primary education

Much Ado About Nothing

theprimaryhead1 Comment

‘You chose this over Henry V? You’re idiots! You’ve got to do an exam on this you know. Didn’t the title give it away…nothing happens!’

Our replacement A-level teacher who was furious with us for getting bored with Henry V and switching texts half way through exam year.

Circa late 90s.

 

And so, as I got chucked out of my Deputy’s and Business Manager’s offices for the third time yesterday morning, I stropped around the office, bored, because sometimes, when you’re a Head…there’s nothing to do.

I know what you’re all thinking:

Teachers: Typical bloody senior leader, not doing any real work. Try working at the coalface mate-you won’t be bored then.

Senior Leaders: Typical Head – letting us do all the real work. (I can’t wait to be Head)

Heads: The man is an epic failure for a) thinking he has no work to do or b) giving the game away.

Well I’m sorry but it’s true. There are times – not many I’ll grant you – but times, when I honestly think that I shouldn’t have bothered coming in to work.

Take yesterday for example. There were no pressing matters for me to sink my teeth into. I put this down to two main reasons:

  1. I had been too bloody strategic for my own good last week.
  2. This term’s data deadline isn’t until Wednesday.

The few days before the data deadline are the worst. I can’t look ahead, I can’t analyse the past and there’s nothing interesting going on in the present, due to assessments going on whilst teachers give me evils because the data deadline is in the middle of the week and their PPA is on Thursday. So I am reduced to an infinite number of little jobs:

  • Authorising school orders
  • Un-authorising holiday requests
  • Preparing for a governor’s chairs meeting
  • Creating the backgrounds for the Christmas performance on PowerPoint
  • Emailing staff important messages about next week’s timetables
  • Updating health and safety files
  • Checking the child protection folder
  • Deleting emails
  • Trying to see if I can slip into the staff room for an extra mince pie without anyone noticing.

I’m not saying this stuff isn’t important – it’s just not what gets me up in the morning. It’s not stuff that when I leave work in the evening, I reflect back on, thinking: today was a good day to be a Head. No, yesterday was a day that achieved nothing spectacular, that did not move the school forward that did not develop me in any other way apart from expanding my waistline as I relentlessly gorged on miniature heroes whilst everyone else was working.

I don’t know how I should reflect on days like these. Should I accept the fact that when you don’t have a class to teach and when there is no crisis to reckon with or no master plan to strategize and put into action, the role of the Head is more caretaker than leader? Or should I jolly well find something meaningful to do?

My only consolation is that these days are few and far between: as today began with me chairing a PEP for a recently placed child in care followed by a meeting with a staff member going through their own crisis, followed by a development of an on-going behaviour issue that we had thought we’d almost cracked, the phrase ‘once more unto the breach dear friends, once more’ sprang to mind As I ended my day with my Deputy discussing twilight inset agendas, and, as I tossed the first chocolate éclair I’d had time for that day into my mouth, I thought: today is a good day to be a Head.

It’s in the books stupid!

theprimaryhead2 Comments

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All this life ‘beyond levels’ stuff is very interesting. (I say that as someone who counts the number of sleeps before the RaiseOnline release date so you’ve been warned.) But I mean isn’t it though? Having to completely revolutionise the way you assess pupils whilst simultaneously getting to grips with a new national curriculum? If not interesting, it is, at the very least, a new challenge in education.

It is not just the practicalities that are interesting (watching each teacher’s brain melt inside their skull as they try not to peek at their APP statements whilst assessing a piece of writing); the discussions it has brought about are equally riveting.

There are the online conversations: fierce battles between those that loved levels, those that hated levels, those that have dreamt for the day when a 2B became as meaningless as it was interpretable, those that vowed to leave education if levels became defunct (as if it was in some way similar to a 95 pence supertax law), those that cynically denounced any other assessment system as ‘well it’s just levels in sheep’s clothing isn’t it’, and those that relished the thought of a convolutedly simplistic system that would come to define their appraisal prospects.

