Thomas Tallis School
  • Home
  • About
    • An Overview >
      • The Leadership Team
      • Who was Thomas Tallis?
      • Why Tallis?
      • School Vision
      • Mrs Roberts Writes
      • Artsmark
      • Prince's Teaching Institute
      • Secondary School Direct Hub
      • International School
      • Ofsted
    • School Prospectus
    • Tallis Praxis
    • Tallis Habits >
      • Tallis Pedagogy Wheel Guide
    • Tallis Character
    • Tallis Threshold Concepts
    • Policies & Guidelines >
      • Data Protection
      • Making Complaints
    • The Pupil Premium 2022-23 >
      • The Pupil Premium 2021-22
      • The Pupil Premium 2020-21
      • The Pupil Premium 2019-20
      • The Pupil Premium 2018-19
      • The Pupil Premium 2017-18
      • The Pupil Premium 2016-17
      • The Pupil Premium 2014-15
      • The Pupil Premium 2013-14
      • The Pupil Premium 2012-13
      • The Pupil Premium 2011-12
    • Exam Results 2022 >
      • Exam Results 2021
      • Exam Results 2020
      • Exam Results 2019
      • Exam Results 2018
      • Exam Results 2017
      • Exam Results 2016
      • Exam Results 2015
      • Exam Results 2014
      • Exam Results 2013
      • Exam Results 2012
      • Exam Results 2011
    • COVID-19 Catch-Up Report
    • Early Catch Up 2019/20 and Action Plan 2020/2120 >
      • Early Catch Up 2018/2019 and Action Plan 2019/2020
      • Early Catch Up 2017/2018 and Action Plan 2018/19
      • Early catch-up review and action plan 2017-18
    • Job Vacancies
  • News
    • Tallis Newsletters
    • Tallis Photography
    • Tallis Video
    • Tallis Sounds
  • Calendar
    • Term Dates 2022-23
    • The School Day
  • Curriculum
    • Curriculum Areas >
      • Business & ICT
      • Computing
      • English & Philosophy
      • Design & Technology
      • Humanities & Social Sciences
      • Languages
      • Mathematics
      • Performing Arts
      • Physical Education
      • Science
      • Visual & Media Arts
    • Pastoral Care
    • Guidance >
      • Tallis Futures
    • Key Stage 3 >
      • KS3 Assessment guidance
      • Tallis Choices
    • Key Stage 4
    • Tallis Post 16
    • Exceptionally Able Learners
    • Special Educational Needs & Disabilities >
      • Learning Support Unit
      • Support Centre for Autism and Language Impairment
      • Deaf Support Centre
      • English as an Additional Language
  • Community
    • Letters Home 2022-23
    • Bromcom Guide for Parents
    • PTFA
    • Governing Board
    • The Tallis Agreement
    • Admissions
    • Attendance & Punctuality >
      • Apply for Exceptional Circumstances Absence in Term Time
    • School Uniform
    • Support Your Teen
    • Online Safety
    • Tallis Post 16
  • Students
    • Year 11 Support & Guidance
    • Bromcom Guide for Students
    • Co-curricular Activities
    • Exam Revision
    • Stay Safe
    • Duke of Edinburgh Award
    • Rewards
    • Reading
    • The Library
    • Cycling at Tallis
    • Alumni
  • Staff
  • Contact
    • School Map
    • How to find us
  • Search
T: +44 (0)208 856 0115

EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

Baggy at the Seams

15/1/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
I was wandering in science, and dropped into a cover lesson, all going well. I berthed near a pair of girls, one with green hair. They were doing something that required sheep drawing but were dissatisfied with their efforts. In this, I could help. Sheep figure frequently in RE what with the parables and so an occupational by-product means I can draw them pretty sharply, in the manner of clouds with legs.  I demonstrated as much on the walkabout rota sheet. The ladies were not only delighted but could also remember the sheep-and-goats routine, so that’s a job done. Who needs performance management?  

January requires new thinking even though it's halfway through the school year. I’m thinking about three unmanageable topics at once, just to keep me fresh. 

First, as per, ethics. I talked to some young staff yesterday and we chewed over the values and virtues of the Framework for Ethical Leadership. The biggest ethical problems they identified – unsurprisingly – were the way we measure the value of a young person based on their academic scores, and the kinds of curricula we push them through. Wouldn’t it be better, several mused, for young people who struggle on our fearsomely overloaded GCSE courses, to be allowed to take very practical courses about looking after themselves and saving money?

Well, yes, perhaps all children need that, but the argument is multi-faceted. Why shouldn’t a child who cannot score at GCSE History be exposed to some of the stories and lessons from history? They need to be able to tell the difference between truth and revisionist lies as much as anyone else. The problem is in the qualification, which has to be the same for everyone and apparently, inexplicably, shamefully, has to have a third of below-pass grades (‘fails’ in normal person’s language). The problem isn’t with history, but the way we measure children using a qualification designed to prove some old lie about teacher slacking.

They’re not worried – and why should they be, learning to be a teacher is hard enough – about admissions. Mike Ion wrote about it in Schools Week last week and I couldn’t have put it better. He railed at the use of parental interviews, school fund requests, birth and marriage questions and the use of tests, all for y7 entry, and how the sharp-elbowed negotiate it all. The fact remains, he says, that secondary school admissions are ‘the secret scandal of our system, fostering delusions about consumer choice and reinforcing outdated perceptions of quality in education. 
The outcome of covert selection practice is to produce an educational apartheid that creates vast areas of underachievement which then suck in vast amounts of public money to compensate for structural inequality.
My second issue is linked, about Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). I’ve just seen a great article in the TES about SEND ‘magnet schools’. This is also to do with performance and admissions of course, but also with the limited understanding some educators have of their role in building up a good, national, comprehensive system.
It goes like this:

Bagpuss Comp has good provision for SEND, so increasing numbers of parents of SEND children choose Bagpuss over Rupert High. The Ruperts then say to any inquiries - we don’t have much provision for SEND, have you thought of Bagpuss? Neatly circular. Further, the money that Bagpuss gets isn’t equal to the provision specified in the Education, Health and Care Plan, and the likelihood of their meeting performance measurements is constrained. All the Bagpuss children get a worse deal, resources-wise and the clipboard brigade descend, with the usual range of results.

Some schools are really committed to inclusion. Some avoid it. How is that allowed?

You’ll recall my tedious attempts to communicate with G Williamson, late of Sanctuary Buildings, SW1. Nothing daunted, I may try afresh with Mr Zahawi who seems pretty efficient. He’s about to publish a consultation on SEND of which we Bagpie have rightly high hopes. I will report further on this.

I regret I don’t think even the SoS can help the third issue, to which all the above are stuck like glue. That’s of the retracted, restricted thinking of educators who take measurable achievement at 16 for their lodestone, inexorably drawn to it such that they don’t recognise the responsibility to map their own path so that their school makes sense as part of our national provision for all of our young. Does it increase results? No? Don’t do it, appears to be the mantra.

A colleague told me she was going to treat herself to a trolley now that the financial year is nearly up: a small pleasure. She needs a bit of help to get herself and her baggage from A to B. So do we all, but the hallmark of a good society is how fairly it distributes its goods, in both senses. I’ve told everyone who gets an email from me that I’m reading Sandel, and I often quote Rawls. There’s no better way to start a new year that with two philosophers. They say:
Those who have been favoured by nature, however and whoever, should gain for their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. Societies should be arranged so that such contingencies work for the good of the least fortunate. 
Or, as Anthony Crosland, another Secretary of State, said in the seventies:
The system will increasingly be built around the comprehensive school…..all schools will more and more be socially mixed; all will provide routes to the universities and to every type of occupation from the highest to the lowest….then very slowly Britain will cease to be the most class-ridden country in the world. 
Everything needs tightening up. Over to you, Mr Zahawi.
 
