Thomas Tallis School
  • Home
  • About
    • An Overview >
      • The Leadership Team
      • Who was Thomas Tallis?
      • Why Tallis?
      • School Vision
      • Mrs Roberts Writes
      • Tallis at 50
      • 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
    • Term Dates 2023-24
    • 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

The Shock of the New

7/9/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
Today’s the day when we get year 7 and year 12 into school. They’ve made a good start – quiet, cheerful and as efficient as young people get. Year 7’s bags are gleamingly clean, their turquoise polos shine in the sun and new shoes of all stiffnesses doing well so far.

We have over 400 year 12s and every one of them has agonised over their outfit so they’re a good-looking bunch. Why so many? Well, London results stayed high so lots of children met the entry requirements and we try to offer them places. Enrolment took all day and – first come, first served – caused some upset. We’ll think about another way of doing it but it's hard to see what’s fairest.

They can at least eat quickly. Year 7 do take their time with lunch: what with the choice, the explaining, the thumbprints and account top-ups. That’s OK today, but from tomorrow there’ll be 540 others in the same space for lunch desperate for food and familiar with the system. We’ll start year 7 early for a while so that they get fed while being gradually speeded up. One young chap in the queue today spotted a fire alarm point’s protective cover saying ‘LIFT HERE’. Being an orderly soul, he did and was promptly swooped upon in a neat pincher by two chaps offering advice. He may not do it again. A life lesson learned: not all instructions are for you. 

As I write, footballs and skipping ropes are being offered in a non-gendered manner and a request for a couple of big chess sets made. How big? Bring-your-own-horse big? Everyone’s telling me that year 7 look older and bigger than usual but I hadn’t spotted it. I start from a pretty low level in any case. Height-wise. It’s not that I have low standards about how tall eleven-year olds should be.

Oh, all right then, the new PM. Well – she’s worked up through local democracy, she was on Greenwich council, she lives locally and she went to a comprehensive school in Leeds. All these are positive. She’s not a public schoolboy and that certainly is. She went to Oxford from Roundhay School and yet said that it had low expectations? Hmm. I once had a conversation with a Deputy Head Girl in another school. She’d got top grades and one of the university hot tickets, but gave the school satisfactory grades for how they’d supported her. Frankly, they’d bent over backwards but I wasn’t worried: young people are naturally solipsistic. You just hope that hindsight develops a clearer picture over the years. Perhaps the new PM can’t unsay things. Is that a good thing?

Today’s speech did, however, stick a couple of things in my itchy old ears. Boris Johnson, she said, was admired from Kyiv to Carlisle. Rapturous applause was slightly delayed, perhaps because it had to be relayed from Kyiv at a time when they’ve other things to think about. Then she asserted that the Conservative Party is the greatest political party on earth, which they applauded more sharply. Really? Were they breathlessly awaiting the 1922 committee verdict across the continents and oceans of the planet? And even if it were, pulling back on climate crisis measures should dent that claim a little? Or is there greatness yet to unleash, unseen in my lifetime so far? Excellent news if so.

Ms Truss is my 13th PM, but that’s not her fault. Democracy is rooted in optimism so we always hope for the best.   That’s what I’ll tell the young when I’m let loose on assemblies next week: we do the best of things in the worst of times and hope in the face of adversity. That’ll be after I’ve told the staff to keep their fears about heating and food bills to themselves. Tallis will be warm enough, and the children fed every day. The safe boundary around school will be maintained and we will proceed calmly and reliably as the year goes by and the outside world buffets itself to bits.

Year 12 will be set loose upon the world in 2024, old enough to vote. The eleven-year olds in year 7 have only lived under one kind of government. The Financial Times predicts a change for the better coming soon. I hope they’re right.   
Picture
But back to now. Our results were good this summer and we’ve been re-awarded our Artsmark Platinum status. Sometimes being at Tallis is like being at the greatest party in the world. Happy New Year!
 
CR
5.9.22
0 Comments

Best laid plans

23/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Mr Williamson, please listen to me.

I’ve been worried about your health for a year now and dear me, you’ve had a bad week. Allow me to help your reflections.

