I don’t listen to talk radio.  Not that I doubt the wisdom of my fellow citizens, but I’m not short of advice. Year 7 tell me how to save the planet, year 9 tell me I’m unjust, y11 that GCSEs should be abolished, y12 that I am personally complicit in all wars. Teachers have a view on everything. The local authority tell me what matters in Greenwich and the Department has views on whatever matters to The Party at the time. (Who’d have thought that the rather obscure matter of whether schools are using PSHE materials whose copyright means they can’t share them with parents would be such a cause celebre. What about other textbooks?). Him indoors has had an opinion on literally everything for the last 44 years.

So enough. I don’t listen to Any Questions or Answers and I don’t watch Question Time. Anything that requires viewer voting – off it goes. I’ll leave a room to avoid listening to any media discussion of schooling (that doesn’t involve me). I don’t even watch or listen to myself when I’m on.

However, I was sitting in a cab yesterday and couldn’t avoid LBC. James O’Brien, who I’m happy to read in print, was interviewing Jim Knight about the NEU’s Beyond Ofsted report. I like this Knight, Schools Minister a lifetime ago. I even took out my airpods (Barack Obama reading A Promised Land, if you must know) to follow the chat.  Headlines:  

Because Ofsted is no longer trusted and significant, change is needed. In a better future, every school will conduct its own nationally-set self-evaluation to report to stakeholders, working with an external school improvement partner (SIP) on an action plan. The SIP would also validate the school’s exam performance reviews. (This isn’t new, but we could do it better).

Inspectors would focus on this process, intervening where it goes wrong. They would not routinely inspect teaching or pupil outcomes but they would be sufficiently skilled to build capacity in school leadership teams. They’d be fully independent and hold government, policies and the effects of policies to account through system-wide thematic inspections. This would include teacher supply. (Bonza scheme).

Safeguarding audits would be conducted annually under the oversight of a different national body. (Ditto)  
So, routine inspections should be immediately paused to reset and regain the trust of the profession. A national duty of care is due to teachers so they may develop collaborative learning cultures which generate excellent professional skills and competencies. This should be at the heart of any reform. (Nicely put, Sir)

At the same time, another v interesting report landed from IPPR: Improvement through Empowerment. They start with:

An interesting week in schools all over the place and also on Planet Tallis. I, however, had the chance to talk to a very affable bunch of year 7s: approximately the top 10% of the industrious, those who’ve thrown themselves into school life and are really, really enjoying it. I congratulated them on their production and assured them that effort was a very reliable route to success. After that, I trespassed on their good nature to ask questions three.

First: what could we improve about school? Sadly, this stumped them because they think it’s great. When pressed they said that they’d like to have their own week in the Library, that the water fountains could be cleaner and that the bridge got a bit crowded at lesson change. Oh, and on the matter of lesson change, how could they get from one to another without any travelling time? How indeed. A conundrum of school life. We need another library, cleaner plumbing, a wider bridge and, I believe, physics. (We don’t give travel time because it encourages loafing.)

Second, what did they think we did well? Clubs, trips and visits. The opportunity to do extra things (like Latin), the food, rugby. And subjects, they’re really interesting.

Having expected the first question to take longer, which it certainly does by year 9, I hastily invented a third. If you ruled the world, and who’s to say you won’t one day, how would you make it a better place for young people? They talked to one another – quite loudly – and wanted to solve the following. Ending knife crime so fewer young people die. Lowering the voting age so old people don’t make bad decisions they won’t have to live with.  Better free facilities in local areas, like swimming pools and wildlife parks. Ending discrimination and racism so that everything is fair. Stopping littering. Helping people with rent and food costs. Not cutting down trees. Teaching black history. Sign language a compulsory part of the curriculum. More poetry. More food banks so that everyone can get what they need.

Hold on, I said, trying not to be too tough on a young altruistic thinker. Wouldn’t it be better to live in a world where we didn’t need food banks. He had to think a bit. Yes, obviously, he said, with the air of youth kindly tolerating dotage. But ... It doesn’t have to be like this, I said. Food Banks used to be very, very, rare, for people on the very margins of society. Not in every community, not for people in work. Note to self: remember this conversation.