CR
14.1.22
0 Comments

My Magnificent Octopus

27/11/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
The calendar gods decree that I write a blog on Community Days. This week is the big autumn event with all year groups doing slightly different things – sustainability, identity, oppression, relationships, careers, debating, revising, wellbeing, planning and budgeting.  Something for everyone, for every eventuality on adult life’s thorniest pathways. From our experience and scholarship to the brains of the young, engagingly delivered. That’s what the recipients of the cry ‘HB to the sports hall’ are off to, in their usual shambling, bickering and tripping manner.
I was Performance Managed yesterday which focuses the mind. I’ve been a Head for 20 years in three different places, and I reckon I’ve got rules of thumb or mental lists to deal with most eventualities. These were, of course, expanded by new stuff we absorbed under lockdown about how to run a school when the children aren’t allowed to come to it, but there’s a new dimension to educating at the moment with which I’m tussling. Remember that as you read, breathlessly, on.

I don’t know how they do things in the independent sector, but I assume they have time to organise a thought, hence the heads’ hutches being called studies, which would explain the number of books old Seldon wrote while he was high heid-yin at Wellington, for example. But I digress. Anyone been to Peppa Pig world? Anyway, the president of the Girls’ Schools Association made a whole load of very good points yesterday, summarised on the Beeb.   

She said: parents and teachers should keep up with young people who are genuinely worried about racism, sexism and climate change and want to address them with support from adults. Adults who complain that today's teenagers are judgemental and speak a different language so adults ‘can't say anything without being called out by PC children’ should get with it. Times have changed, and we need to keep up. This nastily-dismissed 'woke' generation are actually young people who are worried about things. We teach them to be kind but when they grow up to be impressively so with an understanding and appreciation for the world around them, we mock them, or dismiss them as unrealistic do-gooders. Nicely put, Ma’am.

Contrast this with the Social Mobility Chair’s end of the forest. She thinks that children need to be very strictly controlled, so they’re habituated into choosing good over evil because they’re all wicked underneath. We can train good behaviour into them, but left their own devices, keep clear, they’re pretty unsavoury. Original Sin.

Ah me. Which side of the fence whereon to plummet? Obviously with young people trying to change the world for the better, but what about the echo of reality hiding in the misogynist retro-theology? Children can be horrible to each other as they explore, or are fearful about, the boundaries of their world. Why is that?

Well, part of the problem is the example adults set, hypocrisy in particular. Why can’t I speak in the corridor at school, no one talks to me at home? Why should I worry about getting a job when the world’s about to end?  What’s the point of learning to be fair if I’m judged by the colour of my skin, or kind, if I’m not safe walking home? What exactly have you done, Sir, to make the world a better place?

Some years ago I wrote ten precepts underpinning the curriculum which still have an interesting half-life in the edu-ether. I started from the importance of knowledge and ended with adult authority and the teacher’s skill. But the problem I’m wrestling with now is this: how to be educators at a time when adults are demonstrably the problem?  I’m reading about wicked problems, again, and worrying about the shallow simplistic solutions that schools have been forced into for so long that now we’re hooked on the superficial, the tick-boxable, the headline-grabbing, the Emperor’s new clothes.

One of the chaps I wrote that book with has just died. He was a great comprehensive school Head for yonks, twenty years older than me. One of the best things about the writing process was talking to him about leading a school yesterday, as it were, the past being a different country. Now I think I need to revise myself, to include the mortal dangers and injustices we knew were around the corner all along, but that young people won’t ignore any more.

My Year 13 class and I keep company with some very old white male theologians as we head toward liberation theology at the end of the syllabus. We drop in on Karl Barth, whose magnum opus was Church Dogmatics in fourteen volumes over thirty-five years. If I had the headspace I’d start on some School Pragmatics, on the lessons of the sum of all my days since 1983. Guilt will probably feature, but not sin. Look out for the next list.
 
CR
23.11.21
0 Comments

​The Best of things in the Worst of times

23/7/2021

1 Comment

 
Picture
Never in my life before have I started a staff end-of-term-do with ‘what a terrible year’ but what else was there to say?

On the last day of the year on Planet Tallis we herd the youth into the sports hall for a rousing send-off with bands and uplifting speeches. Such things – what with us not being Silverstone or a night club – are still being frowned on here so we made do with year 10 being live on spaced-out chairs. They’re a pleasant bunch and we reflected on the year together.

This doesn’t involve free discussion, you understand, assemblies are assemblies no matter what, but we did have awards and a couple of bands played. All very nice.  We all the tutors said a few words and we made some awards to the most imaginative, disciplined, persistent, inquisitive, collaborative young people, then the most respectful, fair, honest, optimistic and kind. Then the ones who turned up for 100% of the time, with no negative points and full participation in all that life offers here. Then it got a bit complicated. Their Head of Year is on maternity leave, and I’ve just promoted their interim Head of Year to Head of year 7 from September, so the person who’s just stopped being Head of year 12 and is now Director of KS4 Achievement is stepping in until the original HOY comes back in October.

This is the kind of thing you can’t sustain too much of. The reason that stability in school staffing is a prize above rubies is that young people need to feel that the adults around them are in it for the long term, know what they’re doing, are absolutely committed to their jobs and the young people who may need their undivided and expert attention at any moment. Thankfully, attached Sir is a constant force of nature with the team and duly got rapturous applause.

Having a captive audience and time to spare, I gave them the benefit of some of my school experiences. I told them that being as old as the hills, I took the 11+, and benefited from its class bias and random educational attachment to verbal reasoning. That grammar school turned comprehensive in my second year, so 120 of us proceeded up the school on top of a growing ten-form-entry comprehensive. Some of the teachers weren’t quite up to it, some aspects of the building – beautiful in its way – weren’t quite built for it and the rest of my compulsory school experience was characterised by a vague feeling of it being made up as we went along. This is not good for adolescents, who are making up their own lives as they go along and need to be protected by stability, predictability and expertise in school. I said I hoped that there was enough of Tallis to keep them confident, no matter what was happening in the outside world and no matter what bizarre and half-thought instructions we’d been tossed about on this year. And the one before it.

Adults can cope with more of this, and, following my uplifting start last night, I reflected to staff on a hot summer day’s experience nearly forty years ago in Leicestershire. I visited the Cheshire Home at Staunton Harold and talked to an old lady who spoke of Group Captain Cheshire – the WW2 fighter pilot who set up the nationwide homes – as a personal friend, who’d taken an interest in every piece of furniture she’d brought with her. I was moved that, in a large organisation, the vulnerable old people felt a personal bond with the man. It made them feel safer and loved. I thanked staff for that same work they do and that same bound they have with the children, so important through the pandemic, a lifeline for some.

Next door to the home stands a church which I’ve probably bored you with before. Built, almost uniquely, at the start of the Commonwealth in 1653 when church building wasn’t really a thing, it bears this lovely inscription to the man who financed it:

Whose singular praise it is to have done the best things in ye worst times and hoped them in the most callamitous.’

​You can’t say fairer than that. We’ve tried our best.
 
CR
22.7.21
1 Comment

Teaching to the test

22/10/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
You may know that Ofsted have been thinking, which is good. It’s even better that they’ve been thinking about ‘What is the real substance of education?’ or as a normal person might put it ‘what are schools for?’

​HMCI commentary: curriculum and the new education inspection framework
​
The clipboard brigade make several points, all of which deserve a big tick. I thought you might like a digest, shamelessly condensed and filtered through my own prejudices. They say:
  1. Education is the vast, accumulated wealth of human knowledge, and what we choose to pass on to the next generation. A ‘curriculum gives a school purpose’. Hurrah!
  2. That curriculum is the heart of education. It requires the pursuit of real, deep knowledge and understanding of subjects.
  3. In too many schools, the curriculum is just a combination of the exam board specification, the timetable and the exam results. Not enough schools really think about what they want children to learn. This leads to a narrow range of subjects being taught and too much ‘teaching to the test’.
  4. Inspections have placed too much weight on exam results.
  5. The 2019 inspection framework will emphasise ‘the curriculum as the substance of education’. Inspectors will look at a school’s ‘curriculum intent’.
  6. They’d like to see schools focusing on subjects and subject vocabulary.  
  7. They’d like to be sure that ‘disadvantaged pupils are not put onto a stripped-back curriculum’.
  8. They observed that expert teachers in the schools they visited ‘lived and breathed their curriculum’ and that good subject teachers are likely to stay in schools where subjects are valued.
  9. A well-constructed, well-taught curriculum will lead to good results because those results will be a reflection of what pupils have learned. 
  10. Parents need to know the substance of what their children are learning throughout their time spent in school. 
So far so good. Tallis approves Ofsted’s new thoughts, which will doubtless be a relief to them. But hold on!  What’s this? They don’t like three-year key stage fours, like we have. Why?
 