Let me deal with the elephant not so much in the room as in your face yesterday, Mr P Morgan of the telly. I wasn’t allowed to watch ITV as a child and old habits die hard, and the man represents the kind of newspapers I don’t allow in the house. Having properly established myself as a snob of the worst kind, I might add that Morgan, P. supported and sympathetically interviewed the former President of the USA several times, only at the very end referring to him in terms both appropriate and unrepeatable. Being interviewed by such a one must be an unpleasant experience. Shudder.

But what were you thinking? You can’t be oblivious to the furore surrounding your continuing as top dog at Sanctuary Buildings. You must know that there is general assent to the proposition that a dishwasher or astute turnip would be a better Secretary of State. You must have expected the question? You surely had an answer prepared?  ‘No, the PM has not asked for my resignation and loves me with all his generous heart’ or ‘Yes, the PM has asked for my resignation but I’ve barricaded Great Smith Street at both ends’ or ‘Yes, I’m keen to resign as soon as a I can find a pen’ or ‘No, as the Kingpin in a palace coup I expect to be PM by Candlemas and you’ll be first against the wall’. Surely any of the above would have been better than obliviously droning about what’s been allegedly achieved. At the very least, you could have said ‘I’ve been precious little use to child nor beast so far but look at the size of my consultation document’.

Piers Morgan, sadly, may not have read it. Had he done so he might have scoffed at the 64 questions. He might even have raised a sclerotic eyebrow at the sentence (p9) ‘That would put [teachers] in an impossible position, as they would be required to imagine a situation that had not happened’. If either of you had ever taught year 9 on a wet Wednesday in November you’d know that imagining things that hadn’t happened is a pre-requisite for good behaviour management.

He might even have suspected that you were about to implode after a sudden change of mindset to one which includes trusting teachers’ judgments. Upon which matter, do you take us for fools? 

‘Centre Assessed Grades’ worked pretty well eventually last year. It gave the correct impression that there was a standard centrally-directed process which schools followed. ‘Teacher Assessed Grades’ knowingly shifts the emphasis. It's reasonable to assume that you hope that all the doodah that descended on you last year when you ploughed on with an algorithm you’d been told wouldn’t work might this year be spread upon the teachers of the nation. 

Why do I think this? Because I’m ancient and recognise treachery when it bares its teeth at me. It is quite a theme of the document. Let’s look at the proposal for mini-exams. First, it is optimistic to assert that all young people are disappointed by not being able to take exams. Some of them will but many of them won’t. Me, I’d have loved not having to take exams.  Second, the proposal of exam-board-issued tests which teachers mark, have standardised by the board and include in the final grade by early July is boggling. Children in different places have missed different amounts of work taught in different orders, so how many papers will be available? How many exam board moderators are there? Are Ofsted inspectors going to be repurposed? What are you thinking?

Ah, but the penny drops, Mr Williamson, again and again. Here’s a fact not in the document: exam boards are not only going to charge for whatever they do this year but they’re going to put their prices up while reducing their service as we mark the things ourselves. For the big businesses that, shockingly, run our formerly independent examination system this is a scheme to print money. Reduce output and accountability while increasing profit. Kerching and thank you, Secretary of State.

However, some Headteachers whom I respect are convinced that exams are the only fair way to judge children, and that teacher assessment does a disservice to disadvantaged children because teachers are prejudiced in some way against them. I think they are wrong. Disadvantaged children are disadvantaged by poverty. If they had space to work at home, parents with secure jobs, good food on the table and a realistic hope of modest security in adult life they would do better.  It is fallacious to assert that exams can mitigate disadvantage. This, too, is not teachers’ fault. 

Mr Williamson, I was myself grilled on both sides at quite a temperature this week. I do try to sympathise.  Although, on reflection, perhaps I could spend my time better.

It's nearly Burns’ Night and I do love auld Rabbie. I’ve procured haggis and tartan napkins, other ingredients being part of daily rations chez Roberts. One of Burns’s biographers observed that he appeared to live his rackety life in the confident expectation of posterity’s attention. You could learn from that. You could certainly learn that the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley and perhaps decide to lay them in collaboration with people who know the terrain.      

I think you should think hard before appearing on any more telly.  Actually, I just think you should think hard. As Burns remarks

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall 
bear the gree, an' a' that.
Yours, at the end of my tether,

CR
22.1.21
 
PS A correspondent has asked me to make good on my promise to comment on the National Tutoring Programme.  Next week, dear readers.
0 Comments

Befogged

28/11/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
It was foggy when I set off this morning but the streetlights were pretty and the great illuminated buses big enough to see. By the time me and my bicycle got onto to Blackheath it was pitch black. I said ooh-er out loud a few times and hoped that the cross guy who mutters wouldn’t appear for me to run over.
 
Fog and early darkness always remind me of a conversation in a Head’s office on the edge of Sunderland at the end of a day, when the dark sky was all-enveloping. We talked about what it must have been like in mediaeval times, with the same sky, no lights, just the cold and the hills, and eventually, to the west, Durham Cathedral appearing looming above the city as if it had descended directly from heaven.
 
Safely indoors, the clock ticked round to year 11 assembly: Instructions for Mock Exams. These will be important but we don’t know how important. I noted with interest that the Queen of the Mocks referred to the pre-exam gathering place as the Green Canteen. This is catching on, though I call it the Dining Room and one of the chaps on the top floor calls it the Bistro. It doesn’t matter.
 
The curriculum we offer does matter, which may lie behind the continually condescending tone of this week’s post-lockdown briefing from the DfE. While announcing a pay freeze for teachers and public spending cuts that will make learning re-stabilisation harder, they remind us of the blindingly obvious: I condense
  • the curriculum must remain broad and ambitious
  • remote education must be high-quality and safe,
  • schools should plan on the basis of the educational needs of pupils.
Duh. They wrote this in July and trot it out every time. It was annoying then and gets more annoying the harder it is to keep schools going and offer a curriculum that is the same for everyone, the necessary condition for an exam-based system. The tone lacks respect, treating us as idiots.

Which appears to be the Home Secretary’s preferred register, manifesting itself ‘in forceful expression, including some occasions of shouting and swearing.  This may not be done intentionally to cause upset, but that has been the effect on some individuals’.

And later in Alex Allen’s belatedly published independent advice ‘Her approach on occasions has amounted to behaviour that can be described as bullying in terms of the impact felt by individuals.’

And then! ‘There is no evidence that she was aware of the impact of her behaviour and no feedback was given to her at the time………I note the finding of different and more positive behaviour since these issues were raised with her.’

Yet she remains, as the PM has insisted that the wagons circle around ‘the Pritster’.

I am in a Blackheath cycling fog about this and mediaeval darkness has descended on my comprehension. How can someone of such eminence, the Home Secretary, have to have bullying pointed out to her? How can it ever be right to shout and swear at colleagues, especially those whom one is expected to lead? How can she command any respect?

I have long clung to the existence of the Committee for Standards in Public Life as a guarantor of standards of conduct for public officials, from the PM down to lowly ole me. The ‘Nolan Principles’ of accountability, selflessness, honesty, objectivity, openness, integrity and leadership have bound us all since 1994. The current Chair spoke on 12 November and said:

‘The bullying allegations made against the Home Secretary were investigated by the Cabinet Office but the outcome of that investigation has not been published though completed some months ago…..this does not build confidence in the accountability of government.’

He goes on, further, to talk about cronyism in appointments and the awarding of public contracts, the firing of civil servants when the resignation of a minister would have been correct, the avoiding of parliamentary scrutiny by media announcements and the use of ‘just vote us out if you don’t like us’ as a way of brass-necking wrong behaviour.

The system depends on everyone choosing to do right, Evans says. High public standards rely on the individual. ‘It remains that case that in politics, public service and business, that ethical standards are first and foremost a matter of personal responsibility.’ because 'few systems are sufficiently robust to constrain those who would deliberately undermine them’. 

This is a dense area and the argument is nuanced. We are not living in a post-Nolan world nor should any of us wish to. We want high standards of conduct in our politicians because we want them to be good people determined to do the best for their constituents. We don’t want to be saddled with people who, as educated adults, have to be told how to behave. We want government to be built on a foundation of goodness and altruism, not self-interest and showing-off. We expect it of children and ourselves and we have a civic right to expect it of our government.

When we devised the national Framework for Ethical Leadership in Education in 2016-18 we realised that Nolan wasn’t enough, but we needed clear personal virtues to underpin all of our actions. We therefore also committed ourselves to trust, wisdom, kindness, justice, service, courage and optimism. We check our own behaviour to make sure it sets the right example to children, and to other adults. This enlightenment didn’t descend from a mediaeval heave, we worked at it.

The PM is lost in a fog of his own obfuscation. He has made too many personal mistakes to want to shine the Nolan spotlight on colleagues. He looks as though he can’t tell right from wrong and worse, that he doesn’t care. Our children deserve better than this.

CR 27.11.20

1 Comment

One Yorkshireman

16/2/2019

1 Comment

 
Picture
Our dining room’s a funny shape. I said this to a visiting Head and he got a bit shirty, giving me the full Four Yorkshiremen (he was from Harrogate). At least you’ve got a dining room, at least it’s a decent size, at least it’s joined on to the school, at least it’s on planet earth, not full of dung and so on, luxury. All true, but it’s still longways on with no thought given to the need to queue.

In cold weather this glorious green space – which only one person ever calls the Tallis Bistro – is quite the place to be. As someone who turned never-going-outside-in-cold-weather into an art form in my own schooldays way north of Harrogate I have every sympathy with the inmates. That doesn’t extend to sympathy with shoving and other uncivilised behaviour when there are a hundred or so more souls than usual indoors who may not be entirely occupied with nutritious eating. In order to prevent annoying clumping we’ve therefore removed most of the pundit chairs at the high benches. This caused a wave of concern among little chaps who like to keep an eye on the scraps for Sir’s dog and the ganneting teachers around the plates trolley, so we saved a couple for them.

Children are creatures of habit, and those habits, good or bad, are largely formed by the adults around them.  Schools are where society looks after its young until they’re old enough to assume the mantle of adult citizenship and everything the adults in schools do is scrutinised by young people, both the what and the how. Those teachers aren’t just modelling eating standing up while using a knife and fork properly, but food choices, friendly conversation and eyes in the back of their heads.

And so much more. We had a governor visit to scrutinise how we spend our Pupil Premium funding and whether it is having any impact. PP money is meant to improve the educational experience and therefore outcomes of children who meet one of a series of disadvantage indicators. We get about £400k a year, so it’s important to our (£13m pa) budget. We have to account for what we spend it on and the statutory document is available on the website here. (Just before you get too excited about it, PP was a Coalition hat put on money already in the system, so the idea that schools had the leisure to spend it on anything new and innovative was always a bit of a stretch.)

We spend a lot of our PP money on our ‘first class’ Pastoral Welfare Team, who wear out their sturdy shoes supporting behaviour management. Governors asked some PP-attracting children about this: did they think this was a good thing? Oh yes, yes indeed.

This is interesting, money spent on adults who spend all their time talking to children about how to behave is seen as an obvious good by the children. They’re not just modelling Tallis Character but the values and virtues of the good life, how to be honest, fair, respectful, kind and optimistic. The children see that in adults other than teachers (who are a breed apart and tend to go on about this kind of stuff) personal virtue, taking responsibility for your actions, is important.

I’m thinking about this on a national scale. The Ethical Leadership Commission I wrote about in June launched its report in January and since them we’ve had quite a bit of publicity. Our thoughts aren’t revolutionary, but fundamental. Children will only learn how to behave well if adults behave well. Adults running schools have to put this above all other structural considerations. Fancy outcomes or badges can’t be got at the price of poor behaviour. We have to do right, or do another job.

The Ethical Leadership Commission now has a Framework set of words, a pathfinder programme which 200 schools have already signed up to, some developing work in teacher and leader training and a new Ethics Committee and open forum at the Chartered College of Teaching. Tallis’s governors are pathfinders. It's slightly terrifying work: there’s a real risk in sticking your dishevelled head above the parapet and saying ‘we should behave as good role models for children’. Everyone’s made mistakes, but the real human skill is reflection and change, in a spirit of humility. I’ve written a book concurrently too, but that’s me ranting, not the measured tones of the great and good commissioners.     
 
