professional development

Motivation! Motivation! Motivation! The 3 Ms of leadership.

theprimaryhead5 Comments

leadershipMaybe it’s the pressure of performance related pay or the higher expectations of the new Ofsted framework; or maybe it’s because performance management meetings have started or maybe it’s because some schools are being led by unqualified individuals who wouldn’t know about the complexities of running an effective if school even if they were hit about the head with the latest copy of ‘A Dummies guide to running a free school’; or maybe it’s because the state of education is in chaos with government consultations suggesting terrible ideas to move things on popping up more rapidly than a series of regional NUT strikes; or maybe it’s because it’s nearly half term and everyone is knackered: I don’t know…but for some reason, this weekend, school senior leaders have got a hammering online.

First there was @TessaLMatthews blog on ‘What makes a good school leader?’ which offered up her highly unpleasant experience of an SLT encounter http://tabularasaeducation.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/school-leaders/ . Then @oldandrewuk gave us some sound advice on ‘How to be a bad SMT’ (which can be found at http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/ ). Now, you know you’re onto something when even a teachingbattleground post doesn’t divide opinion: judging by the comments that followed both posts they have either only been read by colleagues at the same schools (this is possible but highly improbable unless the school employ a combined total of about 8000 staff) or (and this is more likely) many school leaders are either a) not very nice; b) not very competent; c) both a) and b).

So here I am to defend us poor school leaders because do you know what? You lot…you teachers just don’t get it! All you’ve got to do is come into school and teach but us, we have whole schools to run. We have a million things to keep on top off and getting you lot to do your bloody job shouldn’t have to be the hardest thing to do every bloody day. For once could I just ask you to do something and expect you to get it done? For once could I tell you how we’re all going to teach without having to see your eyes roll and your arms fold with the old teachers sardonically wittering things like ‘oh, we’re going back to that way are we, I remember when we tried that in 1972..ha!’ and the young teachers crapping on about Ken Robinson and moaning how I don’t know what it’s like to be in the classroom anymore-I do actually so shut up and try taking some advice rather than just expecting to give it all the time. Seriously-do your job and no one gets hurt: Got it?

And breathe. Relax. Breathe again and before you click the ‘report abuse’ button, count to five and believe me when I say: only joking. I just wanted to try it on for size and see what it would be like to be ‘that kind’ of leader. Doesn’t really do it for me never has. Tried it once and I just felt like a bit of a prat and it didn’t get me anywhere except made at least one person thought I was a prat (well two if you include me)

However, I was genuinely thinking a couple of weeks ago about my approach to leadership in terms of am I too nice – which is normally a euphemism for too soft – which is another euphemism for ineffective. I had a meeting with a local authority school improvement officer (who I like) and they were challenging me about my ability to ensure the effectiveness of a member of staff. As they were talking I was reminded of ‘The League of Gentlemen’ character Pauline, the job centre re-start officer, who maintained that you should treat people like pens: ‘If they don’t work, shake them. If they still don’t work, bin them.’ I was trying to get across my slightly different approach of utter transparency, lots of support and lots of reviews. ‘Don’t worry I have a system’ I kept saying, that allows me to be nice, fair and could actually allow this person to succeed and if it doesn’t work we also have a system that will take care of that in a way that is professional, fair and impossible to disagree with. ‘But how long will it bloody take?’ was the comment getting repeatedly fired back at me.

Time is important you see. Everyone wants impact in the shortest possible amount of time. HMI want impact within six weeks of RI which means the local authority want it by five.  Headteachers therefore want impact by four weeks which means subject leaders have to show it by three. This leaves teachers with the rather hard task of making impact within a fortnight. If anyone challenges this time frame then they get accused of having low standards and a stubbornness that is a barrier to improvement.

What this then does is create pressure and as we know pressure can make some individuals behave in appalling ways. The buck however stops with the headteacher and simultaneously, the example, should also start with the headteacher.

The most effective way I have found to achieve this is by being transparent, honest and actually quite nice to the people I work with. I want people to want to work in my school as much as I want them to know what we’re all up against. There are no hidden agendas. Schools should be exciting places to and people should feel proud of their achievements. If they are struggling I want them to feel supported – not shamed into it but actually helped along the way. Challenging conversations occur all the time – but they’re so much easier to have if you have shared your direction, expectations, vision at the very start. Now if you hate my vision my direction of the school then your heart won’t be in the school I’m leading anyway so you’re best off out anyway. But even then – we can be nice about it.

I was talking to a teacher the other day who had once worked for a really horrible sounding headteacher. Everyone was terrified. Public humiliations at staff meetings, throwing of stationary, staff crying daily in the staff room. I naively said that I can’t imagine that kind of leadership is tolerated any more. From reading some of the blogs this weekend it seems as though I was way of the mark. I pity the leaders who are this stressed and frustrated that they take it out on teachers and support staff but more so I want them to stop. Stop and think about the damage they are doing.