Three-year key stage fours originated at a time of intense exam pressure. Lots of schools did it to give more time to GCSEs and therefore improve results. This is part of the reason for the current panic about schools just focusing on English, maths, science, history, geography and languages, because that’s what’s been valued in national education talk in recent years. Therefore, lots of schools just do a quick rotation of arts subjects in year 7 and 8 and then don’t offer them much at KS4 so they can tick the ‘EBacc’ box of the subjects above. 
 
Tallis doesn’t do that. We have a very broad curriculum at key stage three with six hours a week of dance, drama, music, art and DT and a very large range of options in KS4. Choosing options early means that our children – who do one more option than many other schools, in any case – have the chance over three years to get into deep subject content, absorb it and make it their own. When I arrived at Tallis six years ago, I was very sceptical about choosing options in year 8 but was quickly converted. That’s not to say that we couldn’t improve the way we do it, of course. So, when the moment comes and we have to defend ourselves, we’ll have a few thoughts to offer inspectors about the what and the why, and how our choices enable us to keep a broad curriculum for everyone. Hurrah again!
 
It’s good news for everyone that Ofsted have made this commitment to the curriculum. I’m not just saying that because it’s Ofsted, but because it’s right. Schools are where society looks after its young, and the curriculum is what society thinks they should know. A broad, common curriculum which enables young people to think and reflect also means that the democracy speaks a common language. It builds up our communal life. That’s why good comprehensive schools with a wide curriculum are every bit as important to the health of the nation as the NHS.  A nation educated together across the whole range of human experience should be well-equipped to understand and change the world for the better. Hold on a minute, that sounds familiar…..
 
Speaking of which: Black History Month. We’ve had dancing, eating, talking, films and workshops. We’ve had two mini carnivals with mass dancing and Caribbean Come Dine with Me.  It’s been a joy. During the lower school carnival I was having our performance review with our Local Authority School Improvement Partner. I had to keep making excuses to sneak looks out of the window to see the children dancing to Sir’s music. They sent me up a plateful of outrageously good food but it didn’t make up for not being outside in the sun. A new colleague said ‘some schools would worry about losing control’ but we don’t. Our systems are good, our community strong and we love to dance, sing, cook and make things. We’re confident to do it because we value it, we do it all the time, and when we go back to class we know each other well enough to settle back down.

What are schools for? Being able to celebrate diversity and inclusivity with laughter and exuberance. That’s not a test you can teach to.
 
CR
18.10.18
0 Comments

‘I’m not committed to love, I’d be fine with war’

16/9/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
I return to the Tallis Hug. For new readers, this quite a feature. Students here hug each other desperately as if waving goodbye to an émigré, when they part for a lesson. They hug when they reconvene in sheer relief that the loved one is safely returned to whichever draughty part of concourse or canteen is home. This is inexplicable to the northerner for whom a raised eyebrow is an embarrassingly gushing show of affection. And they come pre-programmed. 

Directing canteen traffic in the early hours of the term small child rushed up to me with a story of lost bag, shoes and bus before leaving home, followed by confusion and excitement in school. ‘Now I’m FINE!’ she squeaked. ‘Can I get a hug?’ ‘No!’ I squawked, rearranging her outstretched arms and backing into a dinner lady. ’We don’t do that here!’  Which, as explained above, is patently untrue. What I meant was - you’ll find plenty people to hug here, but not adults and certainly not me. The exuberance of youth. 

In telling this rocket-propelled putative hugger something about the Tallis way I was – rather magnificently – following my own instructions. My theme for the year is Tallis as usual. We don’t want to invent any new ways of doing things this year, just to do everything we already do better, and more consistently. That’s not to say that we won’t have some creatively eccentric new ways of teaching, but we want our running procedures to be reliable, predictable and better.

Which subtle segue leads me into the general state of our education system. Not enough money, 40 000 fewer teachers that we need, exam system that can’t bear the weight put on it, financial scandals etc etc. My solution to most worries is reading so I’ve just finished Melissa Benn’s Life Lessons. Benn is a tireless campaigner for community comprehensive schools but in this little piece she also turns her attention to the state of adult education and the universities, as well as schools, proposing a National Education Service. (Before you reach for the pen to report me to the Secretary of State for contravention of Staffing and Advice for Schools September 2018 para 5:33 (expressing political views) this is not quite the same as the one that Labour talked about a bit at some point.)  It’s well worth reading, not least for this.
Why do we still know so little and celebrate even less the successes of comprehensive education? That a new generation of educational activists and administrators, including anti-grammar [conservative MPs] and many in the academy and free school movement now adhere to its principles so hard fought for half a century ago but rarely give it credit is not merely a form of disguised tribalistic discourtesy: it is also the result of a long-standing distortion of the historical record  
​She goes on to say:
It should not be forgotten that today’s widespread commitment across the political spectrum….to the idea of all children getting a shot at an ‘academic education is the direct result of comprehensive reform.  It changed our attitudes for the better and should be built on, not dismantled.
One of the things we often say at Tallis is that the comprehensive dream is a vision every bit as precious as the NHS, and every bit as complicated. Model communities of local young people taught with expertise and equity is a blueprint for a better society. There are other barriers, mind, and I’ll talk about my next reading book, Robert Verkiak’s Posh Boys next time. 

Reading was on the agenda in year 7 assembly too. ‘Reading makes you kinder’ said Ms R. ‘You all need to read more’.  Perhaps the year 11 boy who bizarrely told Sir in English that he wouldn’t need English after leaving school could be persuaded that he might need kindness? Not that the conversation I had with Sir didn’t have its odd turns.  It was in discussing the choice of poetry for GCSE that he gave me the title of this piece. Which poems would you rather read?

We are committed to love at Tallis in that we are committed to kindness and service. Part of that is to be reliable, predictable and better. War and love, love and service, expertise and equity, creativity and eccentricity: Tallis as usual, hold us to our promises.
 
CR
13.9.18
0 Comments

Little Red Roosters

22/4/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
How often do you think about red roosters? Twice a day? Then this column’s for you: read on.

A mixed pair of year 8s are gazing at something so I get between them. This new pound coin? What’s it worth? Ever the educator, I can help: ‘A pound’. ‘Yes, yes, but what’s it worth, I mean, how long’s it been around?’ This is, I suspect, precisely the existential question that standardised coinage is meant to prevent. Rather like you and I, dear child, worth does not depend on age. 

We’re obsessed with money this week as the future is grim. Successive governments have longed for a schools’ National Fair Funding Formula but shied away from the cost or the carnage until now. This lot are doing it within the funding envelope, as we say now. The same money, shared out fairly. It has a brutal logic as a cold fiscal fix. As a way to support a the nations’ young, it is utterly inexplicable. Why disinvest from children? 

Tallis’s total budget is about £12 million a year. For the financial year 2017- 18 we’ve been given about £326,000 less, a drop of -2.7%. We‘ll face further reductions next year, and then that lowest level of funding will be the new normal. Over the next two years we’ll try to plan to lose over half a million pounds.  Which may not be possible.   
Such brutality does interesting things to language. The ‘Fair’ was dropped a while ago so it’s just a formula, rage against the machine. Similarly the parroted ‘we are spending a record amount on schools’ makes my head swivel on its stalk before exploding. School funding is frozen, with inflation and other factors meaning schools have to make huge cuts on top of Coalition cuts.

So, pottering home after the A level dance showcase (brilliant, with a matchless first Little Red Rooster) I thought out loud (thankfully not on the bus), about the rationale for slashing expenditure on schools. Hana’s questions recurred: What’s it worth and how long’s it been around?

