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EDUCATION TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD & CHANGE IT FOR THE BETTER

What's progress

11/2/2017

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A year 11 solicits my opinion on his burgundy fleece gloves, ridiculed as effeminate by his chums. I agreed this was unjust. Another inquires politely after my health and asks for advice on cough remedies. I’m available for comment on most things, but I generally try to specialise in two areas. For the record, those are knowledge and the curriculum, and ethical leadership. However, if you’d like my opinion on any other aspect of education, literature, life, politics, fashion or domestic poultry I’ll happily give it. I may not be well-informed, but I’m articulate.

I’d been asked for a piece on knowledge for an outfit of whom I was suspicious. I arranged to get up close to the commissioner one dark afternoon before agreeing. I went easy on him as he was so baby-faced he could have passed unnoticed among year 10 without the tweed jacket. He reassured me he was old enough to be out buying coffee for women so we agreed on the article and then he asked me about centralised detention.

My hearing isn’t great in a crowded room. What? I said: do you mean where an Assistant Head gathers all the sluggards who’ve been late for lessons into the canteen at the end of the day and annoys them? Like when a Deputy, steeped in treachery and low cunning, sits with egregious offenders until 16:30 on a Friday? Or a Head of Department gathers homework defaulters on a Tuesday?  Or a Head of Year gets irritants together on Thursday and badgers them for an hour? Yes. It was a bit like being asked how I feel about GCSEs, or assemblies, or lining up for a fire practice. As kindly as I could, I said: I don’t think it’s new. He said, everyone’s talking about it on the blogosphere. I made a cross-eyed face: is that a fact?    

Sure enough, a couple of weeks later the uber-school of the new rigidity advertised for a Director of Detention. Is that all they’re going to do? Someone described it as recruiting an official school bully, but that’s unfair. We all do detentions. Our own good Sheedy could be called Director of Detention, but its only part of his work on engagement and good behaviour. I’m amused by this oldest and unsubtlest of sanctions being gussied up by new schools who are very keen on saying what they DON’T do: they don’t mark books, they don’t do wall displays, they don’t let children talk, but they’re very keen on detention. Surprised they need it. Funny old world.

New schools in a deregulated landscape are on my mind. We’ve been talking to anyone who’ll listen about an aspect of the Progress 8 measure. P8 is a good measure in that it doesn’t present perverse incentives at the C/D borderline which skews schools’ approach to teaching. All grades count equally and the school is judged on its average deviation from the national norm, each year a different dataset. (Actually, all grades don’t count equally until next year, therefore favouring the grammar schools, but that’s a rant for another day). The problem is the disproportionate effect a non-achieving child has on the whole outcome. So, our final grade for 2016 is -0.05 against a national average of -0.03. That includes 8 young people (of a year group of 270) who, for a range of sad reasons, weren’t with us daily by the end of year 11. Without them, it would have been 0.1, quite a different outcome. But we weren’t without them.

So, this year there’ll be consequences of compassion again. We have young people not in school. Some did things that mean that they can’t be in the Tallis community, some are ill, others the victims of atrocious circumstance. All are being educated otherwise, but they remain on our roll until the end because we chose to find them a positive alternative to the oblivion-risk of a permanent exclusion in KS4, or keep trying. Local Authorities do the same.  However, the protocols that bind all schools together where we share the most challenging young people appropriately and fairly are stretched by the proliferation of schools sailing under different flags. Some partner with us closely, others are more distant. They can’t be compelled to take children who’ll endanger their results.
Harbingers of doom said that the academy programme would lead to the abandonment of the vulnerable. As always, the regulator steps in to prevent sharp practice, so the last school the child went to gets his results. We’re proud to be one of those schools, proud to be inclusive and give everyone another chance and we’ve a lot of colleagues whose expertise makes that possible.

The future is troubling. The planned funding formula endangers support services and therefore further endangers children to whom life has already dealt a duff hand. Who’ll care for the children who are harder to love? Who’ll go the extra mile for children who can’t offer much in return? I’ve an opinion on that too.
 
CR
9.2.17
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Tracey Emin's Bed

5/7/2015

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Picture
Busy busy, I should say. Year 11 and 13 leaving ceremonies, prom and party, Headstart Day for year 6 and the last training day of the year.  It’s that that interests you? Glad to oblige, keen to scupper any notion that we sit around eating grapes and playing canasta. We’re still rewriting schemes of work now that the national curriculum has got very small indeed. Hardly visible to the naked eye, compared to its predecessor which was visible from space. Our departments have been deciding what knowledge and skills children need, working backwards while planning forwards (snazzy, eh?) from the top of A level to the littlest year 7s. 

We were putting the finishing touches to our new way of assessing and reporting at KS3, what with it being three weeks to September 1st in School Land. Imagine our pleasure, therefore, when we were well and truly goosed by a new announcement, its evil twin and an unspeakable triplet this week.
Item 1: GCSE grade 5. G5, as a spiffy young colleague called it, is the new C. G5 is where the measuring will happen, a bit higher than C, more of a B-lite. Got it? Our KS3 plan (taken us 9 months) won’t quite work so we needed to adjust, on Monday too. Stop me if I’m boring you. It’s not a big deal, but we’ll have to do a shedload of work again and it gives the lie to Morgan promises about lead-in time and workload. Who knew?

Staying calm, let us contemplate item 2: the EBacc, now compulsory for everyone starting year 7 in 2016. We’ll have to think. We spread KS4 over three years to develop a bit of depth, but that means we need to be ready for September 2018, which isn’t long if you have to retool without any money. We quite fancy a TBacc, which is EBacc with Tallis bonus, but we’re not through thinking yet. Perhaps we’ll install one of those French barber’s pole affairs as a foxy addition to our foyer, and just remove an A. It’s enough to make you yearn for a Gauloise. 

And now, ta-dah! Item 3: a school is coasting if fewer than 60 per cent of pupils get 5+GCSEs A*-C with English and Maths. Or, after 2016, if our yet-to-be-defined progress measures aren’t up to scratch. Hmm. Wouldn’t it be great if the coasting measure was ready before it was introduced. