helping the poorer children was so they had something to brag about on their website. ‘Don’t know if 1:1 tuition helps the little sods but Ofsted bloody love it!’ I once heard a local authority Head say at conference whilst a chain of MAT Heads walked out in disgust.

Rebecca, and I’m sure this is true of all RSCs, can’t stand it when she hears Executive Heads bang on about their school development plan being financially viable. Excuse me? But what about it being educationally viable? How about you put your ego aside and focus on the child before the cash cow Mr Executive? The only small issue here – and I hate to bring it up – is that I think only MAT Heads call themselves Executives. Maybe the RSC should change that bit because I’m sure it’s the local authority school Heads, like me, who brag about our massive budgets.

For the second half of her talk Rebecca discussed how school improvement works and how schools should think about the academic and emotional education they provide their communities in order to have a positive social impact. Every school leader should be committed to ensuring that no child in their community, or their neighbouring area, should attend a poor school. Schools should work together on common areas of need. Schools should add value to their communities and be able to sustain any improvements they make so that they are a viable option for years to come.

But, of course, I didn’t really understand that bit because this is only what MATs do.

I guess it won’t be long until I do understand it though. Because, luckily, MATs are coming. It’s time to declutter and repair all that nuanced and individual leadership that has accidentally, and yet steadily, improved the state of education over the last decade. Now is the time of false dogmas that help those in power peddle the concept of structured school partnerships. We all, apparently, need to be intentionally (not intelligently) re-designed so that we can all stand on the same MAT, hold hands, cross our fingers and hope it works out for the best.

Until then though, I think I’ll carry on screening my calls.

Letting go

theprimaryhead17 Comments
Mr Rochester
“I am no bird: and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” Jane Eyre to Mr Rochester

 

 

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you’re looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills that I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you…and I will blog.

Liam Neeson in Taken 4 (probably)

I have moved on. In short, earlier this year my school suffered a terrible Ofsted. At the helm was a bull-headed and bullying lead inspector who steered her team and drove forward, regardless of any evidence, a judgement that was as inaccurate as it was cruel. We fought it. The report was overturned and re-written. I complained. Numerous aspects of my complaint were upheld. That felt like closure. My school remained afloat and moving forward, but I was left feeling battered and bruised, to the point that I’ll happily take issue with any teacher who claims leaders are not on the ‘front line’ of education.

I have moved on but I can’t let go. I think the reason is because this lead inspector is a practising Head Teacher. I just can’t get my head around that. Why would a fellow Head go into a school that had improved so much over the last two years and seek to destroy it? Why would a fellow Head seem hell-bent on opposing the views of HMI, the local authority, the parents, the school itself and the fact that levels of achievement, for all children, had risen year on year? I just couldn’t understand why another professional wouldn’t play fair, favouring instead to discredit the achievements of a whole school and belittle the school in front of its community.

Like an itch you just have to scratch, I began to research her school. I wanted to know what her school was like. It must be something pretty special in order for her to have the chutzpah to give my moderately successful school such a ticking off. I was rather surprised, therefore, to see that achievement in her school had been steadily declining for the last three years, with the 2014 results hitting an all-time low of 64% of pupils achieving Level 4 in reading, writing and maths. When looking at the socio-economic context of her school, I learned that it is situated in a highly disadvantaged area, unlike mine, but our value added scores for 2014 were identical: 99.5 – both of our scores having dipped from the year before (hers for reading, mine for maths). And so, when I saw that she had been visited by Ofsted two months after me, I wondered if her team had been as unforgiving of her as she had of me.

Apparently not.

Her report came out as good, with outstanding features. And, as far as I can tell from comparing our two reports, there had been some pretty conflicting messages communicated during our two inspections. Whereas she had clearly told me that because only 87% of pupils made expected progress in maths, we should consider ourselves inadequate; her team judged her dip, resulting in 85% of pupils making expected progress in reading, to be nothing more than a blip. Whereas her team then went on to judge her leadership to be outstanding because she knew about the dip and promised that it would never happen again, she categorically told me that I was inadequate for letting it happen in the first place and ‘over-optimistic’ and clueless because I suggested that it wasn’t going to happen again. Whereas her team praised her internal data that showed things were improving, she discredited mine, claiming it was bogus and that my predictions were ludicrously inflated.