The best schools have a grand narrative: this is what we are, this our history, this our aim. Ancient schools know: educating the poor of the parish for 500 years, Honore et Labore, Sapere Aude, like we have Education to understand the world and change it for the better. But quality education for the masses is very recent, a post-war, comprehensive dream. Most of our schools, in historical terms, are modern. Does that make us less valuable?
From the standpoint of the privately educated, this must all look very clear. If schools were better they’d have nothing to fear. Most schools are not very old so they haven’t survived for a long time, and they’re not very attractive to rich people, they’re obviously not very good. Ergo, they’re not worth much, so they must be improved in whatever way seems economical at the time. Or starved of cash so the weak go to the wall. Or altered again and again and again by successive ranks of politicians who have no clue that stability and trust are crucial to public institutions.

So, Hana, perhaps the government sees it your way. We can tell what schools are worth by how long they last. In a future without enough money, subject to measurements that change every year, without enough teachers and with people rightly fearful of becoming headteachers, let’s see how they last. Like the rooster-less barnyard: everything in the farm yard upset in every way, the dogs begin to bark and hounds begin to howl.

Our friends from Taiwan came to visit to protect us from gloom, dancing and singing. 20 year 8s had a great day with them and there was much hugging and tears when they left, having given us a second rooster. It’s got a money-box slot, so we’ll perch it on reception and see if it can lay us a load of cash. The attributes of the year of the rooster, I discover, are fidelity and punctuality, and you can’t have too much of either of those in school.
So I turned to Confucius and the wisdom of the structured life. As he said:
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works. All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.
All the government have to do to get a really bad outcome from schools is to carry on as they are. Finding money to fund us all really fairly, with the money we need, would be difficult, and it would be good. Leaving us alone for a few years to generate stability and do our jobs would be even better. We value things that last on this damp island. Loving our schools and letting them flourish would be a public good.

CR

21.4.17 
1 Comment

A shooting foot

24/2/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
Visiting a friendly primary yesterday I was so distracted arranging my hair for their fancy entry photo system that I typed myself in as Thomas Tallis. I am not actually tallis, nor shorts: I am the average height for a UK woman, no matter what my own giant offspring say as they stoop to reason with me as if I were a more than usually stupid dachshund.

Nonetheless, I’m recognisable among the Tallis horde. On the bridge yesterday we inquired civilly after each other’s half-terms. The bridge flows best with minimal supervision and the occasional left-right reminder, but all was nearly brought to confusion by a pair of small girls with pointy eared hairbands who rushed across the path of year 11 boys three times their size. Popular imagination would expect them to be unpleasant, but they just muttered (woah!) and tutted about The Youth of Today needing to learn how to cross traffic.

We keep things going like this most of the time. A pleasant word, a bit of oversight, some minor hassling and not much shouting. The adult-child ratio, not over-generous, enables this, as does the number of teachers who’ve been at it for years and who can sort out a queue with a raised eyebrow and a click of the fingers. Not quite an idyll, an inner-London comprehensive, but it works for us.

Imagine such a school however, with fewer adults, with less experience, with more children. Imagine that lots of the teachers are inexperienced, unqualified, on short-term contracts. Imagine that the classrooms are a mess because no-one’s there long enough to claim them and the children, whose attendance starts to slide, don’t know who they’ll have for maths, or French because they’re in year 8 and they’ve been re-timetabled four times this year so the permanent teachers get the exam classes. Imagine not having your own form tutor. Imagine that inner-city school with no pastoral staff, no one with time to comfort a desperate child, no one to go to the meeting with social services (who haven’t got any long-term staff either). Imagine thresholds so high for mental health support that only a child in hospital (if there’s a bed) gets an appointment with a medic. Imagine no bands and teams, trips and visits. Imagine no visitors because we can’t pay them and don’t have enough staff to manage behaviour in front of strangers. Imagine no time for International Day or Black History Month or the Big Draw, no Christmas tree, no rewards. Imagine day after day only of subjects that count for the latest version of the accountability measures, in big classes in cold rooms with broken computers and no text books. That’s what the funding future looks like.

The two biggest problems facing schools aren’t anything to do with structures or super-selective grammar schools – though they’re stupid enough diversions – but funding and the teacher shortage. Funding is too low, but now the comparatively better-funded are being reduced to the level of the poorest-funded in the name of fairness.  It takes a special skill to generate a teacher shortage in a recession when there are more graduates then ever, but that’s what’s happened. And so we face the ghastly consequences of political ideology versus the public sector (‘safe in our hands’). The facts are denied: no, there are not more children, and no, more of them don’t have special needs. Dogmatic posturing interfering with professional leadership means no-one wants the jobs: accountability pressures make it foolish to stake your mortgage or your children’s futures on an unstable career ladder. No central planning of teacher supply mean there’s no one to help anyone’s children’s future, but still the government says it’ll be alright in the end. Does anyone in government actually care about children?

No funding and no teachers means that the teachers who are left can’t cope and can’t afford to do it: as the Education Select Committee’s report said on Tuesday:
a key driver for teachers considering leaving the profession is unmanageable workload. It is important for people to understand that the current education funding crisis is contributing significantly to these workload pressures. Schools are having to cut the number of teaching and support staff, and this inevitably means more work for those who remain. We would also point out that successive caps on teachers’ pay over several years have greatly devalued salaries in real terms and this issue also needs to be addressed. More investment in education should be a national priority.
The future looks pretty grim, but my spirits rise as I meet a helpful and realistic officer from a neighbouring borough, talk sense with good governors and bang my head on the desk when Harry, late again, describes what he thinks is a revision schedule. I see sixth formers shaking hands pleasantly as they regroup and then try to get Ahmed out of trouble when he loses his rag after stubbing his toe. ‘At least it wasn’t my shooting foot’. I know what I’d like to use a shooting foot for.
 
CR
21.2.17
1 Comment

Re-introducing Secondary Modern Schools

10/9/2016

12 Comments

 
Picture
I don’t need to tell you the facts, you can read them anywhere. Grammar schools do not help social mobility, they restrict it. Grammar schools do not spread advantage, they entrench disadvantage. Progress for clever children is not better in grammar schools. Very few children from disadvantaged households go to grammar schools.

​Grammar school places are won by children whose upbringing predisposes them to pass the 11+ or whose parents have paid for tutoring. Grammar schools existed when we needed a blue-collar/white collar work force. Passing the 11+ and keeping that achievement level going is exceptionally stressful for children who know that their parents have their hearts set on it. 


I’m writing carefully for a particular audience. If you live in a selective area, you’ve got to make the best of it. I’m not getting at you, but the state should protect children from harm, and selection harms children. School places should be planned, not established on a whim. Free School sponsors should be able to demonstrate that any educational provision for which they clamour, to which a Free School is apparently the answer, serves the needs of the democracy, the common good. Greening’s bizarre assertion that selection can be casualty-free is from someone who hasn’t thought through what that means to the child who is not selected.Intelligence is not fixed at 11. The 11+ is a poor indicator of anything but family income. A child may be good at tests or too distracted for tests at 10 or 11 but that means precisely nothing about his or her chances in the future.  Intelligence isn’t about to run out and challenging academic education does not have to be rationed. It’s not a zero-sum game unless the structures make it so.

This school is in Greenwich. We are fabulously comprehensive, educators for the world city. Over our southern borders lies selection. Sometimes our year 11s go to look at the grammar schools when they’re deciding about whether to stay on with us. Sometimes a child likely to get a hatful of top grades at GCSE tells us that they have definitely decided to go to one of the grammars. We tell them the facts: that they’ll do as well as or better here and that others in their position have come back, sharpish. They look embarrassed and tell us that their parents have their hearts set on it or ‘My community think this is best’. What would you say?  

Grammar schools are a proxy for parental fear: so here’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about grammar schools.  ‘I don’t want my child’s education to be dragged down by slow, naughty or disrespectful children.  I don’t want her to learn bad habits or fall in with the wrong crowd. I want him to make his choices within a limited range of options so he can’t make a mistake and end up on drugs and die young.  I want him to get the kind of job that posh kids get. I want him to be happy.’  Of course you do, but hoping that your little one is a quick acquirer by the age of 10 and therefore insulated for life doesn’t make sense. It certainly doesn’t make for a stable, just and excellent education system for everyone’s little one. 

