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Your country needs YOU! (But qualified please, don’t take the Michael)

theprimaryhead1 Comment

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I appointed a new office worker this year: she had worked in banking and had experience of working with the public. At the end of the term I asked her how she had enjoyed her first 8 weeks working in a school. She said that she had absolutely loved it but…

…she couldn’t believe the intensity of life in a primary school and how hard all the teachers worked. ‘I knew they’d be busy in the classroom teaching stuff but I never realised how hard they work on the emotional support for the children and the parents and everything else that has gone on this term: it’s just non-stop!’

For me this newly found perception is most interesting precisely because she hadn’t even seen the work that goes on in the classroom: just everything else and as those of us in education know it’s often the ‘everything else’ which is so exhausting and rewarding simultaneously…and a big reason why QTS is important.

So you have a degree, a passion for your area of expertise and you believe you would be a great teacher. That is genuinely fantastic! I’m pleased for you, come into the world of education and you will love it but please don’t break in via a side door while no one’s looking. Do it properly and train: why? Because you’ll be a better teacher, I promise. I know you have a Masters and yes I know you have a passion but all that will enable you to do is to give some high quality information to the children in your class (due to your degree) with some of them retaining some of it (because of your passion). Teaching is more than getting children to remember stuff (despite Gove gulping to the contrary).

Being a teacher is HUGE. You literally can’t get a job with a bigger job description. I haven’t got time to go into all of it but this picture of a mug sort of puts it across – albeit in a rather smug way.

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A mug that is smug…a smug-mug if you will. Every staff room should/will have one.

See? It’s a big job and quite frankly it is too big for your degree in [inset whatever degree subject you want] to handle. It needs a bit more care and attention if it’s going to be done correctly. Oh, and if you think by ‘done correctly’ you think I’m still just talking about the teaching a lesson bit you need to start reading this again or look at the smug-mug or alternatively decide never to become a teacher.

What I’m trying to get at is that with QTS you will understand and will be beginning to be better at working with the pressures and the all the other ‘stuff’ that you have to manage effectively so you can still deliver consistent levels of progress and achievement over time. You still won’t be perfect (but don’t worry we’ll all help you) and you’ll get better.

‘But if I’m going to get better at being a teacher because of working on the job anyway-why can’t I skip the boring QTS bit?’

Oh ok and while we’re at it we might as well just put it about that ‘rosebud’ is just his sledge, Vador is Luke’s Dad, Romeo and Juliet both die, Godot never turns up, the girl in the crying game has a willy and the answer to the life, universe and everything is 42. Do you want to do that? No, I didn’t think so. You don’t just skip to the end, the pay-offs will be meaningless: you’ve got to work your way through it, build up your knowledge and understanding.

Training to become a teacher is far more valid than some certified measure of aptitude and a lot of self-belief. It involves going to lectures and listening to experts talk about learning and the psychology of pupils and the importance of all those bits and pieces identified on the smug-mug whilst doing small work placements in a variety of school settings and reading endless books about becoming a reflective teacher and then transposing them into your own thoughts and pedagogy. It will actually really help you when you finally get your hands on you own class full of 30 (or more) individual minds bodies and souls.

So give yourself and the fellow professionals you wish to work alongside the professional dignity and stature we deserve and become a qualified teacher.

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.

…but some of my best friends are dyslexic!

theprimaryhead4 Comments

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This week is dyslexia awareness week. Its theme this year is about debunking the myth that dyslexia is just about struggling with reading and spelling. There are some interesting and useful resources on the British Dyslexia Association’s website that you could use in school from posters and assembly sideshows to information for teachers and staff about how to support pupils with dyslexia.

I have to admit that I was rather surprised as I clicked and downloaded all these resources, not from what I was reading about dyslexia but because they were free. Free! Several free resources later the biggest myth surrounding, not dyslexia but dyslexia support was being debunked…some of it is freely available!

I could not believe my eyes. You see, I live in an almost constant state of annoyance around dyslexia support: now wait a minute, don’t judge me, I’m not being dyslexicist. Read the title: some of my best friends are dyslexic. I recognise dyslexia and will always look to see how I can support people with it. What I also recognise is that private dyslexic support centres within my local authority area (I probably can’t name and shame but I live in a city with a suspended bridge built by a man who wore a tall hat and has a middle name that quite frankly beggars belief) are, in my experience, useless when it comes to helping schools support pupils with dyslexia.

