Last night was options evening, a reasonably jolly occasion. It’s the first time that children really get a choice about what they study and it’s always interesting to see how they respond. Options had an added soupçon of excitement for us this year as our advent visitors from Ofsted Towers gave us a Paddington stare on the matter. Pray tell us why, they said, you have a three-year key stage four when you know we disapprove? Enlighten us, would you, as to its purpose? And what, for the love of Mike, are you doing with year 9? As I’ve said before, we had ready answers. As I’ve said before, they raised their eyebrows and narrowed their eyes a little. Then it appeared in the Things To Do list they kindly left us.  

After Ms Dedman, Tyla and Engen had spoken (admirably plainly and passionately) I addressed the assembled families in the hall. Reporting on the Lead Inspector’s thousand-yard stare I asked parents to tell me what they thought. Half a dozen sought me out, all of who approved of what we did and liked the early choice. They talked about motivation and freedom and taking on adult responsibility. Their children nodded sagely – but they don’t know anything else.

Some parents rested their weary elbows on the canteen pundit benches and probed gently. Why did we introduce a three-year key stage four, then? Well, it was before my time, but in an era when it was not only common practice in schools, but admired good practice. It gave children the chance to study for (sometimes modular) GCSEs in a flexible way, perhaps resitting where necessary, or even passing something in year 10 and doing new courses in year 11. It helped maximise results.

Most of those conditions have gone now. GCSEs have much more content, the modules are gone, and the chance of assimilating enough content and knowledge before the end of year 11 is frankly unlikely. Schools don’t do so many GCSEs and it’s not possible to hoist up results that way in any case anymore. Not that that was ever a justification.

Tallis has found itself in an interesting position. When I arrived in 2013, the first year of year 8 options, many staff begged me to return to options in year 9. I prefer to take a long view and had no experience of a three year key stage four, so I didn’t act precipitously.  By the time we got to a second year, and certainly by the time the revised specifications for GCSE appeared, Tallis teachers had grown fond of the new division and much preferred it. Three years at key stage four gives you time to take the higher levels of content more slowly. It means that year 9 can be a foundation year, where children are spared exam questions and can really immerse themselves in the subject and what it means.

However, the visitors didn’t quite experience it like that. They were left with the impression that too many children are doing exam practice for too long. We shouldn’t be doing that. Fair point.

There’s another matter too. Three years is a long time to study one thing. It’s as long as a degree, but with much less lounging about. A thirteen-year-old is a different beast to a sixteen-year-old and there’s a risk of them forgetting by year 11 everything that they knew in year 9 (as well as their name, address, PE kit, timetable, friends, enemies and sandwiches). The year 9 introduction year works really well if it’s a foundation year, but the exam prep really should be left to year 11.

Why don’t we just stop it and go back to three-year key stage three?  Well, three years is as long as a degree and they’re too young for all that coffee. Year 9 in a subject you can’t wait to drop is a long year, at just the wrong developmental age, when you find it really hard to concentrate on anything except yourself and are just getting into your stride as Outraged of Greenwich. Perhaps we should do something else with year 9 altogether?
So we’ve got a working group together and we’re thinking of both obvious and creative solutions. Everything is on the table and we’ll decide what to do by October, ready for next year. We’ll invite parents’ views too: watch this space.     

But the really nice thing about options evening, like any parents’ evening is seeing our inmates with their elders, the way they talk to one another, lean on each other, tut and roll their eyes at each other, gasp in blank incomprehension at each other then leave arm-in-arm. Love takes so many forms, some of which are also confusion and worry. We need families to have patience, and keep talking , and make their good choices together, no matter how old they are.

I’m glad to be part of the same human family as New Zealand. When their PM’s ready, would she like to come and sort us out?  
 
