teaching

Ofsted Inspections: Fairly without fear or favour…who are you kidding?

theprimaryhead10 Comments

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It is hard trying to run an organisation whilst simultaneously trying to improve it: this is made doubly hard when you are doing so in an open environment. When you are constantly made aware of the unpopularity  of your decisions  by the very people whom you are trying to improve or trying to make improvements for. It really doesn’t help then, when the people above you behave in a way that makes you wish you could put them on the naughty step until they’re sorry – voicing their opinions which seem to contradict previous agreements, or putting pressure on you to change course. So no wonder that Wilshaw is ‘spitting blood’ over some of Gove’s alleged words and actions against Ofsted.

Poor Wilshaw, I thought, that really has the potential to ruin your weekend. Then I read another quote from Wilshaw about Ofsted: ‘As long as we exist we will do the job fairly, without fear or favour’. And at this point I had to laugh at the sheer self-pitying and self-indulgent notion of this statement. How about you, Sir Michael, consider those F words from the perspective of the people who are at the mercy of your blunt instrument of torture improvement.

Fairly

Is Ofsted fair? I am the first to agree that schools need support and validation from an independent and external body in order to help improve achievement for all children in the country. But is the current system fair? No. A system cannot be described as being fair when it lacks a key ingredient for fairness: consistency.

I strive for consistency. I truly believe that it is the key for sustained school improvement. Find out what works and do it well. If you apply this to any aspect of school life it will have a positive impact right across the school. Yet it is impossible to apply this to Ofsted. Having recently heard a Head who is in the middle of their training to be an inspector, I was alarmed when he said the following:

‘The entire focus was on how to fill in the evaluation forms: you don’t write a judgmental statement down unless you can back it up with evidence. You have to be able to have a chain of evidence that backs up the reason behind your judgement.’

That sounds ok doesn’t it…but he continued:

‘We then saw examples of a lesson and we had to evaluate it as if we were carrying out an inspection. Around the trainees in the room, our judgement on the quality of teaching varied from inadequate to good. I suggested that this was something we should probably discuss but was told the variety in judgements did not matter…all that mattered was that we each could refer to evidence behind our judgements. It didn’t matter what we thought only that we could argue it.’

How is that fair? How can a school’s inspection result being mainly determined by the lead inspector’s whim and own personal interpretation of what the school ought to be doing be a fair system through which to judge the quality of education across the country?

Without Fear

Is it any wonder that schools fear Ofsted? When it is so transparently clear that schools are not judged in a consistent or fair manner you can’t blame schools for living Monday to Wednesday 2:00pm in a state of fear. How can you prepare for something when you have no idea what tangent the inspection will go off on? Is the lead an early year’s specialist, a data obsessive (which normally means they can only interpret data if it’s presented in a way they like), someone who has judged the school before entering, someone who values PE above everything else, someone who prefers a particular teaching method? There is no consistency in what individual inspectors are looking for or think, so, schools cannot trust the teams entering their school.

I appreciate that every school is different but that doesn’t mean inspections should vary so wildly. Inspections should be focused on the consistent effectiveness of schools over time. They should gather information and work with the leadership team to find out how good the school is based on agreed national expectations (no data myths) and against the school’s contextual information. We would all know where we stand and we would all be able to welcome Ofsted into our schools.

Without Favour

Actually the idea that Ofsted aren’t doing anyone any favours isn’t wildly inaccurate – but that’s probably not what Wilshaw was inferring. (I get it Mike, and you have my permission to charge into every free school like a massive bull in a tiny china shop and go knock yourself out.) I want to love Ofsted. In my particular experience I got the result the school needed in order to help get everyone on board with my improvement plan.  But the inspection itself was a truly horrendous experience that did nothing to suggest that Ofsted are robust bastions of education. Instead I felt that it was a hoop, a barbed wired hoop being held by an ignorant bully, which I had to squeeze my school through in order to get on with improving my school. That is not right.

So I support Wilshaw’s rhetoric of ‘fairness without fear and without favour’ but after he’s got to the bottom of his gripes with Gove – he’s still got a long way to go.