Then there are the fake real-life conversations – mainly conducted by sales reps offering a simple ‘Like levels but definitely not levels’ sales pitch, promising that all these systems will guarantee smoother progress trajectory patterns in each and every year group and, as long as you book out all five of your insets for their training, won’t cause your teachers any grief at all.

There are then the ‘real’ real-life conversations between schools:

Outstanding school not due to be inspected for another ten years: So what are you doing?

RI school about to be inspected: Well, we’ve had to get the ball rolling in case the big O rock up and want to talk life beyond levels, so we’ve launched a new system starting in every year group based on awarding pupils points according to a set of predetermined threshold criteria in every subject. Eight times a year these points are collected, averaged out and spread over an evaluation matrix that shows you exactly where the child was three months ago. However, we are still using levels as a back-up in Years 2 and 6 (obviously) but also in Year 1, 3 and 5. What are you doing?

Outstanding school not due to be inspected for another ten years: Oh we’re just sticking with levels. But do let me know how that system works out won’t you.

And don’t get me started about the conversations between staff members. Young teachers who only know levels and haven’t got the experience or confidence to look at a piece of work and go ‘Yeah, that looks about right for a seven year old’. Old teachers who have only ever used levels and can be seen wandering the school corridors clutching a crumpled and faded A3 APP spreadsheet like a security blanket. Ancient teachers who have only just got used to using levels since the days of educational freedom (which also happened to be the days of low standards, no planning, caning, and the occasional employment of non CRB’d paedophiles). Get a load of those teachers talking and the panic sets in faster than the reversal of achievement after the summer holidays.

As far as I can see the panic is caused for mainly two reasons:

  1. How will we know any new system works?
  2. What if I’m the only one it doesn’t work for?

To answer these questions we have to seriously ask ourselves what exactly are we looking for? Now, before you accuse me of coming over all Zen, let me explain. A large part of the conversations I have had with lots of people about life beyond levels is about children making progress. ‘I mean’, I hear the odd teacher cry, ‘If I don’t understand this crazy new system or use the system correctly, my children won’t make progress.’ WRONG. If you use the system incorrectly it will appear on paper that they have not made progress. In reality, they will have made exactly how much or how little progress your teaching has allowed. Progress is not determined by data – data does not even reflect actual progress. All data does is present a pattern of apparent progress, based on one individual’s interpretation of the progress measures being applied.

That is what is so gloriously silly about life beyond levels. It’s a sham. It’s not even the emperor’s new clothes. In the tale of ‘life beyond levels’ the emperor was butt naked from day one. Nobody really knew what a 2B was in writing – not to the extent that their judgement would chime exactly with every other practising teacher in the land. Nobody agreed with every single level judgement that came back from the SATS marker. No child ever graduated from one level to the next because of the inclusion of a single level descriptor. It’s all a nonsense.

Children make confusing, conflicting, incremental steps of progress all the time because, well, because they’re children: complicated little sods whose gradual rates of achievement occur like stages of evolution. You often can’t pin down exactly when it happens but, over time, it just does…providing?

That’s just it isn’t it? Progress happens providing the teaching is good and I don’t gauge that from data. I get it from monitoring the work of teachers: the planning, the teaching, the marking, the next steps. In short: It’s in the books stupid. Don’t worry about the system – that will sort itself out and settle itself down and be as accurate and frustrating as all ‘one size fits all’ systems have ever been. Yes, I’ll always check to see if the data patterns match up with what I see in the books and, when they don’t, I will investigate and support. The data may trigger an increased interest in your practice, but it won’t be the damning evidence that turns me into judge, jury and executioner. So, don’t panic, keep meeting the needs of your pupils, and the representation of your hard work through the ones and zeros of your data will look after itself.

Now get to bed – only 325 sleeps until the last ever RaiseOnline.

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart…

theprimaryhead1 Comment

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There was a bit of Twitter chat on male and female teachers today. Is it right that there is a shortage of male teachers? Are women better teachers? Do heads prefer a specific gender with which to populate their school? You will be thrilled to know that I don’t know the answer to these questions and I would balk from answering them as I haven’t done any research. I haven’t, for example, set up three schools, one with all male teachers, one with all female teachers and a control school with, yes you’ve guessed it, no teachers. And I haven’t then observed these schools over a period of ten years to see which of them achieves the highest percentage of Level 6 scores in the spelling, punctuation and grammar test.