I know, I know the pressure, the pressure! Pressure does not equate to being able to act like a shit. We get paid more – suck it up. The more pressure a school is under the nicer you should be – seriously. The more you should work with the leaders beneath you to make sure they have a handle on how to improve their areas. Doesn’t mean you can’t get frustrated. My office often sounds like a dock-yard as my potty-mouth is quite frankly disgraceful. Never AT people you understand – well maybe at them occasionally but certainly not while they’re in the same room. When I am working with people however, at the back of my mind is the question all leaders should have: am I enabling this person to operate at their highest level?

If the answer is yes, then it is normally because I have them on my side, I’ve been honest with them and supported them and they recognise that I am actively investing in their development. Okay, that’s what I’d like them to think I’ve done, it may a be a slightly ‘heightened reality’ version but it certainly isn’t because I’ve stabbed them with a pencil, called them a useless **** and told them to input all that data again because at the moment it’s about as helpful to me as teats on a boar. (Like I said earlier, tried this approach once and it didn’t work)

Maybe I’m a coward – I don’t like confrontation and between you and me I try to give people want they want (within reason) as I’ve learned that’s quite a motivator and bargaining tool. But I do have my non-negotiable terms I have my expectations and so far no one has suggested that they are unreasonable and so far no one has left. (one member of staff has even requested to go back to full time since I started my school – and bearing in mind we require improvement and I’ve got them working harder than I’ve ever seen any school work, I think that’s quite good).

Because no matter how ‘up against it’ you are, keeping the troops on your side is the best weapon you’ll ever have – and if I need to take out a second mortgage to keep the staff room cake levels at a constant high, well that’s a price I’m prepared to pay.

So many ‘freedoms’ so little time!

theprimaryhead2 Comments
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3 weeks left and a new pay policy to write…what’s the problem?

I have had to make a new rule in my household: no one must tell me how long it is until the summer holidays.  Why? Because if I actually stop and think about all the things that  need to happen before the end of the year I am worried that my head will explode like that bloke from the film ‘Scanners’. Every year I try and think about how I can make Term 6 less crammed and better timetabled: desperately seeking to achieve the utopian vision of the last day of the year ending with everyone happily skipping off, full of energy ready to embrace their summer holiday. But, every year, it gets to the last three weeks and the school is on its knees and I end up thinking: ‘I really must plan term 6 better next year?’

This year is no different except for one teeny-tiny additional thing I need to do before we break up. As well as: sports days, reports, end of year data, heart attack inducing return of SATs papers, Year 6 leaving, the end of year show, deciding where to put teachers next year, planning an inset for the last day that no one will take anything from because they’re too tired, planning an inset for the first day back that no one will take anything from because they’ve been away too long, discos, summer fair, final string of governors, staff leaving dos, trying to keep staff morale up whilst simultaneously insisting that we can’t have golden time every afternoon because you’re tired and finally getting around to tidying my office….there is the ever so slightly important issue of writing a new pay policy.

At a recent Heads meeting I was slightly glad that I wasn’t the only person in the room who:

  1. Hadn’t yet given it a lot of thought.
  2. Didn’t really know what to do about it.
  3. Was secretly hoping we could leave it (not because we’re particularly weak but because the list mentioned above is the minimum amount of stuff that every head is trying wade through right this minute)

Having not received any guidance from the local authority we have been visited by a million private HR companies who have given us a seemingly unlimited number of options of how to use pay as a consequence for performance. A selection of these has been:

  1. Even out the size of incremental increases along the main pay range (it’s a range now not a scale) and split each one in two. Thus giving the illusion of a ‘better than expected’ pay rise for good performance (look you’ve gone up two increments!) whilst actually giving you less in ‘old money’.
  2. Once you’ve determined the sizes of the incremental increases along the main pay scale sorry range, create relative performance measures. So if I had five teachers all working at MPR4 they would be in competition with each other as only the top three performers who had met all their targets would be eligible for a pay rise.
  3. Create a target specific Upper Pay Range system: UPS is not for life but could be up until Christmas if performance is weak. Also, the entire jump from MPR6 to UPS1 would be reset at the end of the year and would only be paid the following year if performance targets are met. (A bit like a bonus…actually a lot like a bonus; basically a bonus.)

Now before you report me to the unions I have to say these were only ‘options’ presented to us as a way of showing us how wide open the ‘freedoms’ of the new pay policy are and some, maybe all, could ‘improve’ performance but could equally create a horrible corporate atmosphere that no one in their right mind would want to be a part of if they also want to be a part of education. But there are some important lessons to take away from it.

If schools are going to drastically change the way in which pay progression is used they must ensure that their appraisal process throughout the year is really effective. It will not be good enough to implement performance related pay and leave it as a trap for the end of year performance review. An appraisal process must be set up to identify and support teachers who are under-performing ‘now’ and could be in danger of not reaching end of year targets.

Of course this should be in place anyway but how swiftly have schools reacted to the early signs of under-performance in the past? How often has a slightly rubbish teacher continued to work and progress along the main pay scale seemingly unaware that the only really consequence of their under-performance is that next year’s teacher has to now work twice as bloody hard? How many schools only offer support in terms of capability when the rock bottom has been reached?

