ofsted

Secret Teacher: I’m always watching!

theprimaryhead3 Comments

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So this week’s Guardian secret teacher hates lesson observations: oh well. So do I when they’re going badly.  But the secret teacher seems to hate them on principle or at least hates them because they think that I have so few principles when it comes to observing lessons: convinced that I spend my time only looking for Ofsted particulars so I can copy and paste sentences from the Ofsted inspection handbook as I write my SEF.

So, I will try and put you at ease with my thoughts and processes for observing lessons as I try to explain a few things from my end. My first big concern about your highly negative perception of lesson observations is that you feel a single ‘bad performance’ may result in you going on capability measures. From my perspective this shows me that:

1.       Your SLT are actually insane if that is the way they run the school-if they’re judging ‘teaching & learning’ as required improvement then by the same criteria I hope they’re judging themselves as inadequate because Ofsted will! OR:

2.       You haven’t been listening and that ‘bad performance’ is actually indicative of your on-going underperformance in general. OR:

3.       You have no idea about how observations work.

An observation is only part of a lengthy process that looks at the overall effectiveness of your teaching. For example:

So your lesson (‘performance’) was good: big whoop! You haven’t marked you books for bloody ages, your plans are the same from last year and those pupils we identified earlier on as being your target group have made next to no progress since September. Still pleased with the lesson judgement? So you can pull a lesson out of the bag when required but that’s not really good enough is it?

Luckily, this also works in reverse. Your lesson was crap – seriously, on all levels it was awful! It was really boring, I could see you were nervous, you went on for AGES so let’s just forget it: however progress is pretty consistent in your class, your marking is spot on and I can see that you have already adapted tomorrow’s lesson to make up for the lesson today. We’ve all had terrible lessons (and not just during observations) but other indicators suggest that all that hard work you do is paying off.

Now if the latter happened I would naturally go through with you why the lesson missed the mark and I would explore some key issues. I will even give you some suggestions on how to improve your teaching because, I do know quite a lot about teaching believe it or not. These ideas may be around the specific area of the lesson or they may be more general teaching strategies that you could apply in other situations, and like it or not they would be primarily based upon supporting rates of progress.  We would have to agree on another time for me to come and see you and that would give you a chance to put some of these ideas into action.

What else did The Secret Teacher not like:

  1. being told to do group work
  2. keeping teacher talk to no more than 5 minutes
  3. demonstrating progress every ten minutes.

On the surface, I agree with you on issue one-the beauty/frustration of teaching is that it requires variation in delivery: what is effective in one lesson does not translate to another. I personally couldn’t care less about individual or group work but I do want to see the pupils working.

Keeping teacher talk down to 5 minutes is a cute trick and one to try. I have often fed back to teachers with the concept of: ‘What if you only had 5 minutes to get that concept across…could you do it?’ Most of the time this is because the teacher spent too long explaining – no, actually, they spent a quality 8 minutes explaining but then went over and over again until every child and me wanted to shout ‘We get it, please can we do some work on our own now?’ by then there was fifteen minutes left and guess what: at the end of the lesson it was impossible to see in the books if anyone had ‘got it’.

Teachers can ‘go on’ for loads of different reasons (nerves, need to be in control, fear of behaviour issues, they were up all night making a costume for their input and they’re going to get value for money out of it, they’ve taken the idea of ‘judging teaching’ too literally and think I am only watching them) but sometimes a truly great teacher can get things across in the shortest amount of time…then spends the lesson supporting/challenging individuals and groups of pupils.

Demonstrate progress every ten minutes: well this does seem a little contrived but there are enough ways out there for a teacher to gauge progress within a lesson for this to happen more than once. The biggest lag factor affecting progress within lessons is for pupils to be engaged in stuff they can actually already do. Get around the class and if they’re not sufficiently challenged move them on. There are times when pupils need to consolidate and if it’s boring: tough. My only advice is that if your observation is booked two weeks in advance or if Ofsted are coming tomorrow: do yourself a favour and keep that consolidation lesson in your pocket until a later date. If you haven’t droned on for half the lesson, I will have enough time to work my way around the class and I will soon learn how well the pupils in your class are learning and we’ll talk about them during the feedback. (That could be why you went on, hoping I would leave before I got the chance…but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one.)

