Season’s greetings from the DfE

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Dear [insert name],

Season’s greetings!

I’m sure, like us, you can hardly believe it’s that time of year again. It seems like only yesterday we were packing away the tinsel and departmental standard-issue baubles, each glittering round globe depicting a past secretary of state for education. (We were certain our Gove bauble got smashed last year and yet when we opened the box there he was, all shiny faced, winking at us, begging to be put back on the tree.)

But here we are! Another year has passed and what a year it’s been. So much has happened, we thought that we’d send out a helpful round robin letter to keep you all ‘abreast’ with our news.

I suppose the big bombshell is that Nicky Morgan left us. This, we’ll be honest, knocked us for six. I mean, one morning she was with us, sat at the breakfast table laughing away about her white paper, then, that same day, she didn’t come home for tea. No warning. No phone call. No text. She just never came home. We rang her civil servants, her colleagues – we even rang her friend – but no one knew where she’d gone. It was almost as if she’d been the victim of a massive loss in confidence and had been told that the only decent thing she could do was to pack her bags and leave. But that doesn’t sound like the Nicky we knew. She was barely aware of anything! We finally gave up looking for her when we saw that she’d left our WhatsApp group.

We tried being single for a bit. We thought that – after Nicky – we’d need a bit of time to adjust. Maybe go through her ridiculous white paper and take out all the bits that were a) mad, b) undoable, c) mad and undoable. We were halfway through this, quite frankly massive, task (seriously, we had hacked the whole white paper down to a single post-it note by the end) when Mummy May suggested we go on a blind date. Now, this isn’t the sort of thing we normally do but we thought, hey, it’s 2016! Plus, Mummy May said that if we didn’t then we’d have to go on Tinder and we couldn’t risk another chance encounter with Gove again.

We met Justine at a Côte brasserie (Justine said that post-Brexit, ministers were only allowed to eat in foreign restaurants to show the public that the government was committed to make ‘it’ work. They were all fine with this, except for Boris, who insisted on only eating at Toby Inns, where he has a special arrangement that gets him access to an English carvery any time, day or night.) It was a quiet night. Justine seemed more interested in the breakdown of the bill, and trying to work out the gratuity to the nearest penny, but, just as we were about to go home, she leant over and asked if she could come back for coffee. We’ve been inseparable ever since.

And the exciting news…

We’re expecting…a new grammar school!

It’s early days, we haven’t had the scan or planning permission yet, but we’ve decided it’s what we want. I originally said just the one but Justine, she wants loads! (That’s so Justine, she’s bonkers!) We’re not sure how we’re going to afford it or whether it’s the right time ‘politically’ but, as Justine said, when is it ever going to be the perfect time? We might as well just go with our heart, cross our fingers and squeeze out as many grammar schools as we can.

Not everyone is pleased for us. Uncle Wilshaw has bored everyone with his views on the matter. He was on Radio 4 the other day, sending the nation to sleep at the wheel, saying that he thinks the idea that grammar schools will help the nation’s paupers is ‘tosh’.  Justine was really funny and said that he had watched ‘I, Daniel Blake’ too many times and that he was soooo out of touch. As if a return to selective education would mean that poor or challenging or socially disadvantaged or needy children wouldn’t be selected. I mean, hello, we’re in the 21st century. And anyway, Justine said that she would make sure that the word ‘inclusive’ was written into the name of the school and that that would sort it. Still, Uncle Wilshaw’s going away soon, leaving us with Aunty Amanda, who hasn’t even been to school, so we should be fine.

In other news, our extended family of School Commissioners continue to do well. Our cousin, David (or Big Dave as he likes to be called) has been doing a lot of running, as those of you on social media will likely be aware. In between runs he’s also found time to raise several new Regional School Commissioners and they are all doing marvellously at big school. They can’t all run as well as Big Dave but they can talk about MATs until the cows come home, or should that be until Big Dave runs home. Bless them, they were all so fired up when our ex promised them that every school will be part of a MAT by the time Article 50 was triggered. The looks on their faces when Justine pulled the rug from under their feet. Priceless. But they continue to tour the country talking as though MATs are the best thing since, well, grammar schools. And we continue to be very proud of them.

Some sad news now though, friends. Grandpa Gibb is still in recovery after his little SATs meltdown earlier in the year. The pressure of inventing new tests and having them leaked all over the internet really took its toll on old GG. He put on a brave face and muddled through it as best he could, but, between you and me, he still finds the whole affair rather embarrassing. Especially when he found out that the boys down at the DfE had played a little prank in the reading paper and had inserted a story about a white giraffe written by Oswald Mosley.

That’s about it really. Oh, our brother Sean is still ‘off grid’ trying to save the world of Ofsted single-handedly, but he texted us last night to send you his love. And Mummy May rang to say that you could look forward to hearing from her later when she’ll tell you why you didn’t receive any money or gift vouchers from her this Christmas. (Word to the wise, don’t mention the word deficit. She’ll go nuts!)

