Mrs Roberts Writes

The Golden Girl

24/5/2015

Icon in Gold by Charlotte Williams, Year 13

We finish teacher interviews at Tallis with ‘What are you reading?’ It's sometimes a bit embarrassing, especially when a candidate gives the impression that they haven't read a book this century and hope fervently never to see one again. Worse when he or she tries to convince me that they live and die for the latest assessment controversy in the twittersphere or that their every waking thought is Algebra For The Reluctant. Teachers should be interesting people so that young people are keen to learn. It helps the world go round.

My own reading is aided by electronics. As far as I'm concerned mobile phones exist to make sure I'm never without a book. If I was sufficiently coordinated to read while walking along the street without presenting a hazard to shipping I would do it. I try to have an educational book in my bag on work days so that the shining hour may be improved, though that rather depends on the quality of the book.

I picked up two from a conference in March. You should read Steve Peters’ ‘The Chimp Paradox’ about human behaviour and self-control: it’s an engaging and interesting book from a witty and brilliant man. Or you could read Michael Barber’s ‘How To Run a Government So That Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don't Go Crazy’. I was at the conference with an old friend, a considerable thinker, who wouldn't even stay for the lunch in case he accidentally heard Barber speak. I thought he was so interesting that I bought the book. Call me dim, but I don’t think I'd twigged that it would be all about deliverance, and not in the theological sense.

Barber was Blair’s deliverer. He set and monitored targets so that public services could be improved in a principled, systematic way based on serious and sensible aims to improve everyone's lot. I'm entirely in favour of accountability, targets and planning. You'd imagine I'd enjoy the book.

Barber’s a brilliant man by his own admission, and I don't necessarily object to that. He often has exactly the right question to unblock a problem and the leadership to solve it. He recognises brilliance in others. His examples from world public service and history are diverting. He quotes Ontario and Adonis on making changes for the long run and seeing things through, on irreversibility, so that good change stays put and can't be unpicked. But I read his chapter on leadership with one eye while looking at another announcement about coasting schools with another (and poking myself in both in preference to either).

Deliverology (yes!) should build up our public services and reassure the taxpayer. However, I searched in vain for an analysis of Campbell's Law (the target is skewed by the pressure exerted on it). There was little on perverse incentives. Barber reflects on the success of the literacy strategy but doesn't consider the longer supply-side issue of de-professionalising teachers when they became regurgitators of processed materials. He doesn’t address and didn’t predict the current chaos over the mysterious number of teachers in training (we don't really know how many there are) and the huge issue with headteacher recruitment as football manager syndrome decimates our numbers.

Barber tells the bible story of Joseph to illustrate proper financial planning but the dichotomy between determining to achieve a thing and giving it time to happen remains. And don't tell me that children only have one chance at education. Do you think we don't know that? The Joseph story takes at least 14 years: it’s about violence, loss, reconciliation, faithfulness and joy in the beauty and gifts of a child. It might be about deliverance in the older sense and it’s just not that easy.

I stood in the drama studio on Friday morning and looked at 18-year-old Charlotte personally painted in gold leaf. She took my breath away. The installation - for A level art, about purity and decay - is as good a piece as you'd see in the galleries of the world, as I told year 9 waiting to go in. Celia, giving out the information, is a writer of similar brilliance. Together they'll change the world. But it is their own determination and the depth of care their teachers have taken, over the years spent with these children and thousands of others that brought this wonderful moment. Deliverology stops you squandering public money, but it doesn't bring you a golden girl.

What am I reading? Barber and the Old Testament, Charlotte and Celia.

CR 20.5.15

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Entering harbour

23/7/2014

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Alfred Wallis, The Schooner the Beata, Penzance, Mount’s Bay, and Newlyn Harbour

We bought a grand piano in the early spring and last week we launched it. We had a recital with pianists of many ages, guitarists, singers, films and so forth. It was quite wonderful, Chopin to Hendrix, Beethoven to Glass played by young people, staff, friends and a remarkable old boy. It was, in the best sense, a bit of a do - drinks on the concourse, posh nibbles. That was Thursday. Friday was a languages extravaganza for year 7, France v Spain in cooking, dance, sport, everything. Tallis beribboned, bedecked, singing and dancing on the concourse, Spanish-quality sunshine.

What else has happened as we sail for harbour? Year 8 have been to the Tate Modern. PE won a quality mark. Year 10 had a Directions Day to help them think about the future. We’ve interviewed young people about our three-year KS4. There’s been a Tour de Greenwich for year 7 cyclists and apprenticeships for Business students. We had year 12 taster week and geography field trips. The foyer designs starts to happen. Some staff are leaving, some changing roles, all are thanked, clapped and smiled on their way. We’ve had celebration assemblies – year 7 so enthusiastic they nearly missed lunch. The timetable is roomed, we ready ourselves for exam results and wonder how this term got to be quite so long.

