primary education

In the looper

theprimaryhead3 Comments

I’m all about freedom.

 

One of the reasons I became a Head was because I am a control freak. Don’t worry I’m not a megalomaniac; in fact, when I started teaching I thought that I’d never want to be Head. When I was a young and a slightly less tired human being, I was all about the classroom and the kids. The idea of going into management sickened me. If the young me could see me now he would have no problem standing in a field with a shotgun waiting for the current me to materialise, out of thin air, all bound up in a bag, to pull the trigger and end the pathetic existence of this useless head teacher. Then again, the young me was a bit of a tit and we’ve never been able to aim properly.

 

Anyway, I digress. The point is, as I furthered my career, I began to enjoy the influence (not the power) but the influence my ideas, hard work and willingness to support others could have on more than just the thirty children in my class. Then it got to a point where I felt that my ideas could influence a whole school full of children and I enjoy that a lot. The idea that what goes on during a school day is to some extent shaped by what I believe to be important in improving children’s lives motivates me more than anything else. And when it actually works…when you see children ‘improve’ as a result of your ideas, well, that’s a pretty good feeling.

 

Where I am still very similar to the young me (still waiting in that field the idiot, he’s no idea I swapped bags, it’s @oldprimaryhead in there now) is that I tend to ignore some of what we’re told we ‘have’ to do. I prefer to put in place what I believe will have an impact and have the ability to ruthlessly prioritise to help children in whichever way they most need – and if that means not doing guided reading for two terms whilst I concentrate on times tables then that’s something I’ll do and I just won’t tell the Literacy leader about it (I did make the mistake of telling my Deputy Head at the time as she was giving me a lift home – she practically stopped the car and kicked me out). I felt vindicated though, the children still made progress in their mental maths and of course I made sure that they made progress in their reading too.

 

I’ve always been about the freedoms.

 

I behave in a similar way as a Head. There are certain things that I either just don’t understand or believe in. So I don’t do them. I assume that everything will be fine; even when the SIO asks me ‘What percentage of your Year 1 pupils have achieved the phonic screening pass score so far?’ and the answer in my head is ‘I don’t know, I haven’t even asked if my Year 1 teachers are rehearsing for it.’ I don’t let it bother me. I know, it will be fine because I believe in what we have in place down there.

 

All these freedoms are making me nervous.

 

So why then, if I’m so cool and running the school like I’m Shaft, am I so worried about these freedoms the government keeps banging on about? I should love it, right?

 

Well, the big difference between me now and the young me (the pathetic moob) is that I’m a Head. This means that I am not just responsible for the children (that bit’s fine) but I am also responsible for the school. And there is a difference. A school is all the children inside it plus about a million other complexities and issues. What’s more, a school is now increasingly judged on these other things and deemed successful or otherwise as a result of the head’s leadership and management of them.

 

Now, this wasn’t a surprise to me when I became a Head. I didn’t suddenly become aware that staffing, performance management, pupil premium, finance, governors, parents, children in need, children in care, looked after children and loads more stuff besides came with the job, it’s just…there’s a lot there and it’s getting added to all the time. Not just getting added to but levels of expectations on how the school should perform on these areas are being put out there as well.

 

Again, this is ok. If we’re being asked to do something we might as well get told how well we’re doing it. But my problem, the reason why at times I wish I had kept myself in the bag that is now hurtling through time and space towards my younger self, is because guidance and suggested ways of checking to see how I’m doing are disappearing. All in the name of ‘greater freedoms for Heads’. I may know what’s best for children but I struggle with knowing what will be judged best for the school when judgement day comes along.

 

What’s more, I don’t like the sneaking suspicion I have that the judges still know what they’re looking for and know how they’re going to arrive at their judgements but now they’re choosing not to tell me and disguising this as a freedom. They’re letting me fumble around for myself. It’s like they know how reckless I’ve been creating freedoms of my own during my career and now they’re punishing me for it. ‘’Come on, you say you know what’s best…well come on then: You tell me…

  • if that teacher should get a pay rise;
  • how to judge progress throughout Key Stage 2 without levels;
  • what’s a good way of spending pupil premium;
  • why PE is supposedly better now we’ve given you some cash;
  • how parents know where their child is in relation to every other child in the land;
  • what makes your approach to the national curriculum so good;

oh, well your answers aren’t the same as the ones I’ve got in my little golden envelope. Turns out you couldn’t cope with freedoms after all. Come on then, climb into this bag, you’re going on an awfully big adventure.’’