I also haven’t conducted experiments with myself such as ‘Skinner’s Pavlova’ whereupon I enter a classroom blindfolded and after observing a lesson declare the teacher to be male or female, resulting in a shard of meringue being fired into my open mouth or getting electrocuted in the face, depending on whether I was right or not.

No, I think it would be wise of me not to answer – plus I’ve kind of already written a little bit about it here. But what I will say is that when I go about the task of selecting a teacher to join my school I don’t care whether they are a man or a woman, I care about their abilities as a teacher. (I’m great aren’t I?) But there is one very important trait that I observe that will help me make up my mind and, if I’m honest, certain elements of this trait, in my experience, are more prevalent in one gender than the other. I won’t tell you which and what – that can be a little game for you to play.

For this very important trait I’ve turned it into a question and I’ve compiled multiple answers for which I have a point system that I won’t share with you now as I wouldn’t want to ruin your fun. If you like, you can come up with your own point system and use it at school when you’re interviewing or maybe just in the staffroom as a bit of self amusement. This is great. It’s like devaluing education and putting teaching on a par with some teen magazine questionnaire about deciding which member of ‘No Direction’ you’d be best suited to having a short term and emotionally devoid relationship with. This is exactly the kind of thing education needs; Nicky Morgan, take note and let’s go….good luck everybody – and just so you believe that I really don’t value the sexes differently, I would like to convey that luck equally to both men and all you lovely ladies.

@theprimaryhead’s big question:

Do you have a special teacher voice?

  1. No, I talk to children the same way that I speak to adults in the staffroom accept  with less swearing (for primary teachers at least; I imagine you secondary lot swear like dockers as you struggle to maintain control of the hooligans that you blame us for creating)
  2. Yes. Normally I speak in a, well, normal voice. When put in charge of a class of kids however I feel compelled to use what I consider to be modern vernacular in order to hoodwink the children into thinking that I have my finger on the pulse and that I relate to them. The hit ratio is horrendously low – I may start off using current phrases but will soon descend into using words from TOWIE Season one and trying to crowbar a reference to Gangnam Style during a PE lesson. I will eventually use phrases that wouldn’t seem out of place in a 1950s documentary about teenagers – do you dig it Daddio?
  3.  Yes. If you and I were having a conversation you would hear and understand me perfectly and you would be able to stand at a reasonably close distance to me – when you enter my classroom you will see that tone, pitch, volume and an assumption that anyone else can speak English are vocal considerations that I have neither the time nor inclination for. My voice becomes more of a strangled harsh bark of the highest register and my vowels come out shorter than your average consonant, unless the word I’m saying is a ‘filler’ word in which case the vowel sound will be stretched to such an extent that it makes a Reception phonic lesson sound like a condensed rap performed by Alvin and his band of chipmunks: Noooowwwwww, riiiiiiight, okaaaaaaayyyyyy, liiiiiisten pleeeeeaaaaase. I also like to stress the main ‘learning’ words so that children are quickly trained to pick up on key vocabulary without actually hearing them in context and I always phrase my questions in such a way that it is impossible to choose the wrong option.
  4. Yes. When I speak to children, particularly in independent work time or during break/lunch/registration, I tend to sound like I’m auditioning for a part in ‘The Wire’. I mumble, assume that all children have an intricate knowledge of ghetto lifestyles and often end each sentence with a question such as ‘You feel me?’ or ‘Ain’t that right bruv?’ It’s almost as if I think children won’t tolerate or respect the vocal honesty in my plummy Received Pronunciation accent.

So there you are. How did you do? And did you spot the man or the woman or do we all have an equal chance in being vocal idiots? I will let you decide, but for the record, and based on the results of all my extensive research into the matter, I know which answer I’d go for. And that means that not only do I have a higher chance of dating Harry Styles but that I also have the perfect teacher voice, init?