How do you solve a problem like Caleb?

theprimaryhead8 Comments

#ToughYoungTeachers is bringing up many discussions on education and in episode two ‘behaviour’ was the topic of the day. This was mainly inspired by Caleb or to me more appropriate Caleb’s behaviour and attitude towards one particular TeachFirst teacher. There were those who considered the boy’s behaviour to be an indication that he was an intelligent and canny individual who was not being challenged and those who thought he was the epitome of what is wrong with education.

Typical statements flying around the Twitter-sphere were:

Students like these should not be tolerated these poor teachers are trying their best! #BlameSMT

Or

That kid (pupil) is hilarious – he’s running rings around that kid (tough young teacher)! #BlameTeachFirst

To

It’s called behaviour ‘management’ for a reason! #BlameTheNotSoToughYoungTeacher

Not that I’m adverse to having a strong opinion but I sort of agree with all three but rather than sit on all three fences I’m going to smash each fence down and then squat over the remains. (as it were)

#BlameTheNotSoToughYoungTeacher

Even if you think Britain is going to hell in an online shopping cart you have to admit that the disobedient pupil showing considerable chutzpah was not being sufficiently motivated in the classroom. The teacher had absolutely no clue how to manage the behaviour and as result the relationship between adult and pupil has now become personal. This is not good; mainly because a battle has now started.

The pupil is now very consciously going to try and not engage with anything the teacher does – his main motivation will be to see just how far and publicly he cannot engage without getting permanently excluded. The teacher is also at war with the pupil although probably at a more sub-conscious level. The teacher will be feeling that the ensuring behaviour from the pupil is not his fault and as time goes by the pupil will become a lost cause and the teacher will just wave the white ‘unteachable’ flag and the pupil will win – although the loss will be bitterly apparent to everyone.

Had the teacher approached the initial warning signs of poor behaviour professionally it would not have escalated with the pair of them needing a couple counselling session with a senior leader. A little bit of respect, recognition of capability matched with appropriate challenge and even with a little bit of humility/humour and it could have been a different story.

#BlameSMT

‘Why the hell should teachers have to put up with little buggers like that kid anyway…’tis the quiet children I feel sorry for: no one cares about them.’

I do actually. I care very deeply about those quiet pupils and I would happily argue that their needs were not being met either. I also expect teachers to be able to effectively manage the ‘disruptive’ pupils effectively so they can learn just as much as the quiet ones. That is why I employed you. You do know that pupils are children don’t you? You do know that some children have difficult lives and that it is our job to work though those so the child can come out on top don’t you? You know that there is a wealth of information out there about how to deal with challenging behaviour and many professionals in your own school (who may have had successes with this particular child) that you can draw knowledge and skills from don’t you? You do know that to sit back and say ‘it’s not your fault’ as if you’re a casual by-stander rather than a teacher makes you a disgrace don’t you? Good, just checking.

Of course, as a Head I will support you. I’ll help you get better at understanding the needs of these pupils and how to support them without losing sight of your responsibility to the whole class. And trust me that I will back you up when dealing with the pupil’s poor behaviour or talking to the family about the consequences of the child not taking their responsibilities for their own learning and behaviour seriously. Of course I will otherwise…what sort of a Head would that make me?

#BlameTeachFirst

This is why proper training is important. You’re not dumped straight in at the deep end without the professional maturity to deal with challenging behaviour appropriately. Of course no aspiring trainee teacher is either…but we learnt through placements and lectures how to do it. Our hands were held along the way. Our mentors weren’t out of our sight as we completely messed up telling a child off, letting  a child off, missing what that child over there was doing and their feedback only made us stronger. We became used to feedback and reflections so that in our NQT year, when the stabilisers were off and we were really on our own, we could cope when getting further advice (we didn’t need to compose a song in the toilet).

I feel waves of sympathy towards these ‘ToughYoungTeachers: I couldn’t have dealt with Caleb after six weeks; after six years I probably would still have needed help. But then I flip and feel a bit cross – where is there support? Many TeachFirst folks have answered my queries on Twitter and assure me that support is in place and it’s really good. I hope so, if only so in years to come, the leaders of Teach First can sleep at night.

I, teacher

theprimaryhead11 Comments
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Whatever doesn’t get you sacked…only makes you stronger.