Reflecting on our own behaviour doesn’t mean introversion or compliance with injustice. So much school policy in the last 20 years has danced around the elephant of privilege guarding the powerful. Ring-fencing money to support disadvantaged children is good, but it’s an Elastoplast on inequality. Our responsibility as good adults isn’t just as models of good character. Society should be fair and children’s lives not blighted by poverty and struggle. Those who have never needed any funding to give them a leg-up, or who have never known want, or who exist only within a bubble of other privileged people undermine the fair chances of the many by passing power around among themselves. Good people should be outraged abut this.  

I’m reading (myself obvs, matchless prose, but also) Friedman and Laurison’s The Class Ceiling. They observe: 
   
...when the following wind of privilege is misread as merit, the inequalities that result are legitimised. This leads those who have been fortunate to believe that they earned it on their own, and those who have been less fortunate to blame themselves.
Dr King dreamed that one day all children would be judged not on the colour of their skin but the content of their character. While we use our disadvantage funding to give love and lasting life-lessons, we mustn’t forget three of the virtues of ethical leadership. Our children need justice so they all may lead useful, happy and fulfilling lives.  Adults need courage to speak out in the interests of all children. We all need optimism, to understand the injustices we face and to change the world for the better.   

​CR

St Valentine’s Day 2019
1 Comment

Arrested on a train

5/10/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
I was minding my own business on the jolly old Southeastern into London Bridge when my attention was arrested by a poster advertising a grammar school served by the same locomotive. It asked rather loudly, ‘HAVE YOU JUST BEEN DEEMED SELECTIVE BY BEXLEY’S 11+ TEST?’

Immune to the concerns of other passengers I approached and photographed this shameless assault on language and then asked everyone on the mothership what it meant. I don’t allow that kind of talk at Tallis so no one knew.  Consulting the ether, apparently, ‘deemed selective’ is the status a child attains who has passed the 11+. Charming.   
I’m trying to keep up with the reading so I’ve already told you about Robert Verkaik and Melissa Benn this year. Now I’m going to tell you about another bonza tome, Miseducation : inequality, education and the working classes by Cambridge and LSE Emeritus Professor Diane Reay. Brought up on the Derbyshire coalfield, she taught in London primary schools for 20 years, so she knows a thing or two. It’s very readable.

Her first chapter, Why can’t education compensate for society? sets out her thesis. Both class and poverty have always distanced working class children from education, but recent fads and interventions have made this worse, not better.   

Focusing on test scores as a measure of school quality has a particularly dangerous effect on schools which serve largely poor communities. Those pressures – and their leaders’ choices - lead to narrowed curriculums and obsessive teaching-to-the-test largely unknown by more advantaged children whose teachers are more confident about results.   

Schools serving poorer communities have a majority of young and inexperienced teachers, committed and determined but rarely from similar backgrounds to the children. They may have been skimpily trained on programmes which stress the adoption of particular practices (fancy uniform, zero tolerance) said to be modelled on the public schools, but which rarely exist there.

Schools justify these hideous proxies because they say they need to re-shape children’s character and outlook in order for them to succeed. Some go further, saying that children from ‘chaotic’ homes need order and structure in school to be able to free themselves from the lives their parents lead. Some – fee-paying as well as and normal schools – equate parental worth with cars and holidays, a ‘nice house’.    
   
In this way, loose talk about social mobility becomes a frontal assault on the parenting of those trapped in poverty. ‘This education will give you a good life, better than your parents’. Ergo, your parents are deficient, shameful, they have let you down. Reay uses a clear phrase here, describing ‘shame as the darker side of optimism’. Optimism is expected in school, or at least its functional twin, aspiration. Optimism is natural to young people despite teenage gloom. Aspiration is more specific, always linked to hard work, good exam results and university entry. In this way, social mobility is outsourced to the child: if he isn’t sufficiently aspirational he throws away his chance of escaping poverty. It’s his fault.  

In a chapter called Class Feeling: troubling the soul and preying on the psyche’ Reay quotes from extensive interviews with children in primary schools where they define themselves by their grades, where they ‘know’ that they’ll have a ‘bad life’ if they get a ‘bad score’. This focus on grades above all, she says, has ‘shifted children’s self-identification as learners’. They are their grades, not their efforts and their insights. If grades are bad, they must be bad, and unworthy of escaping poverty.