Parents’ fear is rooted in another zero-sum myth: comprehensive schools are all terrible so we need to replace them with grammar schools for 20% of children because there isn’t enough good education to go around. But comprehensive schools are not all terrible.  Very few of them are terrible. Some grammar schools are terrible. Most comprehensive schools are very good and loads of them are absolutely fantastic. The postcode selection trope  trotted out by the PM - that good comprehensives only exist in rich areas – is just not true.  London proves that, as HMCI (a man incapable of telling it other than it is) has trenchantly said. Tosh and nonsense indeed. 

This isn’t policy, but education as nostalgia, a dog-whistle to a bygone era of class distinction and limited mobility.  Even David Cameron called it ‘splashing around in the shallow end of educational debate’. It’s part of the anti-intellectualism of the Conservative government, where anyone on top of the facts, from sugar to Europe, is disregarded as an expert. It is the stuff of despair. 

When our sixth form leave us we tell them to be kind to people at university who haven’t had their advantages, whose parental choice of school for them has made them uncertain about people from different backgrounds. We tell our young people to share their ease and confidence so that the gifts of a comprehensive education are shared with those whom privilege has restricted.

We do this because comprehensive education is an honourable and visionary undertaking every bit as important as the NHS. It preserves the fabric of our democracy and gives us all the chance to lay the foundations for a model society. These great schools work brilliantly for all our children. Parents love them and communities thrive. We have everything to lose as a nation if they are destroyed. We should rise up as one against this shallow, cynical, divisive, wicked and ignorant project.
 
CR
7.9.16
 
 
 
Distant star:
We should never judge children by their qualifications.  We need to get out of this mess.

12 Comments

Boxers and Lawyers

15/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Nigel Henderson, Photograph of children playing outside, 1949–1954

You’re never more than 6 feet from a lawyer in London. I had a great email last term from one who’d had the commuter’s nightmare of being at a bus stop with a load of schoolchildren. Despite this, she wrote to offer work experience to the sixth former whom she’d heard expostulating so eloquently and accurately on Donoghue v Stevenson (about negligence, I had to look it up). ‘She formulated a perfect argument and wouldn’t let it go’ she wrote. ‘She’ll be perfect in court’. 

Last week I stood in a queue for the Palace of Westminster, how I do gad about, earwigging on the conversations behind me. A brace of English lawyers were explaining life to a Polish third. They talked about the public school to which one had sent his children and the other was about to (no, I shan’t tell you which one). The Polish person asked if it was good: chuckling in a knowing way, one said ‘well, the sixth form’s pretty good for studying, playing poker and smoking’. I mused on this while ostensibly reading a report on teacher supply. First: I suppose if children are sent off to board then they have to do these things among strangers. Second: say that about Gasworks Comprehensive and it’ll bring the inspectors running across the fields in their long black coats. How the other half (7%) live. 
Finding out what parents think is a holy grail for secondary schools and we try to bridge the obstacles of adolescence, scale and distance in different ways. I’m terrifically grateful to the parents of Tallis PTA and I’m indebted to the 84% who turned out for year 8 Parents’ Evening. I do like seeing parents with their youths. Spotting family relationships is interesting for the nosey, and seeing resemblances is fascinating. Year 8 are particularly funny. They’re way too old to sit on Mum’s knee so they usually lean in a sort-of chummy manner, while things are going well.  When they’re not they can be as huffy and flouncy as a year 12, or resort to comically guilty despondent expressions, like a Boxer dog with a mouthful of Christmas cake.

We’re pretty pleased with our new reports this term so year 8 were experimented on. That happens a lot to year 8, just as well no-one’s stuck there permanently. Parents could see at a glance where offspring were doing well by the jolly shades of green: yellow and red not such happy news. Wily parents grasped this instantaneously and couldn’t be thrown off course by flimsy excuses. ‘Very useful’ one grimaced at me as she dragged the Boxer off to account for himself in Science.

He’ll recover. I stood on the bridge today and watched Break. Children swarm and mooch, muttering and shouting. I watched a new starter rush to hug her new friend (she’s got that Tallis habit quickly) and some older boys trying to eat crisps and chase each other at the same time. A laughing year 10 was having her hair re-done. Footballs were being simultaneously confiscated and encouraged depending on the zone. At the end we did our outrageous whistling, clapping, shooing and shouting routine to hassle the hordes back into class. I explained for the fiftieth time why we’ve put part of the bridge out of bounds and thought for the sixtieth time about whether there’s a better way of doing it.  

We’ve invited consultants amongst us recently to give a couple of areas the onceover. They’ve been worth every penny, encouraging us to think in a slightly different way about the future. How do you get the Boxer dog to a state where he can’t stop himself explaining tort law at the bus stop? How do you get the reluctant 12 year old scientist onto a space shuttle?

We start with the end in mind while seizing the present reality of a child. It’s quite a balancing act: we value the person she is now while we hope to help her become someone we won’t know and may not even recognise. We do it in partnership with parents and the people at the bus stop. We let them be children while we form then into adults that might make a better go of changing the world. And the richness of our community gives them something extra so they can hope to breach the fortresses of privileges. They have to smoke and play poker in their own time.

CR

10.3.15

 

0 Comments

To be fair to the mayor

30/11/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Johannes Vermeer, Woman Holding a Balance, c. 1664
To be fair to the mayor, he’d just done his London-is-great spiel at his Education Conference when he was ambushed by a question that caught his attention. What did he think, asked the Press Association, about expanding grammar schools?

To be fair to the mayor, he didn’t answer that, but he did think out loud.  What do you think of academic selection, he asked the room?  What’s wrong with it? It never did any harm to the chap who was always at the bottom of the Mayor’s year group at Eton. He asked for a show of hands: did we use academic selection? He was interested that we did. The crowd started to rustle a bit and someone shouted ‘we do it all the time’. 

To be fair to the Mayor, he spotted that the temperature had dropped.  ‘I’ve lost my audience!’ he wailed. People got a bit cross, in a teacherly way, with muttering and tutting. We’re always irritated at suggestions that we don’t measure achievement or progress, or arrange our schools in order to support them.  

To be fair to the Mayor (and I may only be saying this because it rhymes) he didn’t say he was proposing grammar schools or the 11+.  He was concerned that we should support those who would lose out but he believed academic competition is key to success. Why does it work in the public and independent schools, he asked? I have several answers to this and muttered some of them to myself in a huffy sort of way. I may have said ‘follow the money’ out loud at one point in a noisier part of the discussion.  
In purely practical terms, selection is based on assessment which is troublesome to use in ways that are simultaneously humane and useful.  Our current use, both to measure students and judge schools, has muddied the water so much that National Curriculum levels have been removed. From dirigiste to deregulation in one move, with what mayhem in its wake.

Like other schools we are discussing life after levels now that the extraordinary decision has been taken that every school will invent its own system. What do we want to measure? What do we need? What do parents want to know? What will scrutineers want to see? What will partner schools do? What is the relationship between attitudes and work habits and subject knowledge? How can you judge progress in a subject that’s new at year 7, or at GCSE ? Can we measure progress in the arts and PE in the same way as in maths or history? What will work with the well-motivated, the reluctant, the struggler, the lazy, the misunderstood?          

Politicians love to talk about their own schooling.  Some – like Johnson and Tristram Hunt – admit that it was private and privileged.     There is a gap in their understanding of other types of schools, which is then compounded by media storms designed to sell news and dominated by those of a similarly narrow background.  We are trapped in misunderstandings which have their roots in the deep inequalities of British society, some of which were helpfully uncovered last week by the 1970 British Cohort Survey comprehensively exploding some grammar school myths.