And as the outside world turns, Mr Gove falls off. A remarkably long-lived post holder, did we lose him because he picked too many fights, or because 1 in 10 women work in education and there’s a women issue? Have we got Ms Morgan because she’s calmer or because she’s female? When will we next have a Secretary of State of any party who went to a state school? Where are the 93% in politics? Why are the 7% in charge even in Sanctuary Buildings? Is there no one who understands how we live, to direct what we become?

In the week when the Trojan Horse inquiry reports, perhaps we should muse on our sun-loungers on where the manipulation of schooling structures has brought us. Autonomy is not an educational good of itself and neither is freedom. What joins us together is worth more than what sets us apart. We need the Nolan values of selflessness, honesty, objectivity, leadership, openness, integrity and accountability. We need the principles of public education to be publicly understood and agreed.

However, it is week 39 and I won’t solve that this term. I’m a fan of the Cornish poet Charles Causley, a former primary school teacher. He wrote a wonderful poem about the end of a school day whose opening words fit the end of term too:

                  At 4 o’clock the building enters harbour
All day it seems that we have been at sea
Now having lurched through the last of the water
We lie stone-safe beside the jumping quay.

The good ship Tallis has reached safe harbour for 2013-4 and now we’ll take a little shore leave. We’ll see what August brings and chart our next course from September. Wherever your dinghy takes you over the summer, I hope the weather is set fair for you and yours.

CR 22.7.14

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Tallis Year

13/7/2014

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Kirsty MacColl Days, 1989 (written by Ray Davies)

Our Tallis turquoise dazzles in the sunshine as I look out of the window to organise a thought. How is the year ending, you ask?

With celebrations and showcases, markers and traditions, placeholders for children’s memories, unforgettable for their families. Band Night was enormous fun. Mr Challenger and I are of a certain age. The bands do Blondie and Bowie and I had a great singalong evening as well as new stuff I don’t get on Radio 4: vibrancy and fabulous noise. Headstart Day acclimatised year 6. They had a great time after initial nerves, setting a new standard in polite and enthusiastic companionship. Their voices are just a bit squeakier than year 7, so they change the pitch of the yard. The Art Show private view was wonderful, beautiful work from blossoming artists: painting, photography, sculpture and film. I was ushered into a cupboard to see a horror installation, further broadening my horizons. Our dancers danced with the best at Sadler’s Wells on Saturday and last night the Fashion Show combined mobile art with dance, music and film. To quote a man who knows: arts in harmony, real gesamtkunstwerk (that’s how we talk at Tallis).

But our highlights were the TTRA Ceremonies for years 11 and 13. We’ve been looking forward to this all year but frankly, I didn’t know what to expect. My last entanglement with a record of achievement was when some Secretary of State decreed burgundy vinyl folders containing one’s life: a sort of judgement-day tome in plastic sleeves.Our day was wonderful! Yes, there were folders (blue), but our real achievement was gussied up in their smartest, ready to be applauded. Our young people came to celebrate their school life with their peers, their teachers and their families. We had hundreds of names, speeches, prizes, awards, the inevitable hugging, a buffet afterwards and lovely photos taken. We had music and goodbyes especially to the year 11 band – their final final act – and to Ms Armstrong. She sang Thank You for the Days to the 240 young people she’s loved and hassled for five years: not a dry eye in the house.

Leaving only time for me to spill cream down my big green dress and wash it in the sink, the evening celebration was for year 13. In an evening beautifully compered by students we had goodbyes from form tutors, another final final band performance, Schubert and Shakespeare and two old boys come to tell us about the world outside. This young surgeon and barrister talked about the community and support, the teaching and the values, the Tallis bonus that still gives them the edge. There were prizes at both of these gatherings, for excellence and for effort, but do you know what was the best thing about them? We celebrated our young people before the exams calibrate and codify them. Real young people, real achievement, measured and assessed by real people.

Did you spot a note of asperity there? Apols. We’ve celebrated a good year in a strong school but the national rhetoric still swirls a fog around us. Isn’t it a hoot when we’re getting used to structures being dismantled to hear that HMCI thinks Local Authorities should have the oversight of schools in an area? Isn’t it just a scream when increased freedom means favouring one sort of school? And don’t you just love it when the dirigiste reappears and whacks you in the face. Of course we care about FGM and we’ll do anything we can to stop such inhumanity, but this year’s Most Risible Sound Bite prize goes to Monday’s threat that schools will have funding withheld if the Head hasn’t read the Safeguarding Guidance. Good grief. Why wouldn‘t we read it? Which bit of the money is going to be cut, from which children? Who’s going to come and test me? Will that stop it happening? Exactly what kind of freedom is this, underpinned by what sort of trust?