While advantaged children also suffer from soul-destroying commodification by potential exam results, they do not have to engage in ‘rational computation’ in order to meet the goals that best suit their interests. If you ‘know’ that you will go to Oxford (Cambridge, St Andrew’s, Durham, Imperial or wherever) because that’s where people like you always go, you don’t have to think much about it. Everything about your life has readied you to get in. You are fine being yourself, you don’t have to learn to become someone else. Oh, and personal private tutoring is built into the family budget. 

So, not only do many poor children go to schools where the teacher shortage really bites, but some of the newly-popular ways of running schools are deliberately framed as places where children have to disown their parents.  From a position of poverty (30% of all children now), they are expected to value material success as an output of education which, if they fail, is their fault for not aiming high enough. While current policy claims to try to raise working-class achievement, by its approach and funding it actually ensures that failure is firmly located in the working class.  If you remain working class like your parents, you are a failure.  What kind of madness is this?
Uninformed madness. 'A plethora of spectacular educational irrelevancies such as standards, testing regimes, raising attainment and achievement levels, league tables, school choice, academies and charter schools, performativities and managerialism, image and impression management, academic/vocational streaming, punitive naming and shaming strategies and the rhetoric of school improvement and school effectiveness have obscured the crucial importance of social class to educational success.’

What does work? Reay says: collaboration rather than setting and streaming. Intense personal learning relationships between teacher and child that empower students as ‘knowers’. Passionate engagement, original thought. And perhaps working towards an answer to the question ‘why English education has never embraced approaches that work and adopts those that don’t?’ Grammar schools, anyone?  Why bother with the 11+ test? The evidence shows that the ‘deemed selective’ child was actually selected much earlier.

Anyway, the reason I was on the train to start with was to go on the Worth Less? school funding march. We were, as the organisers said, ‘relentlessly reasonable’ and have carried on being so this week as the sheer effrontery of the DFE claim about funding has been systematically unpicked and exposed as shameless falsehood. The UK Statistics Authority is calling it in for investigation, so all power to their spreadsheets and swivel chairs (which is how I picture them).  

I was directing traffic and some year 8 boys passed me. One said to the other ‘I’m praying for something good to come out of it’.  Who knows what that problem was, but Amen to that.
 
CR
4.10.18
1 Comment

The long night and icy dew

3/12/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
​My year 9 philosopher berthed alongside near the memorial garden. Regular readers will recall her specialism is calibrating bleakness. Everyone’s terrible, she declared, but all I could see was some bottle-flipping, irritating in itself, but possibly permissible at lunchtime in this far corner of planet Tallis. It’ll end in insults and chasing, she foretold, as two shrieked past. I thanked her kindly and went to stick my nose into a group of year 11 boys who were randomly cheering, just to annoy. Second lunchtime, Thursday, December, week 13 of 39. 

We travel in darkness at this time of year so the short days take on a sort of flicker-book illuminated urgency. We rush about doing and talking constantly, then it goes dark again and we wait for reanimation in the morning light. Time telescopes once you get to December and the pull of the exams gets stronger. Nothing’s new anymore and we’re starting to feel tired, especially year 7s unused to the distances and the sheer physical demand of secondary. Diversion is welcome.

Oblivious in my lair two weeks ago I was surprised to hear and feel a bang like the trump of doom. I rushed to the window and saw the smaller lunchers jump a bit, look around for entertainment, not find it and resume annoying each other. I put my whistle on for protection, just in case the end of the world needed whistling in, jammed hands in pockets and strolled (never run towards potential disaster in school for fear of gathering a crowd) downstairs to find - nothing. Business Director, usually clued up, was also missing, presumably vaporised in the boom. It took some time for her and I to stop calmly chasing each other and eventually coincide in block 5. The bang was, of course, that chemical, the one that caused all the trouble somewhere else (I’m not a chemist). Anyway, Science found it, told Business, who rang 999. By the time she got from her office to reception – admittedly a bit of a trek through a lot of doors – to warn of imminent constabulary, the Bomb Squad, good grief, had arrived. Minutes later a hole was dug on the back field, the offending stuff carried carefully to it and then exploded safely at a distance.  15 minutes from call to bang. 