There are some massive myths surrounding dyslexia but in my experience they are mainly peddled by the organisations who actually claim to be the champions of dyslexic support. The main myth seems to be that schools have no idea how to support dyslexia and some even actually go out of the way to not recognise or support pupils with dyslexia.

Are you serious?

Do you really think as a school we would turn our backs on a child’s need? Do you think we sit there twirling our Victorian moustaches inventing ways in which we can actively punish and humiliate our dyslexic pupils? Do you think we stand in front of the class pointing at the child saying ‘Nonsense, that modern disease of dyslexia doesn’t exist: you’re just lazy.’ And then make them stay in at break time copying tiny printed letters onto a white background? Why would we do that?

And yet, parents who have accessed your service seem to have this perception that this is a standard approach that all schools adopt and I can assure you…they haven’t got that from me. So why would an organisation that wants to support dyslexia do this? More on that later but let’s take a step back from dyslexia for the moment.

Now in my opinion the whole broad spectrum of SEN can be terrifying for parents (and some teachers) and the more experienced I become in education the more I understand where this fear comes from. It mainly comes from the unknown and worrying that the particular type of SEN that may have just crash landed into your life, is so incredibly complex that only the most senior professors at CERN  are capable of understanding it. For me the first step in supporting pupils, parents and teachers in matters of SEN is equipping them with knowledge. Often, even the most worried people about the most complex SEN issues can calmed and reassured once they know a) a little bit more about the issue b) what it looks like in the real world and c) how to get the right support in place (which in many (not all) cases consist of simple but consistent measures).

Right, back to dyslexia. Given the above sentiment it never fails to amaze me how after paying approximately a million pounds for an ‘assessment’ by an independent body (who also just happen to make their living by supporting dyslexic kids) the parents receive an assessment report which is so staggeringly complicated it makes raise online look like ‘Miffy draws a graph’. Is it any wonder that the parents are then panicked into feeling like they have to do more to support their child? And where do they go to? Why their child’s school of course.

This seems to be a totally rational and sane suggestion. Yet when they hear how our classrooms are dyslexic friendly and that we have a range of teaching strategies in place that will support any child with dyslexia and how we will target that child for additional reading/phonic/spelling support: this doesn’t seem to be enough. Now why is that?

Is it because the same people that wrote the assessment report have also concluded that the only solution is to attend their organisation at significant cost to the parents? Interesting that they are still more than happy to encourage children to miss whole mornings and afternoons from schools; I would have thought that in this brave new world of performance related pay this could start to get tricky. If I have a pupil who spends 10-20% of their time away from my school shouldn’t I receive regular assessment updates, shouldn’t the parents hold them accountable for 20% of their child’s achievement or underachievement? The parents don’t seem to think this appropriate…I wonder why?

If only there was something I could do that could put the parents’ minds at rest that we really were a dyslexic friendly school…maybe there is an award I could get the school. Well it just so happens there is. On the British Dyslexia Awareness website you can request to get an accreditation: brilliant I thought that could be really useful and if it strengthens our practice all the better. I clicked on the download and waited, and waited….and waited. Why was it taking so long? Oh it’s because the Dyslexia accreditation action plan is the size of the yellow pages. Do you remember when SEFs first came out and they took almost two years to complete: that’s pretty much how long it would take to fill in this action plan. Seriously, I’ve seen Bristol Local Authority’s post Ofsted action plan and there is less to do across the whole city than there is for me to get my school a Dyslexia friendly icon for my letterhead.

It concerns me that there is this huge barrier being erected between parents worried about the support their children are getting and the schools who are trying to do their jobs. It angers me that this barrier is being put up on purpose for what I see as financial greed. I am not perpetuating myths about dyslexia but the dyslexia organisations up and down the land are spreading the belief that schools neither know or care enough about their pupils to support them effectively with their dyslexia and that my friends is wrong.

(Having said that I do recommend looking at the resources on the British Dyslexia Association website as they are rather good and could be very helpful for teachers and parents)