primary education

You’re only as good as your last crisis

theprimaryhead3 Comments

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New year and more importantly the start of my second year as Head. Having worked so hard last year to get everything in place that I need to move the school forward I am confident that nothing can stand in my way. This is my school, my rules and I am the master of my domain. What, I ask you, can possibly go wrong?
At approximately 1:00pm on Friday I was informed by a teacher that a pupil had possibly opened the school gates and walked out. She had just come back from lunch and some children had told her that this child had escaped. She seemed a little sceptical as no member of staff outside seemed to be aware – even the person on gate duty – but she thought it worth reporting to me. On hearing the news I thanked her and promptly walked out to the playground where a member of the lunchtime supervision staff informed me that yes, they had seen a boy leave the site, and for reasons I have yet to get to grips with, they decided to do nothing.

I cannot exactly remember what I felt at this point: rage, disbelief, panic, despair and inadequacy were all pretty much there and I think I also said something out loud that although was undoubtedly truthful was probably, in hindsight, pretty unhelpful at that moment in time. This disorientating cocktail of emotions lasted about 3 seconds before I sobered up and I began to try and act with some degree of leadership.

Firstly, I went back into school told the Deputy that we had a missing child and off we went to quickly look around the local area. Whilst doing so, I got the office to ring the police and get me the child’s address. After a few minutes I had the address and found myself knocking on the door and greeting the unexpected parent with a phrase I truly hope you’ll never need: ‘Is you child at home? No? Well, I’m afraid he’s not at school either…sorry.’ Then, before I could think of the next stage of my plan, the police rocked up.

Up until this point I was being driven primarily through fear. Having to tell a parent you have no idea where their child is, is probably one of the crappiest jobs I’ve had to do but it was only the fear that made me do it, rather than ‘paper, scissor, stone’ it with someone else. Likewise calling the police: in my heart of hearts I was thinking ‘Can I get away with this without ringing the police and the whole thing becoming massive?’ But the fear told me that I had to do the right thing, I had to get the maximum amount of help to find a child who had literally slipped out of the school’s care.

Once the police were in control with a full search (including police helicopter), a ‘sweep’ of the school and officers reviewing the CCTV footage, I went back to school. Now maybe it was because I was back in my office or maybe it is because deep down I’m really just a grubby self-preserving schmuck but I started to think about the school and what I could do to help ‘it’. From getting an HR rep ready for Monday morning advice, writing the school’s account for the newsletter, wondering how to talk about it with the children in the afternoon’s assembly, deciding how to go through it with staff, ringing my chair of governors whilst all the time thinking ‘Come on…think! What else should I be doing?’

As well as various worst case scenarios about the child that would flutter into my head and wallop my brain like a flump being hit by a hammer, I also began to ask futuristic questions concerning my school. Would this generate media interest, trigger an Ofsted, a school closure, a couple of sackings and the general teaching council and NAHT asking for me to return my membership cards?

Then, after what had been a pretty unpleasant 57 minutes, I had the call that the child was safe and had been returned home. To say that a wave of relief washed over me is probably a cliché but who cares because I’d just found out that a pupil in my school was safe and that really, really mattered. The aftermath went pretty much as I had expected: I acknowledged the incident in the newsletter, spoke to the children reiterating that it was wrong to leave the school site without permission, debriefed the staff and got debriefed myself by the police.

They were surprisingly positive about how we had responded and even commended me and the staff on the support and assistance we had given them. I eventually rang the child’s parents and we set up a meeting to investigate it further and to think about any support needed. They were also grateful with our response – I can only imagine that the shock and relief of the previous hour was preventing them from asking the all-important question: how was it allowed to happen?

These are questions that I will obviously explore myself in the coming days and I’m sure the school’s safeguarding procedures will be strengthened. I too will be judged and I wonder what impact that judgement will have on the school’s future. All that will depend on whether the judgement is based on the event itself, how I responded at the time, or the actions I take after a review. Whichever these becomes the most dominant, the whole episode has reminded me once again that there is little room for smugness over your school development plan successes…because that comfy rug under your feet is simply waiting to be pulled.

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.