Finally, the secret teacher wants to be trusted to do their job. Well, believe it or not but I want you to be the best teacher in the world too and formally observing you is one way I can help that come true (if it isn’t already). There are set times for observations because I’m busy doing loads of other things and there are more of you than me so give me a chance to see you all. However, every time I come into your class I’m observing; every time I stand by your door and listen for three minutes I am informing myself about the quality of your teaching; every time I flick through your books when you’re on break duty I am checking that you are doing your job consistently. If that sounds creepy or highly untrusting: sorry but in my job, I have to be sure. Because if I keep hearing you shouting at your class, if your books are not marked consistently, if the atmosphere in your room is not positive then I need to know as soon as possible so I can help you sort it out. I trust you to support me in helping you and now you can trust me and get a good night’s sleep before tomorrow’s observation knowing whole heartedly what I’m looking for.

For the original article please follow the link: http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/aug/10/secret-teacher-lesson-observations-playing-the-system

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Eyes Wide Shut

theprimaryhead5 Comments

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After a rather busy year that was my first year in headship I feel that I have reached a turning point in my outlook on education. It feels a bit like an epiphany with the clouds of educational fuzz parting as a singular beam of light illuminates the true path to educational success. Over the year, one word has repeatedly entered my subconscious and this word is now at the centre of everything I do. It has given me a clarity that I have never experienced so far and has become a filter through which everything else must pass through. The only problem I have is that I can’t tell if through my experiences over the last year with Ofsted, HMI etc whether my eyes have truly been opened or if I have been brain-washed.

Oh, the word is ‘achievement’, sorry probably should have cleared that up at the start. Although at times I feel so stupid that this word has not always been at the forefront of my brain-I imagine many of you didn’t even have to get half-way through the first paragraph before you thought ‘the boy’s talking about achievement’. Some of you may even have spurted out your holiday Pina Coladas in disgust thinking ‘the idiot’s a Head and he’s only just started thinking about achievement; find out where he works and acadamise the damn place now, put the poor children out of their misery’.

I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But before you judge me too harshly, I haven’t not been thinking about achievement but I haven’t always linked everything and I mean everything back to it. I now believe that everything a school does can only be judged successful if judged through academic achievement:

Teaching, behaviour management, your relationship with pupils, your relationship with other staff members, marking, marking all your books, marking all your books every night, planning, getting the right resources, the way you deal with bullying, the way you promote anti-racism/anti-sexism/anti-homophobic views and behaviours, using your data, setting targets, effective child-protection procedures, effective governance, reward systems, assembly themes, after school clubs, the use of pupil-premium monies, the use of all school monies, leadership structures, use of support staff, use of child-mentors…

All of this, if done effectively, will impact on achievement (that bit I’ve always known) but my epiphany/brain-washed bit is that all those elements should be judged through achievement too. Oh and that everyone else in your organisation MUST believe that this is why they do all of the above as well as they can.

We don’t develop a good relationship with our class because we enjoy working with children: we do it because it will have a positive impact on achievement. We don’t challenge racist/sexist/homophobic views just because they are morally abhorrent: we do it because it will ensure a right to equality and ambition which in turn will impact positively on the achievement for as many pupils as possible. We don’t sit down with a pile of books and mark them because it’s part of the job description: we do it because if the school’s policy is effective it will allow us to support achievement.

I could go on but I think you get the point.

Achievement is not just the marker by which we measure how well a school happens to be doing: it is the reason why we turn up. It is the reason why working in schools is so hard. It should be the reason why working in schools is so rewarding. Too often ‘soft’ successes that provide no actual evidence of success are seen as being adequate in themselves and I think that this should change. It is not good enough that a child is happy in your class unless you are capitalising on that happiness to further their chances later on. It is not good enough that you have worked your magic on an angry/violent child if you are not then pushing that child to achieve. You should not feel proud of your achievement as a teacher if all you have done is create a happy, caring and safe environment and convinced yourself that this is enough…it isn’t!

I know…I sound like a monster. I sound like my Ofsted inspector. What have I become?

I think I’ve become a better Head (I hope I have otherwise the last year was a monumental waste of time). I still passionately believe in enjoying teaching and working with children and still believe in creative freedoms and that working in schools can be fun for everyone. But I’m moving away from thinking that some perceived successes cannot be judged or measured. I think that if you hold a pupil’s academic achievement as your ultimate goal you will not rest until you can link everything we work so hard in putting in place to achievement.

So, if you’re reading this thinking ’well it took him a year but bless him, the kid’s on the right path now’ thank you very much. If you’re reading it thinking ‘we need to take him out, he no longer has a soul’ please help me have another epiphany.