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21.3.19

How often do you walk backwards? I was accosted by a toddler last week keen to demonstrate forward and reverse gears. I thought I should tell him that reversing has limited utility, but now I’m seeing it everywhere. Teenagers walk backwards as much as forwards given half the chance because, like toddlers, they are unbelievably nosy. They can’t tolerate conversation without their input and when space is limited try to walk in a clump with a couple at the front walking backwards to maintain the circle of discussion. That’s all very well, but eyes are located at the front for a purpose and reversing in a group through a door while holding a football, arguing about love or PE and not knowing how big your feet are is positively hazardous. Face the direction of travel, I cry. Save yourselves.
 
People have been dropping by just to tut and roll their eyes and tell me how long January’s been. This is strictly unnecessary as it’s the same blessed length every year, but coming back to school before Twelfth Night makes it seem interminable. And then there’s February to contend with, which is no better except for half term. It would make perfect sense to have a moratorium on any excitement this half term and just concentrate on getting through the days and heading home before nightfall.
 
However, we are gluttons for punishment. We’ve had a pretty constant stream of visitors (apart from Them) attracted by our website and our general stuff. A much-visited colleague reasonably asked ‘Do we ever say no?’ Yes, but not very often and perhaps I should. Fine words from someone who’s arranged another Civil Service Immersion visit straight after half term.
 
Anyway, yesterday’s visitor was again impressed by the self-regulating multi-directional traffic on the bridge. Like an elderly 14-year-old I can’t leave a good thing alone so went forth to hassle the crowds today. Feeling sprightly for my age, I didn’t grab the trusty anorak. I shuddered theatrically therefore and a forward-facing youth asked if I was cold, as if being cold was an unacceptable sign of weakness. In February. In a thin jumper. Post-Ofsted. Perhaps I needed Clara’s spotty headscarf?
 
Unacceptable weakness was exactly what was being tested (I think) by an enthusiastic group throwing eggs off the bridge after close of play on Wednesday. No, not that kind of egg throwing, we don’t hold with that here, but something sciency. Eggs with parachutes, accompanied by groans, howling, derision and cheers.
 
Much like this week’s staff briefing which included gardening, birthday parties, fidget toys, slime, year 11, year 13, a knockabout double act between me and Gov & Pol, but thankfully no mention of parking. I’m pretty intolerant about fidget toys, but hypocritically so. I can’t sit still to save my life and invariably pick at my face, hair, teeth or just get up and wander about in meetings. Rank has its privileges. HMCI knits: I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
 
But this week also brought us Year 13 parents' evening, the end of the road for some long-term parents. The former Chair of Governors, for example, with child number three now in the final furlong. It’s a strange experience and I’ve said it before: we should print certificates, or strike medals.
 
Except that parents do it for love and generally don’t begrudge the time spent queueing and arguing (usually with the child, occasionally with a teacher and we try to resolve that). We do it for love too, in our own way and we try to give our time freely. A new support colleague asked if she should make an announcement to hurry parents along as time wore on, but we tend not to do that. Parents’ evenings overrun, its part of the warp and weft of school life. I can usually predict who’ll be last. Yes, Bradshaw.
 
Even when everyone’s gone, a handful will remain picking over hard cases or the unexpected upsets and wondering about how we could do it better. Then we all go home. Children and parents to happy or sad homes, filled with pride or regret. Teachers likewise. Mr Smith rewards himself with a kebab after parents’ evenings, and why not?
 
When we get back we can turn to face the second half of the year with confidence and commitment.  Our Platinum Artsmark award buoys us up that our holding onto creativity is valued, and a super conference yesterday sharing practice on transgender young people went really well. It’s getting lighter! Have a nice half term
 
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9.2.18

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.

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10.3.15

 

She qualified at about the same time that women teachers started to be paid the same as men. When I was born in 1961 my retired grandfather sent her back to work with the words ‘it doesn’t take three people to look after this baby’. He taught me the parts of a car engine and the church boiler and took me to meetings. My mother worked as a primary school teacher for 40-odd years in Teesside. She did everything: lots of plays, singing and dressing up as well as a furious insistence on the primacy of times tables by heart over all things. My friends’ mothers in the 70s didn’t work and I was proud of her career, which started when teachers were also Civil Defence Volunteers and ended with computers in the classroom. Married twice, she wasn’t told to stop until she was 65.