That just leaves us enough time to say, well done you, on all your hard work this year and all the best for the year ahead.

Good luck with grappling with your data and supporting your SEND kids with bugger all money and retaining staff who are working themselves to an early grave and employing staff who haven’t had so much as a sniff of experience of teaching before filling out the application form and trying to fend off academisation and petitioning against the grammar that’s opening down the road and planning for a deficit budget and taking on all the ills of society because you’re the only ones people expect to have responsibility for everything even though you haven’t the time nor the money to do anything but teach mastery (whatever that is) or frontal adverbials (whatever they are) and trying to get through the next Ofsted (because that’s all that matters) without having a massive stroke in the process.

We have every faith that you’ll do marvellously.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love

The DfE

The secret of my SDP success (part 1)

theprimaryhead1 Comment

I wrote this the other day, safe in the assumption that nobody would want to actually read about the joys of school development planning (SDP). Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather when literally ones of people wrote to me saying that they really were interested, and, please could I share my strategic wisdom with them.  Now, I don’t know about you but I like to use the Ofsted criteria for statistical significance, so, when a third person showed interest it was clear that I had to consider a proportional and appropriate response. Hence why this Saturday, as well as attending the school Christmas Fair (where I spent most of the time trying to avoid getting my face painted), I found myself writing this seminal treatise on strategic school development planning.

It was a couple of years ago when I had my SDP epiphany. I was at the Birmingham Inspiring Leadership conference and Alastair Campbell was on stage. He was a late booking because someone more educatey had pulled out. Nevertheless, he was delighted to be here as he had just written a new book called ‘Winners’ and he happened to have a spare hundred copies in his van that he said he’d happily flog us at the end of the show. He also said he’d share a few funny stories about John Prescott as long as we promised not to record them and upload them to YouTube because, in Campbell’s words, Big JP still has a temper and a mean right hook. As it seemed pretty clear we were all going to be winners by the end of this hour we agreed to let him talk. I won’t go into too much detail about his talk because you’d be better off buying his book and reading it yourself.  But there was one detail that really stood out.

The difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’.

Lots of people, claimed Campbell, do not know the difference between a strategy and a tactic. Those that do, succeed. Those that don’t, often wonder why things aren’t succeeding as well as they thought they would during the planning stage. This was perfect timing for me as I was just about to start writing my new school development plan. After the conference, as I strolled to the Birmingham library to begin writing the SDP before my train arrived, I wondered if I knew the difference.

First though, I had to write my aim. Alastair Campbell said that your objective, or overall aim, should be bold and simple. That suited me just fine. After seven minutes I came up with one of the key aims of my new plan: ‘All teaching is brilliant’. Nobody, I thought, could argue with that. Why wouldn’t you want all teaching to be brilliant? Surely that is an idea that would unite everyone.

Now I had to come up with my strategy.

I began writing a list. Trouble is, I realised that I was just listing tactics:

  • Lesson Observations
  • Work Monitoring
  • Collaborative teaching projects

I tried putting these into long sentences in the hope that they would become more strategic.

  • Termly lesson observations to identify strengths within the teaching profile and areas of teaching that require improvement.

I imagined handing this over to Campbell for approval. I closed my eyes and could see him rolling up my SDP and beating me with it whilst calling me a small-minded unstrategic idiot. Why couldn’t I do it? Why couldn’t I understand what my overarching strategy was going to be?

And then it hit me.

What was my belief that underpinned all my tactics? Why did I think that these tactics would move the school forward so that all teaching would be brilliant? When I thought about how I would introduce all these tactics to my senior leaders, my governors and my teachers I suddenly knew what my strategy was:

Total commitment to all staff’s professional development.

The strategy was a mind-set. It was a lens that brought into focus the true purpose of all the tactics. No longer would this list of tactics be working on a deficit model of school improvement: making sure bare minimum requirements were reached or identifying where teaching needed to improve. The emphasis would not be on the teachers to try and get through these tactical actions unscathed. It would now be up to the senior leaders to make these tactics worthwhile. This is something they could only do if they were genuinely committed to helping everyone become even better.

When I discussed this with the SLT, I made it clear that only by keeping the strategy in the forefront of their minds would these tactics work. If all they were doing was carrying them out to make a judgement on teachers we would fail. If all they focussed on were the systems of teaching we would never achieve brilliant teaching across the whole school. Only if they were committed to finding ways of improving every teacher’s effectiveness would every teacher reach their potential.