May I offer some facts? Most schools use some form of academic selection in their setting processes. Setting is not streaming, but is done by assessing ability in a particular subject (this seems impossibly hard for politicians to grasp; they may be in the wrong set). However, there is no outcomes evidence to distinguish setting from mixed ability teaching: teacher quality is the key. Assessment measures progress and helps design subsequent teaching to accelerate it, which is standard good practice. Attending a grammar school does not confer lasting benefits in terms of university entrance or success as children from comprehensive schools achieve more highly at university than those from other types of schools. However, private schooling is powerfully predictive of gaining a university degree and especially a degree from an elite institution. This is probably because of the double advantage of close links with Oxbridge colleges and a prevalence of graduate parents, the strongest predictor for university success.

In 2007 David Willetts – supported by David Cameron - courted lasting unpopularity from the Conservative party by saying:
We must break free from the belief that academic selection is any longer the way to transform the life chances of bright poor kids.  This is a widespread belief but we just have to recognise that there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it. 

The comprehensive dream can transform lives for all its children. That’s where we’ll get a return on our belief.

Christmas approaches and we’ve bought the red tags and the trees. Perhaps the hope I’ll write on my tag is that education debate might be embellished with facts and evidence in the General Election. Perhaps I’ll tie one to the door of Sanctuary Buildings, SW1.         

CR 27.11.14
0 Comments

Textbook Tallis

29/6/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Sol Lewitt All ifs or buts connected by green lines, 1973
We are a textbook school. By that I mean that we appear in textbooks, German ones, published by Klett of Berlin. Our young people help to make the content so that it is vaguely similar to real life, and we appear in the accompanying DVD. We even did a model assembly so that German children experience the full eccentricity of English school life. The book describes life in a range of London housing, school days, even has a diary entry from a dog called Sherlock. There was a dog in the German textbook I used at school in the last century (Lumpi ist mein hund) but we were not privy to its thoughts. It’s interesting to see our lives in text book form, simple but believable.  

Tallis is therefore so well known that German tourists flock to us to check that we weren’t just made up by their English teachers. This week we had a visit from a consulting engineer taking time out from a university symposium to have his picture taken with me, and a visit from 30 12 year olds who spent the day with year 7. They sang us the song with which they start all their English lessons: ‘Let’s go to Greenwich, jump on the bus’. It’s wonderful that they think of us, fellow humans who’ve never met, every time they have an English lesson, and all the more remarkable as sadly we don’t actually teach German. Verzeihung!
The Bishop of Woolwich spent some time with us on Tuesday:  we’re not a religious school in any way, but it was nice to welcome someone who has a heart for South London. Maybe he’ll jump on a bus to Greenwich in his head when he thinks about schools. We had alumni too, talking to our year 12s as they enjoy progression week and start to learn about universities. These adult friends who’ve just left us, finishing their degrees, give great advice and love to reminisce. They remember the particular and the general about school as a launch pad for the world and the many advantages conferred by comprehensive education. They also remember food and trips and tell the young people of today that they don’t know how lucky they are.

On Wednesday I went to the Civic Centre to talk about teachers’ pay policies, an summer fixture. We talked about the challenges of the job and how we use and interpret government policy. Should we try to codify everything we do so it’s used as a checklist? How far does professional judgement and interpretation free or restrict schools? How detailed do policies have to be? Studies consistently show that performance related pay for teachers has very little effect on standards but that doesn't stop us spending a huge amount of time on it year after blessed year. We’re warned to plan for more pay appeals this autumn. Is that really a good use of education time?

The gods of public service provide the 178 from Woolwich to Tallis so I literally jumped on a bus to Greenwich at the end. Halfway along a young man who’s recently left us joined me for a brief symposium of our own on comparative education. We chatted about his new start and he offered a few tips he'd picked up. It was a general picture from a chap with particular outlook, but he remembered Tallis with pleasure, knowing the inside track on the textbook school.

We’re rewriting our own textbook at Tallis. National changes give us the chance to make a sensible unity of teaching, planning and assessment based on what we value. It might turn into an actual textbook one day – Tallis habits for Tallis praxis.  It is in textbook clarity that the real strength of a school lies:  what do we stand for, what do we value, how do we get there, annually judged against how are we doing? I’m not sure we need the dog, but perhaps we might: until recently I didn’t know they wrote diaries. 

Arriving back at school I jumped off my bus while a small gaggle of Tallis got on the front, in acceptably orderly manner. Even before we write it each one of those young people should be able to tell us what’s in the Tallis textbook and whether what we represent, illustrate and illuminate is clear enough to them. If it’s a good text, they’ll always have a bus to Tallis in their heads that they can jump on to help them to the next stop.   

CR 16.6.14

0 Comments

Banding Together

16/3/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square, 1964
I love the list we get in March of our next year sevens.  I see the names and picture keen bright eleven-year-olds grinning as they find their way around the big school. I love it that our admissions are handled calmly, fairly and by the Local Authority.  

I once worked in a school where admissions resembled the Schleswig-Holstein question. You needed a map, a compass and a Bismarck’s understanding of county bus routes to get a toe-hold in the discussion. There were years when revised admissions criteria might as well have been in Babylonian Cuneiform. Two years running we had public meetings with that Great Panjandrum, The Schools Adjudicator: beat that for complexity.  

It was just an oversubscribed LA school in a city where a vengeful providence had put all the schools in one corner. We didn’t go in for aptitude tests, priest’s references, pricy uniforms or parental interviews.  We had no choice about and no view on which 11-year olds joined us in September. Admissions were County Hall’s problem.  If the LA had sent us 240 penguins to educate, we’d have got with the fish and the ice skating.
As it was, we tried to work out which friends our new children and their parents could agree on liking, which classes to group them in and how to get that perfect mix of background, test scores and gender in every single form group. We hoped for a balanced intake, but had no means of promoting it.   

In London admissions are different. Children take a test in year 5 and are allocated one of 4 ability bands: this combines with parental preference to give schools a balanced basketful of children. This wise process is reinforced by the Sutton Trust’s latest characteristically sensible publication.  Last month’s report on Banding and Ballots recommends banding to achieve a comprehensive intake, especially in urban areas. It meets the Trust’s laudable aim of improving social mobility through education.

Why is this important? Why is it right to divide children up and then spread them out? Is this not social engineering of the worst sort?  Why not make every child go to its local school and let the devil take the hindmost? Why not leave year 7 to the market and the pointy elbows of the argumentative classes?

A good comprehensive school like Tallis is a work of art and a force of nature. It contains within its warm and cheerful walls the raw materials of the good society. Children of all kinds thrown together make friends across the divides and learn something about how to bear one another’s foibles and burdens and how to respect one another. They reject snobbery and develop an immense pride in diversity, community, fairness and justice.   

A Head I worked with had a leaving speech for his upper sixth which I’ve plagiarised shamelessly ever since. He would warn those heading off to university to be understanding towards people who had not enjoyed their advantages.  He spoke pityingly of young people from dull schools where everyone was alike, who then might find it hard to get along in real life. He said that being an alumnus of a comprehensive school was the best possible preparation for life, and that such young people had a responsibility to keep to the values that formed them, to make the world a better place.

We have to be organised about what we believe is right for our society and our young people.  Parents are individually and collectively wonderful, but they need a structure to relax against, where what is right for their children is also right for other peoples. A proper, balanced comprehensive school gives us a glimpse of a just society in which no-one is disadvantaged by money.

It’s not easy to balance all schools and is almost impossible in rural and post-industrial places. Children in some areas would have to spend hours on buses to be part of banded intakes, and that wouldn’t be right either. School buses are at the mercy of the Lord of the Flies at the best of times.  Heads in London have little idea of the time it can take to resolve a bus disagreement including soup and chewing gum. But a good is a good, and just because something’s hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try it. If we thought that, who would understand A level Economics, surds or the offside rule?  We need banded and balanced intakes in all our schools for the common good. Time to try harder. 

CR 12.3.14

0 Comments

    MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

    A regular column about school life.