Later the same day I read the Leading in Practice review by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, just published last month. Ethics remain in the news, with the report on the former Secretary of State and his subsequent departure from his subsequent role, and there’s at least another one on the stocks. One would hope that the Committee for Standards in Public Life was buoyant.

​Page 15, however, is terrifying:

Travelling from Liverpool Street to Ware (Where? How we laughed) was diverting due to tangled announcements.  The outward and inbound messages were delivered tidily together giving the impression of simultaneous forwards and backwards motion. This was moderately amusing for those of us who could identify where it began and familiar with the route. It was potentially catastrophic for the inexperienced and just plain disturbing for those joining part way through the journey. Several people stepped onto the train, then off, then on again in response to what they heard, like an annoying video meme.
 
That the whole zeitgeist of the time feels like a mad seesaw or Dr Doolittle’s pushmi-pullyu is too obvious a point to make, making us all miss-step and doubt our capacity to plan or make any progress anywhere. People cope by not listening to the news, not talking about the news, ranting endlessly about the news, making up news or succumbing to despair. In this we have a lot to learn from the common or garden adolescent. Such a youth may be clueless, confused, misinformed, brilliant, tentative, furious, doom-laden, perspicacious, happy or sad within a day, or an hour, or a conversation. They’re like this because they’re detaching and rebooting synapses and suchlike all the time. It’s exhausting and maddening for the child and witnessing adult, but at least we know what it is. Politicians, largely over 25, have no such excuse.
 
I sit to write this in the green canteen, the home of the XFN Study Hall. Not a cheesy radio station, XFN stands for expectations, effort and engagement and is our latest way of tricking and training the reluctant of year 11 into working. Starting in September, we identified 50-odd who needed attention and kept them behind to work for an hour every day. We measured them and released those who’d responded to treatment after 6 weeks, adding others who’d lost the plot or showed no capacity to find it. That was where the fun started. Some of the originals were glad to be out of it, but some wanted to stay. Some didn’t want to stay but their parents wanted them to, some weren’t invited to join but volunteered to join the crew – lured by the custard creams? – and some have parents who want them to join no matter how well they work under their own steam. Some approach with the brisk step of enthusiasm, some have to be lassoed, some adopt a mournful drooping air to demonstrate that the effort required will not be easy to generate. Some come with a current love interest and hardly mind at all.
 
And they all do it in the developing knowledge that they are competing for every mark, for every grade with students everywhere, and that no matter how hard they work they might not get the 4 or 6 or 9. I tried to explain this to an interested non specialist representative of the intelligentsia last night. The logic eluded him. So you’re telling me that 90% might not necessarily be a grade 9? It might be 91% one year and 85% the next year? How does this help? How do you know what to tell them? ’. Good questions, sir. Come and watch us at work.
 
So the excitement and torture of adolescence is compounded by the swings and roundabouts of comparative outcomes: the excesses and exaggerations of press and the politics butt up against the despair and uncertainty of the way we live now. Last weekend another interlocutor, in the west, told me how posh Greenwich is, and Camberwell. And, in fact, Peckham. And everywhere else in south London, well-known fact, poverty’s over, children of austerity not in need. What are we all going on about? Good lord. Where to start? With the facts that the deprivation in London looks less because that in the north has got so much worse? As one might say to an opinionated but lazy A-level student: interesting view point. Come back when you’ve balanced the facts and we’ll talk then.
 
Scepticism and clarity are required skills of the day job. We have to hear the pronouncements of the young through the ears of age. You say you want to go to the toilet, but I think you’re just trying to avoid work. You may indeed have left your homework at home, but chances are that your bedroom is a stranger both to book and biro. You say you were prevented from getting to school on time by a tiger on the pavement, but it hasn’t been on the news so we’ll assume you weren’t. You promise to start revising for the mocks, but every indicator in the universe suggests that you won’t get started before you’re 25. It’s not that we don’t believe you, just that we’ve heard it all before and we know better than you do what you might possibly mean, and why. We trust and disbelieve at the same time, supporting and punishing, interpreting.
 