Musing over the sequence of events on the stairs we happened upon some year 10s, fresh from a triumphant Talent Show production with Barclays mentors the previous night, and deranged with curiosity. They questioned me closely and found me wanting. One tossed his curls: I’m going to ask Sir about this. Thank the lord for Sir, who could explain the bang without using a frankly unsatisfactory phrase to hear from a headteacher ‘it was stuff that might explode’. What isn’t? 

Children need the world interpreting for them. Not everyone heard the bang, so we could have ignored it, but we didn’t. Science explained it on Monday and there was general discussion and wry amusement.

Later that week, another explanation, another explosive issue. This time it was sexual and relationship danger with a fabulous theatre company doing Chelsea’s Choice. Four actors slipping in and out of two or three roles each telling of a terrifying slide into abuse and desperation. When each scene ended with review by the actors of the play within the play the audience visibly relaxed. Some apprehensively chewed their jumpers, or their neighbours’ jumpers. Girls held hands. Rapturous applause and a great q and a at the end. Fifteen-year-olds think they’ll never make mistakes, but I’m old and I know that they will, and their optimism is heartbreaking.  

Year 9 saw it before lunch, brilliantly, year 10 after lunch. Well. Let me just say that they certainly benefited from the show but also from the bonus opportunity of 20 minutes lining-up-and-entering-the-hall-in-silence practice while we reinstalled a piece of operational software that must have been dislodged by the bang.

This darkness takes me back to an Advent 37 years ago, on the Strand when I first heard Geoffrey Hill’s poem that begins:

What is there in my heart that you should sue

so fiercely for its love? What kind of care
brings you as though a stranger to my door
through the long night and in the icy dew
seeking the heart that will not harbour you..?
 
We throw ourselves at the education of the young in the hope that some of it sticks. There’s so much to tell them and we have to get it through the noisy clamour of living, the insults and chasing, the cheering as well as the darkness, just to make them safe for life. What is there in their hearts for which we sue so urgently?  The flickering urgency that illuminates our days, the best hope for a better world.
 
CR
1.12.16
0 Comments

Ask for Angela

4/11/2016

1 Comment

 
Picture
Pardon me for mentioning it but I was in the loo of the Wig and Mitre in Lincoln on All Saints Day when I saw the Ask for Angela poster and thought that’s a damn good idea. If you've missed this – and I’m not often up with the zeitgeist – this is a dating safety genius from Lincolnshire County Council. The little posters say something like if your date’s not going well and you're worried about your safety, if you think there’s something a bit weird, go to bar and ask for Angela. The staff will know what you mean and will quietly get you out and whisked off to a safe place of your choosing. Angela the guardian angel, obviously.

Angela replicates for adults the safety nets we know are vital for children. From Childline to the NSPCC, from the trusted Form Tutor to the kindly dinner lady, we expect a worried child to be comforted and protected. We do it all the time. I was on the gate this week and a small person presented himself. It was Tuesday, moved house on Monday and he couldn't remember how to get home. That's a pretty panicky place to be for an 11 year old so we rushed to Reception where Miss even extracted a smile from the sobbing lost soul as she made the necessary calls. Everyone needs an angel when they're in trouble, someone who'll reach out into the hostile world and map you to safety.

We've entertained another Civil Servant from the DfE this week as part of our mission to change the world for the better. He did three days, glued first to a friendly child and then a range of impossible jobs so he could see what we do to protect our communities from political whim. He admitted on arrival (it was a good job l warmed to him) to expecting a big city comprehensive to be a bit chaotic but was bowled over by our calm and happy vibe. He saw English, maths, art, geography, break and lunch duty, staff room life,timetable, data, inclusion, deaf support, the dreaded IER and even did some speed networking for the Year 10 careers gig. He liked the warmth and safety that he felt, and the care he saw in action. He also saw the budget. And what the future looks like.

But we talked about teacher retention and what to do to restock the classroom for the longer term, and stop teachers bailing out. I went off on one as per about intelligent accountability, assessment expectations and unscrupulous school leaders wringing the life out of young teachers but we also talked about the effect of the myriad routes into teaching and the ethical underpinnings of the profession. Except I called it a service, because I think that helps. Decentralised recruitment and training needs really tight principles and explicit expectations if we're to preserve something that was once taken for granted. Kindness, optimism, scholarship (let alone tea and queuing) don’t survive accidentally. Old git, moi?