 

Man, these freedoms are killing me. looper

DfE – the E is for ‘Evaluation’

theprimaryhead8 Comments

So what was the point of some fools from Twitter talking to the DfE and an MP for 90 minutes? Well it was fun, I enjoyed it and it was a genuine pleasure to meet some of the many people I follow and respect on Twitter in person. But on reflection, I don’t know what the point was.

 
I think this mainly because there was no set agenda – well there was but we didn’t know it beforehand. We were an eclectic bunch too. I think if we had been picked for any other reason apart from we’re mouthy on Twitter and we blog, then, well I wouldn’t necessarily know what that reason was. We all care deeply about education, but our fields of expertise were disparate to say the least. That’s not a bad thing but did it contribute significantly to what the DfE wanted out of it? I don’t know, maybe they’ll blog about it.
It could have been more structured with a stronger facilitator. We did get side-tracked by ofsted, we couldn’t help ourselves but you could almost see their eyes glaze over when we did. I wanted them to say, ‘Oi, enough you lot. Let’s go back to the curriculum!’

 
As for Elizabeth Truss MP, well she turned up, she listened. It was quite impressive actually she was obviously listening before she actually entered the room because the minute she sat down, midway through someone’s point, she was nodding and muttering ‘yes, yes.’ under her breath – I was impressed. It was a bit irritating that she was constantly distracted by her phone and her assistant who kept bustling up to her to say in a hushed whisper ‘the car’s not going to be available’ or ‘the car is now available’ and finally ‘I’m not sure if the car is here or available’. But she certainly has the politician’s knack for swooping in and out of conversations with the appearance of knowing what was fully being explored despite being somewhere else entirely. She asked us questions, she listened to our answers and wrote down either our ideas to take forward or our names so she could plot our removal from the whole education system. Actually I noticed that on her piece of paper were little biographies of all of us and I tell you what? I need to seriously improve my twitter following, compared to everyone else I was a nobody! I could see it in Truss’s eyes when she looked at me as if to say ‘You don’t belong here!’ Maybe not, but I do know about differentiation which was more than some people.

 
But look, I don’t want to get into politician bashing just for the hell of it. I appreciated the opportunity and the time everyone took out of their day to attend and their willingness to have an honest and open discussion. What will it achieve…well I guess time will tell and hey, given the pace of change in recent times maybe we won’t have to wait that long. And if changes do happen because of what we said and you don’t like them, please write to:

@imagineinquiry, @cherrylkd, @debrakidd, @educationbear, @emmaannhardy, @heymisssmith and @thought_weavers:

they made me say it!

DfE – the F is for ‘Frankness’

theprimaryhead1 Comment

Although beforehand none of us really knew what we were going to talk about, one thing was clear; we were all going to exploit this opportunity to speak our minds. Not in a mad old rant sort of way but through civilised and respectful conversation. (I think we mostly managed it)

We were an odd collective bunch of educationalists but we all shared thoughts and ideas about the old system, the incoming one and what we thought could improve our world of education.

I think all parties were honest in their comments – including the DfE. It wasn’t a case of them necessarily defending their ideas, frameworks and policies against a barrage of criticisms: more a case of them listening to the ‘real world’ implications of what they had put in place.

The curriculum

Although this got a rather favourable review from the people around the table, below are some key points made that challenged it (forgive me if I don’t attribute each point to who made it – although if I start talking in metaphors you can be pretty sure that it came from one half of @thought_weavers)

Broad and Balanced – well it is and it isn’t. The increase in expectations within reading, writing and maths coupled with the ‘stripping’ away of certain broader and balanced elements may, could, just might, result in some schools in challenging circumstances not feeling able to do the ‘it’s not in there but it’s implied you should cover it but we won’t be checking’ elements of it. The pressure to do ‘well’ in the tested bits could mean that these areas are overdone and the balance becomes distorted.

The counterpoint is that if you don’t ‘perform’ well in these tested areas you are in fact letting the children down more so than by not committing to the full curriculum. If children can’t read, write or calculate effectively how are they able to cope at secondary school? If making children ‘secondary ready’ is the hidden agenda behind primary schooling shouldn’t we focus on that bit if that is the bit that required improvement? The counter-counterpoint however is, in my opinion, starker; how is a child secondary ready if they have not received a fully rounded education that has included citizenship and has allowed them to persevere in all manner of disciplines not just literacy and numeracy? I’m sure there is yet another counter-counter-counterpoint to that argument but I’ll move on.