So we’ve another week-and-a half to go, with everything from Dr Bike and his puncture repairs (free breakfast for cyclists) to an open forum for parents and the launch of our grand piano. We’ll have some staff farewells (sad) and other end-of-term shenanigans, (generally happy). I’ll thank leaving colleagues for their years of service to the children and to a job both inspiring and infuriating, then I’ll go and lie down quietly for a couple of weeks.

A very happy summer to all our readers!

CR

10.7.14

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Everything in between

4/5/2014

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Michael Kidner, Circle after Image 1959-60

Have you seen our field of jeans? Do potter along if you haven’t. The jeans on poles at the front of our building are part of a brilliant experimental programme called Catalytic Clothing. It’s the brainchild of artist designer Helen Storey and chemist Tony Ryan – people from different worlds in a highly successful art and science collaboration. They’re working with the R&D departments of big laundry brands, exploring how clothing and textiles can be used as a catalytic surface to purify air. Saving the planet while you wander about. Yet another practical use for teenagers.

So we’ve got the Field of Jeans as part of our Catalytic Learning programme. We love the idea of an artist and a scientist working together for public benefit, and we’ve had cross-curricular days, staff and students, to expand our thinking. Look at it on the website: such fun! Our last day was just before Easter, but the tragedy of contemporary education is that young people have become so focused on exams that many of them were troubled about having an off-timetable day to explore new ideas. ‘Is it on the exam?’ they demand. ‘If not, why do it?’ So we work hard to demonstrate that it’s the things in between the exam questions that matter too.

It was at this point in composition that I looked at the clock on Tuesday. It was 12:05, and I bethought myself that (a) OFSTED were due sometime after Easter, (b) they always ring immediately after 12:00 and (c) is that the phone? Time has behaved oddly since then and the last 54 hours seems like (a) weeks or (b) seconds. Thank you, but I can’t tell you how it went. Rules are rules.

Anyway, I have had cause to consider the measuring of what we do. Is it reasonable to measure the progress of children and schools? Yes. Is it reasonable to investigate whether that achievement, behaviour, teaching and leadership are up to scratch? Yes. Does this damage schools? Probably not: the new schedule, as we winsomely call it, is much more sensible than it has ever been before. Does it give a full picture? Maybe not. As Dougal once said to Father Ted about bishops ‘Ah Ted, they just come in, fumigate the place and then they’re gone.’

Children are both oblivious to and troubled by OFSTED. Generally speaking, adult concerns are tedious and while they are nosey about what’s going on, they get back to the dramas of their own existence sharpish. Suits and clipboards are not crowd-pullers. They’re more likely to be outraged by the sheer impertinence of inspection – who are these people? What do you mean, they’re seeing if the school’s alright? Of course it is. Young people see themselves as arbiters of quality: who are these amateurs?

One inspector had had a conversation with a couple of young people over a bin. The responses were thoughtful and interesting, one pictures chin-stroking. I think that’s a good way to find out about a school, but the child was unimpressed ‘He talked to me over a bin. Seriously?’ Another small member was perturbed by the whole experience. Tuesday break he asked me if they’d arrived, and at lunchtime how long they were staying. When we reconvened Wednesday break he shook his head in disbelief that they were still among us. ‘How long can this go on?’ he despaired. He’d have hated it when they stayed for a week.

But after it was over school life picked up again as if the previous 54 hours hadn’t happened. Last week’s dance showcase had fully 29 acts and the time flew, like the dancers. Despite the suits we had a street hockey launch day with remarkably few bruises. 30 Norwegians came to maths. New teachers have been interviewed and appointed for this expanding school: 4 this week, despite OFSTED. Outdoor ping pong proves popular. Photography and art exams happen.

Last night, immediately post inspection, our A level creative writing students performed work from their residential week, to a packed studio audience. Their poetry and prose was witty, poised, serious and a balm to the soul. The anthology is called Everything In between, an apt title for the week. We’ve been scrutinised and picked over, our practice laid bare under 4 inspection headings but it’s everything in between that makes us what we are and who we are: Tallis happy, Tallis proud.

CR 2.5.14

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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

The Golden Girl

Entering harbour

Tallis Year

Everything in between

MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

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