    Archive

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

    Categories

    All
    11+
    1970s
    80s
    90s
    Aamilne
    Ability
    Absurdity
    Academics
    Academies
    Academisation
    Academy
    Acadmies
    Accountability
    Achievement
    Addiction
    Administrators
    Admissions
    Adolescence
    Adulthood
    Adults
    Adventure
    Adversity
    Adverts
    Advice
    Aiweiwei
    Aleppo
    Alevels
    Alienation
    Allourfutures
    Altruism
    Amandagorman
    Ambassador
    Aneurinbevan
    Annefrank
    Annelongfield
    Anthonyburgess
    Anthonyhorowitz
    Anti Racism
    Anti-racism
    Apologies
    Apology
    Appointments
    Appraisal
    Apprenticeships
    Arabic
    Argument
    Ariadne
    Aristotle
    Army
    Arrogance
    Art
    Arts
    Artsmark
    Ascl
    Askforangela
    Aspiration
    Assemblies
    Assembly
    Assessment
    Assessments
    Attendance
    Attributes
    Austerity
    Authority
    Autonomy
    Autumn
    Aztecs
    Balfourbeatty
    Banding
    Battle
    Battleaxes
    Battlements
    Bbc
    Beauty
    Bees
    Beginnings
    Behaviour
    Belonging
    Berylhusain
    Beveridge
    Biafra
    Billlucas
    Billyconolly
    Biology
    Blackhistorymonth
    Blacklivesmatter
    Blogosphere
    Borisjohnson
    Boundaries
    Bowie
    Boys
    Breaktime
    Brexit
    Briefing
    Bruisers
    Brutality
    Bsf
    Btec
    Budget
    Budgets
    Bugsy
    Building
    Bullying
    Bureaucracy
    Cambridge
    Cameron
    Campaign
    Cancelled
    Capital
    Catalytic
    Celebration
    Ceremonies
    Ceremony
    Certificates
    Chalk
    Champagne
    Champions
    Change
    Changes
    Character
    Charity
    Charlescausley
    Charteredcollege
    Checklists
    Childhood
    Childq
    Children
    Chinese
    Choices
    Chriskillip
    Christmas
    Churchofengland
    Cicero
    Citizenship
    Civic
    Civility
    Classrooms
    Climate
    Clipboards
    Clothes
    Code
    Cohesion
    Collaboration
    Colleagues
    Commission
    Commissioner
    Committee
    Commodification
    Commongood
    Community
    Compassion
    Compliance
    Comprehensive
    Compromise
    Concentration
    Conference
    Confidence
    Conformity
    Confucius
    Conkers
    Conservative
    Consultation
    Context
    Contingency
    Continuity
    Control
    Controversy
    Conversation
    Coronavirus
    Corridors
    Costcutting
    Courage
    Cover
    Covid19
    Covid-19
    Craft
    Creativity
    Cressidadick
    Crime
    Cslewis
    Culture
    Cupboards
    Curiosity
    Curriculum
    Cuts
    Cyberspace
    Cycling
    Dameedna
    Dance
    Danger
    Danielhuws
    Darkness
    Data
    Davidharsent
    Deadlines
    Deaf
    Debate
    Decisions
    Decolonising
    Deliverology
    Democracy
    Demonstration
    Deprivation
    Deregulation
    Derekmahon
    Design
    Detention
    Determination
    Dfe
    Dialect
    Dianereay
    Diary
    Dickens
    Difference
    Dignity
    Diligence
    Dipsticks
    Disadvantage
    Disaster
    Discipline
    Discourse
    Discussion
    Diversity
    Dofe
    Dog-whistle
    Dominiccummings
    Donpaterson
    Doors
    Douglasdunn
    Drama
    Dreams
    Driving
    Drking
    Dt
    Durham
    Earthday
    Easter
    Ebacc
    Eclipse
    Economy
    Eddieandthehotrods
    Edhirsch
    Education
    Effort
    Eglantynejebb
    Election
    Elite
    Elites
    Elitism
    Empathy
    Empowerment
    Endeavour
    Endurance
    Engagement
    Enrolment
    Entitlement
    Epiphany
    Epistemology
    Equality
    Equipment
    Equity
    Ethicalleadership
    Ethics
    Ethos
    Eton
    Evaluation
    Events
    Everyday
    Examboards
    Exams
    Excellence
    Exchange
    Exclusions
    Expectations
    Experience
    Explosions
    Expolitation
    Extremism
    Facilities
    Failure
    Fairness
    Faith
    Fame
    Family
    Farewell
    Fashion
    Fatherbrown
    Fear
    Feminism
    Festival
    Fidelity
    Filming
    Finances
    Fitness
    Fog
    Folly
    Food
    Football
    Frederickdouglass
    Freedom
    Freeschool
    Friends
    Friendship
    Fsm
    Functionalism
    Funding
    Future
    Gaffes
    Gardening
    Gavinwilliamson
    Gcse
    Gcses
    Generosity
    Geography
    Geordie
    German
    Germans
    Gestures
    Girls
    Globalwarming
    Goats
    Gotomeeting
    Gove
    Government
    Governors
    Grades
    Grammar
    Greenwich
    Grenfell
    Guidance
    Guilt
    Habits
    Handwashing
    Happiness
    Harassment
    Hartlepool
    Headship
    Headstart
    Headteachers
    Health
    Heating
    Heatwave
    Helicopter
    Heritage
    Hippocrates
    History
    Hmci
    Hmi
    Holidays
    Holocaust
    Homelessness
    Homesecretary
    Homework
    Honesty
    Hope
    Hopes
    Hospitals
    Hugging
    Humanity
    Humanrights
    Humanutopia
    Humility
    Humour
    Hunger
    Hymnsheets
    Hypocrisy
    Ict
    Illumination
    Imagination
    Immigrants
    Inclusion
    Information
    Injustice
    Inquisitive
    Inspection
    Institution
    Integrity
    Interdependence
    International
    Interpretation
    Interview
    Interviews
    Investment
    Invictus
    Invigilation
    Invigilators
    IPad
    Islam
    Janeausten
    Jeremyhunt
    Johndonne
    Johnlecarre
    Johnmasefield
    Johnrawls
    Journeys
    Joy
    Jubilee
    Judgement
    Judidench
    Justice
    Kaospilots
    Katherinebirbalsingh
    Kenrobinson
    Kidbrooke
    Kindness
    KingcharlesIII
    Knifecrime
    Knighthood
    Knowledge
    Ks3
    Ks4
    Language
    Languages
    Laughter
    Leadership
    Learners
    Learning
    Leavers
    Leaving
    Lessons
    Levels
    Liberal
    Liberty
    Lindsayhoyle
    Lines
    List
    Listening
    Literacy
    Literature
    Liztruss
    Lockdown
    Logic
    Logistics
    London
    Londonchallenge
    Loneliness
    Lordagnew
    Louismacneice
    Love
    Luck
    Lucyholt
    Luddite
    Lunchtime
    Machiavelli
    Macpherson
    Management
    Mandarin
    Mandela
    Marland
    Martinlutherking
    Mastery
    Maths
    Mats
    Matthancock
    May
    Measurement
    Media
    Meetings
    Memories
    Menstruation
    Mentalhealth
    Metacognition
    Metaphor
    Metrics
    Michaelgove
    Michaelrosen
    Michaelyoung
    Mickfleetwood
    Middlesborough
    Midlands
    Misconceptions
    Misconduct
    Miseducation
    Misogyny
    Mistakes
    Mobilephones
    Mobility
    Mocks
    Mojo
    Monarchy
    Money
    Mothers
    Motto
    Movies
    Multiculturalism
    Music
    Musical
    Myths
    Names
    Nasuwt
    Nationalcurriculum
    Nationality
    Neo-trad
    Neu
    News
    Newyear
    Newzealand
    Nfff
    Nhs
    Nickdrake
    Nickgibb
    Nickymorgan
    Nihilism
    Noah
    Nolan
    Normanrockwell
    Npq
    Nqt
    NSPCC
    Numeracy
    Nuremburg
    Oaa
    Oath
    Obama
    Objectivity
    Oecd
    Offence
    Ofmiceandmen
    Ofsted
    Oldtestament
    O-levels
    Ombusdman
    Openevening
    Openness
    Opportunity
    Oppression
    Optimism
    Options
    Outcomes
    Outrage
    Oxbridge
    Parenting
    Parents
    Parentsevenings
    Parliament
    Participation
    Partnership
    Pastoral
    Paternalism
    Patience
    Paulmuldoon
    Pay
    PE
    Peace
    Pedagogy
    People
    Performance
    Perseverence
    Persistent
    Pfi
    Philiplarkin
    Philosophy
    Phones
    Phonics
    Photography
    Physics
    Piersmorgan
    Pisa
    Planning
    Play
    Plumbing
    Pm
    Poetry
    Police
    Policing
    Policy
    Politeness
    Politicalcorrectness
    Politicians
    Politics
    Poor
    Populism
    Posh
    Post16
    Postcovid
    Postmodernism
    Poverty
    Power
    Powerpoint
    Practice
    Praxis
    Predictions
    Prejudice
    Preparations
    Pressures
    Prevent
    Pride
    Primeminister
    Princeofwales
    Principles
    Priorities
    Private
    Privilege
    Problems
    Procedures
    Professionals
    Progress
    Progress8
    Protection
    Protests
    Proxy
    Psychology
    Pta
    Pti
    Public
    Publicsector
    Publicservices
    Punctuality
    Punctuation
    Punishment
    Punishments
    Pupilpremium
    Qualifications
    Quentintarantino
    Questioning
    Questions
    Quotidian
    Rabbieburns
    Racism
    Radical
    Radio
    Raf
    Rain
    Rainbows
    R&d
    RE
    Reading
    Recessional
    Recovery
    Recruitment
    Refugees
    Regulations
    Relationships
    Religion
    Remembrance
    Reports
    Research
    Resignation
    Resilience
    Resits
    Resolutions
    Resources
    Respect
    Responsibilities
    Restorativejustice
    Results
    Retention
    Revision
    Rewards
    Rhetoric
    Rich
    Richisunak
    Rishisunak
    Riumours
    Romans
    Roof
    Routines
    Rudyardkipling
    Rules
    Safeguarding
    Safety
    Sajidjavid
    Sanctuarybuildings
    Sarcasm
    Savethechildren
    Scandal
    Scholarship
    School
    Schoolboys
    Schoolcouncil
    Schools
    Schoolsweek
    Schoolwear
    Science
    Screens
    Seanharford
    Secretaryofstate
    Selection
    Self-actualisation
    Selflessness
    Send
    September
    Service
    Sex
    Sexism
    Sexual
    Shakespeare
    Shops
    Shortage
    Siegfriedsassoon
    Silence
    Singing
    Sixthform
    Skills
    Skipping
    Snow
    Socialcare
    Social Care
    Socialmedia
    Socialmobility
    Society
    Software
    Sorry
    Speech
    Speeches
    Spending
    Sports
    Staffing
    Staffroom
    Standardisation
    Standards
    State
    Statistics
    Stephenlawrence
    Stevemartin
    St.lucy
    Stress
    Strike
    Stuck
    Study
    Suffering
    Summer
    Sunderland
    Superhead
    Support
    Supremecourt
    Surestart
    Surprise
    Survivors
    Syria
    System
    Taiwan
    Talk
    Talking
    Tallis
    Tallisat50
    Tallischaracter
    Tallishabits
    Targets
    Tate
    Teacherly
    Teachers
    Teachfirst
    Teaching
    Teams
    Technology
    Teenagers
    Tennyson
    Terrorism
    Testing
    Tests
    Textbooks
    Thankful
    Thanks
    Thinking
    Thomasfuller
    Thomastallis
    Time
    Timetable
    Timharford
    Timoates
    Timpson
    Toilets
    Tories
    Traceyemin
    Tradition
    Traditions
    Training
    Trains
    Transgender
    Transition
    Treasury
    Trump
    Trust
    Truth
    Tsarinas
    Tsars
    Ttra
    Tutor
    Tutoring
    Tutors
    Twitter
    Tyneside
    Ucas
    Ukraine
    Ulysses
    Umbrellas
    Uncertainty
    Undergraduates
    Understanding
    Unemployment
    Uniform
    Unions
    Unitednations
    University
    Vaccination
    Vaccine
    Values
    Veilofignorance
    Victorian
    Vikings
    Violence
    Virtues
    Virus
    Visitors
    Visits
    Vulnerable
    Walkabout
    War
    Warchild
    Warmth
    Weather
    Welcome
    Westminster
    Whatwouldyoucut
    Whistleblowing
    Whistles
    Whitehaven
    Whiteness
    Whitepaper
    Wilshaw
    Winniethepooh
    Winter
    Wisdom
    Woke
    Women
    Words
    Workload
    Worldbookday
    Worldpeacegame
    Worth
    Writing
    WW1
    Xfn
    Year
    Year11
    Year13
    Year6
    Year7
    Year9
    Yoga
    Youth
    Zahawi
    Zeitgeist
    Zoom