I did go to university, though my grandfather didn’t live to see it. I came to London and then did a PCGE at Birmingham. I’ve taught all over the place and picked up qualifications at two more universities. I chose not to work when my children were tiny and was a Head by 40. No-one has ever shown the slightest interest in whether I was married or not, though colleagues did buy me a nice set of pans when I did.

My own daughter shows no signs of going into the family business. Educated to within an inch of her life at an excellent comprehensive school, she took university in her stride. Like her grandmother and great-grandmother she knows a thing or two about life and is not a woman to tangle with. Prosperity or austerity – what could get in her way?

Having an educated mother is a pretty good start in life for any child. UNESCO knows that having a mother with secondary or higher education halves child mortality. The World Bank recognises that educating girls to secondary level is a clear indicator of prosperity and stability. Yet simple things prevent it. While Malala’s story is a crystal-clear shocker of bigotry and brutality education remains impossible for millions of girls for cruder reasons. Even in places where governments have strained every sinew to provide education, girls stop going to school once they start menstruating because there are no toilets, no privacy and no running water. Some girls don’t get educated because their world is against them, but some don’t get educated because there are no sanitary towels and no doors on the loos.  Half of the girls who drop out of school in Africa do so because there are no proper toilets.

So have a look at the Toilet Twinning website, and if you haven’t bought your Mum anything for Mothers’ Day, put a toilet in your basket.  My mother and grandmother had some things to overcome in their time, but nothing as outrageously basic as this.  Let’s spend a penny or two and give other women the chances our mothers fought for.

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26.3.14  

Wednesday is sixth form council. They reminisce about life lower down the school, how to encourage that happy absorption in interesting events in their younger colleagues.  ‘Fairtrade Week!’ one cries, others groan. I make peace with a young chap who acted foolishly and apologises graciously. Year 12 have mock results and a parents’ evening. It’s lovely to see personal traits we know well reflected in parents.  We see different faces of the child: one who’s painful at home may be all charm at school, and the opposite. Parents want to know what we’re doing and we are pleased to be accountable. Year 11 have mock exams but the weather gods are only partially kind to PE while the sports hall is full of anxious desks. All 21 staff who took level 1 BSL have passed. More ukeleles appear.

Thursday we review our new improved lunch queuing system, instigated by communal outrage from the small about pushing in from the large. We face the challenge of a dining room built without space to train The Great British Queue of the future. Young people simultaneously demand and resist change, and support and complain about decisions. They want to know why we decide as we do.  We’ve brought the queue indoors and it’s quick but loud.  A slow-loading computer poses problems for the year 9s presenting assembly: they react with aplomb. I read OFSTED’s latest guidance so to predict their scrutiny when it comes.     

Friday is observing in history. Year 8 students tussle with the ending of the slave trade in Britain. Despite complexity, they articulate honourable and economic reasons. They understand pragmatism and moral imperatives and contort themselves across chairs the better to make their points in group debate. I talk to a man about door-stops who thinks children are much bigger than when he was at school. Are they? Everyone over 12 looks tall to me. I give the Director of Education a Thomas Tallis umbrella.

So ends a week that began on Sunday with teacher licensing on the news.  I was irritated that politicians and press think this might annoy or challenge us. We are analysed and examined from every angle all the time and none of that as closely as we study ourselves.  At least it’ll expose the old lie that there are thousands of incompetent teachers skulking in the staffrooms of the nation.  I planned to mull it over in church, but the sermon was too interesting.

Monday of week 18 we start again.  Notwithstanding alarums and excursions, about 3,500 lessons will be planned and taught, 40,000 pieces of work created and 8,000 or more lunches cooked.  An inestimable number of pens will have run out and homework sheets been glued in upside down.  We’ll have theatre trips, job interviews, residential visits and visitors from 6 countries. 

Tallis spends another week fulfilling our responsibility to the community’s young under the public’s eye.  Changing the world, one day at a time. 

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16.1.14