Schools survive with poorer teachers because of the fantastic teachers that insulate them. Don’t get me wrong; the problem here is leadership not teaching. A change in pay policy is not going to scare a teacher into teaching well but it might just make the Head Teacher slightly more pro-active in nipping under performance in the bud.

I don’t know any Head who wants to stop a member of their team from getting paid or even wants to have that conversation! But by putting the idea of levels of performance affecting levels of future pay into all educators’ consciousness it will hopefully develop a more rapidly supportive culture in schools that need it.

And just because I always try to link my end of a blog post with the start of a blog post because that makes me feel that I’m a cleverer writer author guru than I actually am:

So as I try to get to the end of the year without my brain actually melting, I have decided to make sure that when I do find ten minutes to write the school’s pay policy, I will set the review date for Christmas…as that tends to be one of the quieter terms.

Hook, line and stinker?

theprimaryhead1 Comment

ImageAs it’s half term and I am simultaneously getting away from work but trying to get on with it I have spent an unprecedented amount of time on Twitter and reading a mass of blogs. It’s been brilliant and in many cases extremely insightful. I have been immensely impressed and stirred by the very ‘giving’ nature of all the professionals who contribute high quality resources, ideas and thoughts to what is, in my mind, a very special online network of educators. 

Sometimes I can’t tell what is more engaging: the ideas or the follow-on arguments that occur between followers. It’s all highly dramatic but I have yet to dip my tweet (urgh that sounds horribly euphemistic, sorry) into the choppy waters of a twitter argument. Not for fear of losing both the argument and followers (although I am highly precious and needy) but often because I can see both sides and the last thing I want is for both parties to gang up on me, accuse me of fence sitting and un-follow me (like I said, I am very precious and needy).

The reason why I often agree with both sides is probably partly due to the limitations of twitter’s 140 characters and that a good debate should contain a strong argument. What you get from this is a world of blacks and whites. Now although I like this as it challenges me to reflect on my own beliefs it occasionally feels, from the outside looking in, that it creates a sense of polarisation that could be dangerous.

I worry that as some of us can come across a little too dismissive of ideas and thoughts about how to teach, it may stop others giving such ideas a go. Teaching evolves constantly-not just the system and the fads but individuals. No one is teaching today the way they were two years/ten years/twenty years ago because along the way you picked up ideas and experiences and you learnt how to weave them in and out of what you do on a daily basis. You are probably not committed to one fixed approach that will last you for the rest of your career. Your principles and philosophy may not change but the nuts and bolts of what you actually do to have an impact on the lives of the people in your charge have to.

With that in mind here is the problem with the black and white approach to Twitter. As we are all on our own different paths at different stages what is totally useless to you may be of immense value to someone else. To therefore dismiss it as rubbish ‘for all’ is rather blinkered…even if you are saying so out of your experience.

As a good (outstanding…you might well think that but I couldn’t possibly comment) teacher, there are many things that I don’t have to do anymore. I haven’t, for example, got to sit and think about the success criteria in order to teach a Year 4 class about report writing. I’ve done it loads of times and really well and I have certain tricks up my sleeve that engages children and I know the success criteria like the back of my hand. I also know how to make sure they effectively use ‘Level 4’ elements of writing and how to place it all in the real world to make it purposeful and fun-I even wear a hat and everything.

The same cannot be said for lots of teachers around the country right now for lots of reasons: they’re just starting out, they’ve never taught Year 4, they’re not yet brilliant, Literacy is their weak point, their partner teacher always planned the literacy, etc. So, they will need to look at success criteria, marking ladders, planning documents, a range of resources, pick learning styles appropriate for those lessons, create targets…buy a hat. These are the hooks that are out there in the world of education that allow you to grab onto something tangible in order to teach a sequence of lessons effectively.

When you have been successful you throw the hooks that helped back into the water as you take on your next challenge to see if you get any future bites out of them.  After a while they may not be as successful so you will find other hooks to use. Every now and then you’ll pick up a hook that you discarded long ago and find that it now works. And so it goes.

Any hook or process that allows an individual teacher to make sense of how to do the very difficult job of getting children to learn and gets them to be successful is fine by me. Use an approach, assess the impact, judge if it’s worth using again. Therefore when on Twitter these ideas get slammed, because they are being treated as if they are being touted as the only idea out there as opposed to something to try, I worry that it will put some people off from giving them a go.

Levelling ladders may be crude, Ken Robinson may be nothing but aspirational air, average point scores may detract from real teaching, kinaesthetic learning styles may be ineffective, planning may be a waste of time….for you. But for some they are the little hooks that will support them to get better in the setting they’re in.

So I don’t want to curb people’s passion for or against any ideas out there and I certainly don’t want to not read those interesting, thought provoking and often very funny black and white comments. But I hope that no one ever reads a 140 character long barbed comment and swallows it Hook, Line and Sinker.

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