I hope that the election allows us to think. I hope it is conducted plainly and honestly. I hope that it is focused on the good of all and the best for a happy, safe and united society. Heads have been sent about three versions of the public sector advice about not being partisan in our professional capacity during this time of increased trial, so I hope our trustworthiness is repaid in kind. I hope we can go forward, safely towards some sort of peace together.
 
Two year 13s dressed in black were so obsessed with an argument about graphs that one walked into a wall and the other into me. I said, loving the graph-work, but have a care for the fixtures and the elderly. I know you didn’t mean it but there’s more to life than winning an argument. Is that bipartisan enough?
 
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8.11.19   

I love a bit of advice. Following it is an entirely different matter but hearing it is interesting. Even annoying advice can be diverting, and the kind that makes you put on a cross-eyed face and bang your head on the table often makes a good story once you’ve had a cup of tea.

Its Open Day season, so the BBC – whose mission is to inform, educate and entertain – have combined all three kinds of advice in their Family and Education news page item School open days: eight things to look for. They ask ‘How can parents get behind the glossy prospectuses and slick presentations and decide whether this is the school for their child?’ Advice is given by three notables: former Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw; General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders Geoff Barton; and acting Chief of the organisation Parentkind, the umbrella group for PTAs and similar, Michelle Doyle Wildman. They don’t always agree. 

I thought I’d put a Tallis take on the tips in the hope of being helpful. We have Open Evening next week and then a weekly opportunity to come and see us at work on Tuesday mornings. For the record, our prospectus is matt not glossy, and slick would be accidental. We aim for honest and hope you also get engaging!
 
BBC Tip 1: Quiz those handpicked pupils who show you around
‘Handpicked’ suggests we send you round school with only the cleanest and shiniest students who’ve been trained up to say particular and positive things. On Open Evening we ask for volunteers, from children whose attendance and behaviour deserve recognition. On Open Mornings, however, we’ll dragoon a whole class or more to take people round. The only children we don’t use are those who are too shy to talk to strangers – and even then sometimes we pair them up so you might get a silent and loquacious duo. No one has a script. They say what they think is important and answer your questions honestly. If they make stuff up, we have no way of knowing. Adults wait at the return point, and you can ask for interpretation then if your guide has befuzzled you.  

Sir M says ‘ask them about progress since primary schools and if they’re in sets or mixed-ability classes.’ It sounds as though he has a view on the superiority of the former over the latter, for which there is no evidence. We’ll tell you about class organisation in our talk. Asking children how they think they’re doing is a sensible idea, though some year 7s will be going over previous learning – especially in maths – to check it hasn’t fallen out of their heads since the SATs. 
 
BBC Tip 2: Ask to go to the toilet
You’re very welcome to go to the loo at Tallis. Geoff Barton says that ‘the toilets pupils use say a lot about a school’s values’ and that is also true. Be our guest.   
 
BBC Tip 3: Bring your child
Of course. Michelle Doyle Wildman says ‘Gauge their reaction, let the visit sink in’ rather than asking what they think straight away. Can I be honest? Choosing a school is a parent’s job. Children know too little about anything to make an informed choice. Of course, if a child declares he won’t eat or sleep if he has to go to Gasworks High and you think Bog Standard Comp is just as good, that’s a reasonable discussion. Don’t let your child make what you think is a bad choice. It’s not fair on them, and it will lead to endless unhappy conflict between school, parents and child.   
 
BBC Tip 4: Listen to the HT speech
Well hello there. What a rare treat that will be. Naturally the Head will educate, inform and entertain with matchless erudition, learning and good sense. I’m unscripted, but we always talk about children’s experience and our hope to fulfil our aim of education to understand the world and change it for the better.