End of Days

theprimaryhead6 Comments

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Ah, the end of the year. In your diary for the last two days of school there is nothing but empty space, apart from a tiny entry marking out a final school assembly. There is no more data, no more reports, no more planning or marking to do. Yes, this is the wind down you’ve been waiting for: the holiday can almost start here.

But for some reason, the activities that apparently must make up the last days of a primary school year, as pre-determined by some higher power, do not ever result in the relaxing fade out to the academic year that you would hope for.

Trying to find out why the end of the year has to end this way is like trying to find out why the universe was created or why there are wasps or why Bruce Forsyth still commands prime time television space. There is no one who has an answer but we all just seem to accept it; happy that it’s just the way it is.

And so, the last day of the year begins…

Presumably the theory behind ‘toy day’ was that it would allow the children to be preoccupied with the making of their own fun (with no input or resources from the teacher) and this would allow the teacher to a) sleep; b) tidy their cupboard; c) sleep at the back of their tidy cupboard. But it never works out like that does it?

Children are incapable of playing a board game from start to finish; they insist on bringing in their most flimsiest toys so you spend half your time pissing about with sticky-tape and re-shaping bent bits of plastic; or worst of all they actually want you to join in with a game of ‘Doctor Who Uno’. Unfortunately, explaining to a 7 year old that the point of toy day is to minimise teacher/child interactions is harder than explaining grid multiplication: so you inevitably end up playing a game which neither you or them know the rules to and when you try to explain to them how their game is actually meant to be played they quickly lose interest, leave you to go and find the robotic puppy that has just simulated urinating in your book corner, resulting in you packing their game away.

By break time you realise that toy ‘day’ is not working and it may have to turn into toy ‘hour’. Luckily they all brought in their pirated DVD collection and after you have excluded the films that are either still playing in cinemas or may contain scenes of nudity, violent images, explicit sexual swear words and scenes of mild peril, you take a class vote. And as they are only 7 year olds and have no taste in films, ‘The Princess Bride’, ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘The wind in the willows’ are rejected in favour of ‘The Smurfs’ or ‘Alvin & the Chipmunks: the squeakquel’. Still, their choice…put it on and that should be 90 minutes of down-time for you.

Ten minutes in and you realise that this may not be the case as you remember that no child can remain silent during a film especially those that have seen it, who cannot keep complex plot points to themselves. Also, no matter how loud and fast a film is, even 7 year olds get bored by the celluloid equivalent of a pile of excrement in a bag. So your time is spent shouting “be quiet!” and growling “just enjoy the film.” Forty minutes in and when you see that only the owner of the DVD is actually watching you decide to stop the film and hope that tidying up will get you through to lunchtime.

With any luck lunchtime will be extended leaving you with half an afternoon to fill. As they come back into class you try some negotiation: “we’ll play one class game then you can tidy your drawers: if you do that quickly, we’ll play another class game and then maybe, MAYBE, I’ll let you play with your toys again while we finish watching ‘Cats and dogs 2: the revenge of Kitty Galore’” They accept your terms and you play a quick round of ‘heads down, thumbs up’ a game so pointless and inane it makes ‘sleeping lions’ look like an advanced version of chess. Then it’s time for them to tidy their drawers.

For the next thirty minutes the classroom is turned upside down as old and forgotten homeworks, spellings and Tudor worksheets are found, evaluated and binned. Your time is spent shouting things like: “I don’t want anything left-it’s all taken home or put in the bin”. Despite this every child, will at least once, come up to you holding some crumpled half-finished science investigation asking “What about this?” You try and look as if you are seriously considering taking it off their hands to put it in your special file of outstanding achievement ready for the next Ofsted before tentatively asking: “Do you want it?” to which they instantly reply in the negative leaving you to suggest that if they don’t think their parents would want it either, they should put it in the recycling bin.

Once all the drawers are emptied, the recycling bin has been filled three times over, and half the school library books are now piled on your desk you decide to sit them down to give them an end of year talk. You explain how great they have been, how hard they have worked and how much you will genuinely miss them next year. Suddenly there is a lump in your throat as you realise that all these little faces will no longer be looking up at you next year. As you stare at the photos of them that you took at the beginning of the year for your class contract you are reminded of just how much they have grown in their time with you. It has been a great year and it feels strange that a different adult will be at the centre of their school universe next year. Luckily, before you start crying one of them says that this is all lovely but you had promised they could play with their toys again; and so with thirty minutes of the school year left, you agree to let them trash the classroom one more time.

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