Which seamlessly segues into part one of a limited series entitled Reasons We Might Miss Michael Willshaw. Himself talked eloquently this week about schools being the glue of a cohesive society which any selection interference will wreck. Go to it, Sir! All power to your irritating elbow! Unfortunately he also blamed local colleagues for not preventing a nasty fight out of hours recently. A tad unjust: these things are the devil to manage and he just wasn't there. Still, one out of two ain’t bad.

We had Year 11 maths and English night on this week and Year 10 careers speed networking with 40 volunteers. Wednesday night was the wonderful Shakespeare Schools Festival at the Greenwich Theatre, complete with an authentically Shakespearean audience, where our young people were slick and witty, Puck on a skateboard, top marks for Bottom. The Dream lives on.

Life should be better than it is for a lot of people. Women ought not to fear for their safety when they're on a date. Everyone should look out for one another and any of us should feel able to ask for help. Our Tallis community isn't perfect, but it’s characterised by genuine warmth not based on a spurious grit ‘n' resilience tick list. Our children have the right to expect kindness and a helping hand when they leave us, and throughout their lives. I'd be proud to think one of them thought up Ask for Angela. #NO MORE.

CR
4.11.16
1 Comment

    MRS ROBERTS WRITES...

    A regular column about school life.

    Archive

    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    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
    Acas
    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
    Camhs
    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
    Civilservants
    Classrooms
    Climate
    Clipboards
    Clothes
    Clubs
    Cocurricular
    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
    Costofliving
    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
    Donaldtrump
    Donpaterson
    Doors
    Douglasdunn
    Drama
    Dreams
    Driving
    Drking
    Dt
    Durham
    Earthday
    Easter
    Ebacc
    Eclipse
    Economy
    Eddieandthehotrods
    Edhirsch
    Education
    Effort
    Eglantynejebb
    Eid
    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
    Fascism
    Fashion
    Fatherbrown
    Fear
    Feminism
    Festival
    Fidelity
    Filming
    Finances
    Fitness
    Fog
    Folly
    Food
    Foodbanks
    Football
    Frederickdouglass
    Freedom
    Freeschool
    Friends
    Friendship
    Fsm
    Functionalism
    Funding
    Future
    Gaffes
    Gardening
    Gavinwilliamson
    Gcse
    Gcses
    Generosity
    Geoffbarton
    Geography
    Geordie
    German
    Germans
    Gestures
    Gillliankeegan
    Girls
    Globalwarming
    Goats
    Gotomeeting
    Gove
    Government
    Governors
    Grades
    Grammar
    Greenwich
    Grenfell
    Growing
    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
    Lornafinlayson
    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
    Morale
    Mothers
    Motto
    Movies
    Multiculturalism
    Music
    Musical
    Myths
    Names
    Nasuwt
    Nationalcurriculum
    Nationality
    Neo-trad
    Neu
    News
    Newyear
    Newzealand
    Nfff
    Nhs
    Nickclegg
    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
    Pandemic
    Parenting
    Parents
    Parentsevenings
    Parliament
    Participation
    Partnership
    Pastoral
    Paternalism
    Patience
    Paulmuldoon
    Pay
    PE
    Peace
    Pedagogy
    People
    Performance
    Perseverence
    Persistent
    Pfi
    Philbeadle
    Philiplarkin
    Philosophy
    Phones
    Phonics
    Photography
    Physics
    Piersmorgan
    Pisa
    Place
    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
    Publiclife
    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
    Rudeness
    Rudyardkipling
    Rules
    Ruthperry
    Safeguarding
    Safety
    Sajidjavid
    Sanctuarybuildings
    Sarcasm
    Sats
    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
    Strikes
    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
    Trips
    Trump
    Trust
    Truth
    Tsarinas
    Tsars
    Ttra
    Tutor
    Tutoring
    Tutors
    Tweetgate
    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
    Wellbeing
    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
      • Tallis at 50
      • 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
    • Term Dates 2023-24
    • 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