Now I know that inspections are not based on data alone and that maybe during her inspection she showed that she was a highly effective leader, whereas I apparently showed myself to be a…what was it she called me? A man with his ‘head in the clouds’. Maybe in 2015 she would be proved right, justifying the praise and adoration outlined in her Ofsted report. But imagine my surprise when I clicked on this year’s performance tables and saw that her reading progress had, well, not exactly swelled, from 85% to 87%. Not only that, but her value added score has fallen to 98.1. As I say, I know it’s not all about the data, but doesn’t this contradict Ofsted’s judgement of her leadership? Does this not mean that her promises to rectify her ineffectiveness to raise standards of reading have ended up sounding rather hollow?

What will Ofsted do now? Will they return and question her as to how this happened on her watch? Again.

I know they will visit me again. I know that they will return to question this Head who has, according to the last report, ‘over-inflated’ opinions about the standards his school achieves. Maybe they will be confused as to how the outcomes we achieved in 2015 were almost identical to the ones I predicted we would get during the last inspection. Maybe they will wonder as to how this incompetent leader got any green on his Raise Online and achieved an above average value added score with results that placed his school in the top ten performing schools within the city? Maybe they will dismiss our three year 20% growth in achievement and complete close of the gap between our disadvantaged pupils and their peers as nothing more than a blip. A long, three-year blip. Who knows?

But back to this lead inspector. It was with some personal interest that, upon hearing the news that Ofsted were culling a large number of their inspectors as they were considered to be unfit for purpose, I enquired if my very own lead inspector would end up on the slagheap. To my dismay, I learned that she is still inspecting. Despite having had one of her inspection reports completely re-written due to the fact that it was proved to be highly inaccurate; despite the fact that her knowledge of data analysis was deeply flawed; despite the fact that she did in fact judge individual lessons; despite the fact that one of the complaints that was upheld, based on evidence provided by one of the additional inspectors, was about her bullying behaviour throughout the inspection; despite the fact that HMI found her evidence base to be lacking, in order for her to make the judgements she did; despite the fact that she mis-represented comments from the school’s senior leaders when writing up her report; despite the fact that she did not follow protocol during the final feedback meeting with the local authority; despite the fact that other schools have complained to the local press about her; despite the fact that she came into a school with a fixed agenda and stuck rigidly to it and despite the fact that she is not HMI accredited…she is still inspecting. I have been told that she will no longer lead inspections but she is still out thete.

Finally, and because, unlike her, I like to be thorough, I couldn’t help but click on her school’s website to see how she had presented her 2014 poor results to her community. At first I thought I had got the wrong school. Because, the results that were being publicised were not the same as the results on the performance tables. According to her, 83% of pupils achieved a level 4 in reading in 2014. And yet, according to the DfE only 71% did. A similar pattern occurs for all other subjects: she claims 95% achieved level 4 in maths when only 83% did; she claims 85% of pupils achieved level 4 in the grammar test and yet the DfE seem pretty certain only 67% did. Maybe her school results omit certain pupils that DfE hasn’t updated, or maybe she forgot to change the date on the website, or maybe these were her unvalidated 2015 results. But guess what? I checked. These are not her 2015 results, according to the DfE. Far from it. Sadly, I can’t actually check what she is claiming for this year’s results because her school’s website is currently under construction.

So why can’t I let go? Am I just bitter? Is it just sour grapes? Is this just a petty grudge?

No.

I think schools have a right to know that rogue, unprofessional and incompetent inspectors are still out there. I think Ofsted should know that one of their own is a living breathing disgrace to their organisation. I think Ofsted should go back and question the claims made in a ‘good with outstanding features’ report when promises are not delivered. I think the professional community should know that when a Head is falsifying information on their website it is followed up and dealt with. I think the professional community should know that Ofsted does not give Heads who are also inspectors an easy ride when inspecting their schools. I think the professional community should know that inspectors who ride roughshod over the inspection framework get punished.