Support – Although much of the curriculum hasn’t really, really changed an awful lot there are some areas that have. I’m thinking computing and the content of the history curriculum. There was a general sense around the room that we had been left a little high and dry in how to skill up staff so they can deliver this effectively. We may be pleased that there are no prescriptive QCA schemes of work and that schools have freedoms to tailor much of the curriculum to their own tastes but where do we start and more worryingly…what if we get it wrong? What if we interpret differently to (whisper it) the ofsted team that come in to inspect our curriculum? There has been no support or guidance for schools to get the curriculum working for their schools.

Elizabeth Truss MP was concerned that ‘teaching schools’ hadn’t been involved in this process of offering support to local schools. We pitched in saying they either hadn’t offered it, the local authority hadn’t brokered any support packages, the teaching schools themselves did not have the capacity to support everyone else. One teaching school represented at the meeting made the point that they too needed to trial it in the first year before being able to support others which seems fair. All of these points seemed at odds with Truss’s perception of how teaching schools were supporting other schools.

At this point it was nearly impossible to discuss the curriculum without straying into our other topic for the day which was assessments.

Assessment

The disappearance of levels – Caroline (because it was her idea remember) was asked very bluntly why levels had been taken away and no other system had been introduced. She gave an answer. I can’t quite remember what it was. I seem to remember thinking if the aim was to make it more transparent to parents then I think you’ve failed as I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. (But then again, I was onto my third cookie by then and the sugar was starting to distort my senses)

Many people in the room seemed to be of the opinion that many schools were leaving levels alone until they had sorted out the curriculum. Caroline made an interesting point that levels, although not the preferred method of assessment, were not banned. I thought this sounded like pokemon cards at school: if they stay in your drawer and you only use them when I can’t see then that’s fine but don’t let me catch you playing with them in class or you’re in trouble.

Caroline did say that levels are gone because they are too crude an assessment. The children are put into boxes and it is difficult for teachers to move them to a different box. There needs to be a more gradual, well rounded, all-encompassing and detailed picture of assessment. But then she started talking about a standardised score that children would get at the end of Reception that would relate to a standardised score children would get at the end of KS2 and this would be the indicator of progress. Well, isn’t that just a bit like levels and APS? Don’t we expect children who are at this level at KS1 to be at this level at KS2 based on expected rate of progress? If you’re going to have a scale that you are going to use to track my Reception pupils all the way to Year 6 – why not tell me what it is and what it looks like in all other year groups because then I can make sure we’re judging my pupils’ achievement in the same way. Making me invent my own system feels really dangerous and makes me feel quite vulnerable. Just a thought.

Testing – This took up a lot of the discussion. The concept that testing to get a score was at odds with a holistic system of assessing children that went against trusting teachers’ judgements seemed to be an alien one to the folks at DfE. And I can see why. You do need, at some stage, a baseline check to see how everyone is doing compared to everyone else. It’s an easy way to get a collective score for a school. It was pointed out how much testing actually helps the child as opposed to helps the schools to be judged by those who are doing the judging.

We were asked what would our way be? I wasn’t the only one to suggest some kind of pupil portfolio where bodies of work were sent in. From my own perspective, I like this as one of the most frustrating conversations I have with teachers is during ‘assessment week’ where teachers will say things like: ‘I’ve got evidence in his book that he’s a 3B and I know in class, on a really good day he can write at a 3B….but on the test he might not, so, I’m going 3C.’ Now, I know why teachers do this, they don’t want to be ‘caught out’ on test day only for me to say ‘What were you thinking? 3B indeed!’  I don’t want unrealistic teacher judgements that are not representative of a child’s ability (either too high or too low) but I trust my teachers more than a test and I have moderating systems that allow me to do this confidently. That is why a national system that puts more faith in a pupil’s real achievement over time would be more valuable than one that sticks rigidly to a 45 minute test paper.

Ofsted – not on the agenda but how can you get people involved in education in a closed room for 90 minutes and not mention the beast in the room? No one criticised the purpose of ofsted but we had a few things to say and a few pointers. (Not that the DfE can do anything about ofsted)

  • Why not go back to longer inspections so ofsted can see the whole school for real.
  • A commitment that ofsted want to see a broad and balanced curriculum in every school.
  • Better links with what the DfE sends out and what Ofsted comes in to see.

I shan’t say no more about Ofsted because it wasn’t why we were there. But also, I can’t remember anything else particularly so I’ll leave it there anyway. You can read part three now you lucky bugger.