When I launched this to the staff, I made it clear that in twelve months they would be better teachers. I didn’t know the specifics as to how. There was no blueprint. It wasn’t going to be because they used a marking policy or mapped out their differentiation in a way that the SENCO preferred. No, they were going to get better because the senior leaders would be working with them, side by side. Together they would explore the quality of their teaching, in the context of their current class, to identify something that might work even better. No teacher would get left behind. No teacher was too good to get better. No teacher would be unsupported. No leader would be unapproachable because we were all committed to them.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone then stood on their tables and called me ‘My Captain’ but there was a genuine sense of excitement as we started that year. Teachers understood the aim, trusted the strategy and no longer feared the tactics.

And it worked. Not that it’s the only measure of success but I got the Ofsted to prove it. More importantly I developed a team of teachers who enjoy being professionally looked after. They expect me, and the senior leaders, to help them get better. We all start the year knowing that by the end of the year we’ll be even better teachers. This year, we’ve taken it further. We have new tactics. But the strategy hasn’t changed.

So there it is. The key to successful school development planning in three simple words:

  • Aim
  • Strategy
  • Tactics

Thanks Alastair. #winners

 

Making a # of it

theprimaryhead6 Comments

hashtag-twitter-instagram1It’s nearly Christmas and, you know what they say: ‘tis better to give than to receive’. So, I thought I would temporarily cease my usual blogging stance of high-horsing cynicism in favour of giving something back. I mean, why should a great leader keep all their effectiveness to themselves rather than dish it out to the hoi polloi?

Thing is, there doesn’t seem to be anything left to talk about. Every educational sacred cow seems to be already slaughtered. I can’t advise about lesson observations because they’re now considered to be illegal in some counties. Anything on behaviour and I’ll be crushed in between the Inclusionists and the Excludedites. You can’t even mention staff appraisal without being accused of sending teachers to work down coal mines. The government messed up astute use of data analysis for all of us. Don’t mention curriculum unless you want to get bored to tears by a progressive/traditionalist debate. And even Ofsted are giving marking a kick in the praise sandwiches.

So, what is there left to talk about?

Maybe I could talk about my school? Thing is, if I start doing that people will begin thinking I’m setting up some kind of edu-cult. They’ll expect me to start writing manifestos with messages about education that are so strong they make Trump’s election campaign look like Joanna Lumley advertising Mellow Birds coffee.

Maybe I should tell the world that the reason our disadvantaged children’s scaled score in maths was 302 was because we put them all in isolation tanks during their lunch hour and piped times tables raps into the disorientating darkness. (Admittedly they now all have skin like sultanas but by Gove they know what six sevens are.) But I just can’t be bothered.

I can’t be bothered to pretend that I have an uncompromising approach to education. I can’t be bothered to be misinterpreted and end up being defined by something I happen to believe in. Not because I don’t have strong beliefs. But because I’m quite up for changing my mind. I enjoy adapting. My beliefs are very strong but they are also apt to change depending on situation and context.

I don’t think that makes me a nightmare to work with. I’d like to think it makes me someone you can rely on. Allowing myself the luxury of accepting the subtleties and complexities of life has enabled me to adapt systems and policy in favour of trying to get the best out of every situation.

All very convenient but where does this leave me in terms of doling out guaranteed wisdom? You can’t take ‘we’ll see what’s around the corner and act accordingly’ and write it on your school action plan can you? Especially if you’re not actually any good! I mean, I can just about get away with it, but you? No, no, no. You need something a little more concrete if you’re to scale the dizzying heights of my headship.

So, let me think.

The only thing I can think of is something so dry and dusty you may as well close this window and go back to looking at mannequin challenge videos. It’s not sexy. It’s not nu-ed. You won’t find a hashtag of it anywhere on Twitter. It’s not appropriate for pinterest. And it certainly won’t win me blogger of the year.

Ladies and gentlemen, middle and senior leaders, I give you:

@theprimaryhead’s approach to school development planning.

Forget what you thought you knew. Throw away your smart targets. Get rid of the ‘who’ ‘how’ ‘cost’ columns and, best of all, delete the ‘by when’ column because it’s absolutely useless. Prepare yourself for a new age of action planning that will set you free in its simplicity. And no, this isn’t leading up to a big groovy joke where I say ‘action planning is for squares’, I’m being serious. It needs to be done and too many people do it badly. But luckily, I have the answer.

 

Wait?

 

Where have you all gone?

 

That’s typical, isn’t it? If this was a blog about the educational research that suggests lesson observations are best done blindfolded so as to prevent the observer from making preconceived judgements on the quality of teaching, or, that phonics through music results in children being good at drawing polygons, you’d be all over it wouldn’t you? This blog would be trending Twitter right now.

But it isn’t. Because nobody cares about the boring bread and butter of leadership. Bread and butter doesn’t interest people, does it? People today want their bread and butter covered in bashed avocado or prosecco dust. I mean let’s be honest, once you’d all clicked on the Mellow Birds link you never came back.

Well fine. I know my place. Somebody, help me up onto this high horse.

Oops, wait a minute, I’m there already.