In short, I think we all deserve better than her.

When I know that, I’ll let it go.

Reservoir horologists

theprimaryhead2 Comments

JPEG_20151019_011735_-29294377-1

You’re asking me how the watch is made. For now just keep an eye on the time.

Alejandro Gillick [Sicario – 2015]

Leading a school is like taking a dog for a walk in the rain. You know the dog needs exercise so you vow to commit to the walk no matter what the conditions are like outside. You prepare, in advance, for every eventuality you can think of to safeguard both yourself and the pooch along the way. During the walk, you try to remain in control of the lumbering beast that is pulling away at every opportunity whilst getting distracted by everything around it. At some point during walkies you let the dog off the lead, assuming it can be trusted, and, before you know it, it has let you down in some unbelievably stupid manner that is going to take a lot of explaining when you get home. Finally, you return from the walk (which has taken far longer than you anticipated), wet, muddy, totally exhausted and your pockets full of excrement.

If you’re wondering what the dog represents in this metaphor, take your pick. Either way, it’s messy.

I suppose, where the metaphor falls down is that neither before nor during a dog walk do you have a variety of stakeholders scrutinising every step you make. No one is interested in how you take the dog for a walk; all anybody will care about is whether the dog a) eats; b) treads on; c) tries to have sex with, anything of theirs that they hold dear. The same cannot be said for running a school.

There are a plethora of folk whose sole desire is to check whether a school is doing their job. They concern themselves with what schools and their leaders are up to. They come in, look around, see what’s going on, ask a few questions…all in the hope that you won’t be left standing with any more poo in your pocket than is reasonably necessary. Knowledgeable, helpful, and always offering a considered word to the wise. These people know when to stand back and wait for the chips to fall. They recognise that outcomes, although not the be all and end all, are still vital signs.

For others, however, the end result seems to be the last thing on their mind. Some checkers seem to have an obsession with the how you’re doing it rather than what good it has done. The outcomes are almost irrelevant, as in, good outcomes can be ignored and written off as an accident or not worth exploring, whilst bad outcomes merely support their overwhelming sense of entitlement to get stuck in.

And by getting ‘stuck in’ I mean they have a desire to not only understand, but to be involved in and therefore (in their minds) improve, every minute detail of school operations. Every system is in danger of being dissected, analysed, advised upon, added to and stitched back together so that it resembles a Frankenstein’s monster of what went before it. A mishmash of people’s opinions, biases, past glories and, worst of all, easy to evidence ideas that they can check up on later.

These critical friends/challenge partners/ball breakers/accountability gibbons needlessly delve into elements of school business that they genuinely need not concern themselves with and, in a desperate bid to grasp the big picture, end up looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The concept that the school, having been successful in some areas, could therefore be successful in others, is alien. Areas to develop are proof that the school has not yet done enough and so why shouldn’t schools be treated as though they have done nothing at all. Trust, acknowledgement, respect, professional courtesy are not terms these people are comfortable with, plus, it’s easier to ‘challenge’ by being destructive. And too often that all important ‘c’ word is misunderstood by those that bandy it around the most.

And this is where the pace of school life is a real detriment. For these people are often not actually based in schools so they have a distorted, time-lapsed view of school progress. They are concerned that whilst they were away the school moved things on – but that wasn’t part of the plan – although they are equally alarmed when things take time. These people are pro-actively reactive. Over-fixating on grappling with how the school is meant to work and panicking when things don’t go smoothly; at times, blaming schools for life getting in the way of their best laid plans, or judging decisions that they weren’t part of too harshly. They are ultimately ignorant of schools’ complexities, for, in a land of grey, they are only armed with a black or white brush. For them, schools will never be able to do enough but they will expect the earth.

They are the blind watchmakers, fumbling around the inside mechanism and yet unable to tell the time.