    RSS Feed

Thomas Tallis School, Kidbrooke Park Road, London SE3 9PX
T: +44 (0)208 856 0115   F: +44 (0)208 331 3004   E: headteacher@thomastallis.org.uk
  • Home
  • About
    • An Overview >
      • The Leadership Team
      • Who was Thomas Tallis?
      • Why Tallis?
      • School Vision
      • Mrs Roberts Writes
      • Artsmark
      • Prince's Teaching Institute
      • Secondary School Direct Hub
      • International School
      • Ofsted
    • School Prospectus
    • Tallis Praxis
    • Tallis Habits >
      • Tallis Pedagogy Wheel Guide
    • Tallis Character
    • Tallis Threshold Concepts
    • Policies & Guidelines >
      • Data Protection
      • Making Complaints
    • The Pupil Premium 2022-23 >
      • The Pupil Premium 2021-22
      • The Pupil Premium 2020-21
      • The Pupil Premium 2019-20
      • The Pupil Premium 2018-19
      • The Pupil Premium 2017-18
      • The Pupil Premium 2016-17
      • The Pupil Premium 2014-15
      • The Pupil Premium 2013-14
      • The Pupil Premium 2012-13
      • The Pupil Premium 2011-12
    • Exam Results 2022 >
      • Exam Results 2021
      • Exam Results 2020
      • Exam Results 2019
      • Exam Results 2018
      • Exam Results 2017
      • Exam Results 2016
      • Exam Results 2015
      • Exam Results 2014
      • Exam Results 2013
      • Exam Results 2012
      • Exam Results 2011
    • COVID-19 Catch-Up Report
    • Early Catch Up 2019/20 and Action Plan 2020/2120 >
      • Early Catch Up 2018/2019 and Action Plan 2019/2020
      • Early Catch Up 2017/2018 and Action Plan 2018/19
      • Early catch-up review and action plan 2017-18
    • Job Vacancies
  • News
    • Tallis Newsletters
    • Tallis Photography
    • Tallis Video
    • Tallis Sounds
  • Calendar
    • Term Dates 2022-23
    • The School Day
  • Curriculum
    • Curriculum Areas >
      • Business & ICT
      • Computing
      • English & Philosophy
      • Design & Technology
      • Humanities & Social Sciences
      • Languages
      • Mathematics
      • Performing Arts
      • Physical Education
      • Science
      • Visual & Media Arts
    • Pastoral Care
    • Guidance >
      • Tallis Futures
    • Key Stage 3 >
      • KS3 Assessment guidance
      • Tallis Choices
    • Key Stage 4
    • Tallis Post 16
    • Exceptionally Able Learners
    • Special Educational Needs & Disabilities >
      • Learning Support Unit
      • Support Centre for Autism and Language Impairment
      • Deaf Support Centre
      • English as an Additional Language
  • Community
    • Letters Home 2022-23
    • Bromcom Guide for Parents
    • PTFA
    • Governing Board
    • The Tallis Agreement
    • Admissions
    • Attendance & Punctuality >
      • Apply for Exceptional Circumstances Absence in Term Time
    • School Uniform
    • Support Your Teen
    • Online Safety
    • Tallis Post 16
  • Students
    • Year 11 Support & Guidance
    • Bromcom Guide for Students
    • Co-curricular Activities
    • Exam Revision
    • Stay Safe
    • Duke of Edinburgh Award
    • Rewards
    • Reading
    • The Library
    • Cycling at Tallis
    • Alumni
  • Staff
  • Contact
    • School Map
    • How to find us
  • Search