There may be some (many) NQTs out there who found the Autumn terms tough. Even the most naturally gifted teacher or bright-eyed bushy-tailed young Buck can find the reality of being an actual full time teacher really hard. That’s partly because it is. Teaching is an incredibly hard job and it’s only in your first proper term that you realise how sheltered you were from the day-in day-out pressures of the job whilst you were training. But it’s also because you haven’t been doing it for that long. So before you spend the final night of your holidays not sleeping as you worry about whether you will be able to jump back onto the merry-go-round or worry that you are just not cut out for this profession read this. Here I dig deep into my memory archives and share with you some of the most incompetent parts of my NQT year. Why? Because I guarantee you have not done anything this bad and it turned out alright for me so you will be fine.

When I graduated and became a teacher they had literally just introduced those English, Maths and ICT tests you had to do in order to get your qualified teaching status. Now as I am not a great auditory learner I didn’t quite get the full message during the lecture where they explained it. All I came away from it thinking was: ‘I’ve got three years to do them’.

So I happily applied for a job, got the interview and got the job. I taught happily for about two months before the Head called me into her office where the Chair of Governors was also waiting. She had received a call from the council saying that there was an unqualified teacher employed as a qualified teacher working in the school. Now, it was a small school so she only had four people to really choose from: the deputy, the SENCO, the Early Years leader and the NQT (I’m pretty sure I was the only one she bothered bringing into her office). What she now had to do was to decide whether I was committing fraud on purpose or just an idiot. Thankfully it didn’t take me too long to convince them of the latter but it was a rather intense meeting where I was facing the very real possibility of losing my job. I apologised, had my pay docked until I had paid back the difference to the local authority and promptly took the tests (and passed). I carried on teaching there for four years.

After I was a proper qualified teacher (by then I even had the certificate to prove it) I settled into the rhythms of teaching. One morning I woke up and I looked up at my skylight and thought: ’Gosh, it’s incredibly light out there.’ At that exact moment I heard the flat buzzer go off – who on earth could that be so early? I stumbled out of bed to answer the buzzer and as I opened my bedroom door I saw that my flatmate had beaten me to it. The voice at the other end was asking if I was in, my flatmate replied that of course I wasn’t in because I was at work….no I wasn’t the voice replied. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 9:50am. By this point I was beginning to work out why it was so light in my bedroom and the voice was explaining to my house mate that she was the Deputy Head, I wasn’t in work so if I was in fact here I should put some trousers on and meet her downstairs quickly.

Again I had to explain to my Head that I was simply an idiot who had slept through his alarm. I practically had to give a blood test and urine test to prove to everyone else that I wasn’t hung-over. They amusingly presented me with an alarm clock the next day and I had to bribe my class with watching a video on Friday afternoon if they vowed not to tell their parents. I carried on teaching there for four years.

I took my class to a local bookshop (for some reason? I actually can’t remember-perhaps an author was there). I had asked one of the parents to come with us and it was she who informed me on the way back that some of the children had taken some gift cards from the store. I asked them to empty their pockets and after I had counted them all up I told the children that collectively they had stolen £450 from the store. I hadn’t done a proper telling off before so I went to town on them. There were tears, I may have mentioned criminal records and I got the parents in and demanded that the children write apology letters to the manager. Afterwards, I inspected the gift cards and saw that they weren’t actually vouchers but promo cards – never mind I thought trying to sound convincing, in principle they stole and I was right to tell them off. I rang the store manager who didn’t seem to mind saying that they get taken all the time and are worthless and there was no need for me to return them. Finally my Head called me in as the parent volunteer had spoken to her and raised the point that I hadn’t sent out any letters about the trip and therefore hadn’t got any parent’s permission. ‘I know it’s a local visit,’ she said, ‘But you still have to tell the parents you’re taking their child on a bloody trip!’ I carried on teaching there for four years.

So there are just three appalling examples of my ineptness during my first year of teaching – I haven’t even mentioned my teaching which when I look back now was pretty appalling. I spent my first year as a teacher caught between feeling elated that I was doing this job followed by daily waves of panic, thinking I was out of my depth. Why have I written this?  Because if there are any new or newish teachers out there who are feeling out of their depth or worried that they have made mistakes that will haunt them forever; you can now relax because you’re not THIS much of an idiot. So get a good night’s sleep and take on Term 3 with confidence and gusto; just for goodness sake…set you alarm.