Sir M says ‘leadership is everything in a school…... make sure he or she talks about progress and outcomes and is the sort of person and personality that will drive the school forward’. I’m not sure that leadership is everything. Leaders have to provide the conditions for success, but a good school is a good school because everyone there believes in it and works to make it better.

We will talk about progress and achievement at our Open Evening but the structure of the new system means that we might not have our GCSE Progress 8 result before the day. That result shows how well we’ve done compared to all other schools. I’ll tell you the scores, but they are a bit meaningless without comparison. I’ll also tell you what we’re working on and what we’re proud of, and what our priorities for the year are. I may mention in passing that we got 7 young people into Oxford and Cambridge this year, 2 into Central St Martin’s and 180 into university. I well may.

It’s rare that results are the biggest issue for prospective year 7 parents, to be honest. We’re more likely to be asked about the curriculum, happiness and the prevalence or absence of bullying. That’ll be why Michelle Doyle Wildman says ‘is the school taking a whole-child approach or is it more focused on the academic achievement? That’s a nuance you want to get in this process of looking at schools’.

Two different bits of advice there, folks. At Tallis, we’re whole-child-focused. We don’t look on children as output or yield for the good of the school, and we believe that school is where society looks after its young until they’re old enough to take on the mantle of adult citizens. We want to help them become rounded, self-regulating, kind and useful people. We want them to be well qualified, but we don’t judge the worth of a child by her potential exam results.   
 
BBC Tip 5: Ask tough questions
We like that. Ask away. Sir M says they should be about progress, strategies, interventions, provision for underachievers and destinations. Ask us anything.  
 
BBC Tip 6: Take a good look at the teachers
Geoff Barton says that the teachers ‘should look like a corporate body, welcoming and keen to talk about the school’. I’m wary of corporate looks, so you won’t find us in matching outfits, but we will be welcoming and talk about Tallis until you beg us to stop.

Sir M says ‘Do they look professional? Do they look like teachers? Are they well turned-out?’ What does a teacher look like? My mother and grandmother were both teachers – is that what they look like? Tweed jackets? M&S Suits? Knee-length skirt and sensible shoes? Heels and a silk scarf? A good teacher has a glittering eye and can’t stop talking about the wonders of the subject. He or she may be slightly unkempt from running fingers through hair for a large part of the day. Or damp round the edges from yard duty. Or covered in paint, sawdust, or whiteboard grime. Or carrying piles of books. Or in a tracksuit. It’s whether they seize and hold your attention that’s important. Look out for that.

Sir M says – ask about ‘unfilled teaching vacancies and the number of temporary or supply teachers’? That’s a good question in an obvious way. We have hardly any: 3 temporary teachers out of a force of 120. One of those is covering a maternity leave. Does that count? Another is a bit of extra staffing we put in just in case. Another is in a subject area of serious national shortage. 

There are 40,000 fewer teachers than we need in our school system. If a school has loads of temporary or supply teachers it might be because it isn’t a good place to work, but it’s more likely to be because there simply aren’t enough teachers. That’s a national scandal, not one school’s fault.    
 
BBC Tip 7: Visit again at home-time
If you like being surrounded by hundreds, even thousands of teenagers then home-time is just the place for you. If you are of a more timid disposition, you might want to watch from a distance. Sir M says is ‘uniform still worn properly, whether they’re congregating outside fast-food outlets misbehaving..…are there staff outside the school?’ All those are good to see, but schools are not police and the amount of time we can spend outside school supervising the streets is limited. At Tallis we enforce a curfew point at the Dover Patrol shops at 1600, but after that it is reasonable to expect parents to take responsibility for their offspring’s whereabouts.
 
BBC Tip 8: Write the date on your calendar
This may fall into the category of cross-eyed face and banging head on table. Of course you would.
 
We hope you come to see us next week and at other points if you would like to. We hope you find us engaging and interesting. We hope you’d entrust your child to us. Most of all, we hope you find us honest and humane partners in the crucial business of raising our children together. Welcome to Tallis!
 
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20.9.18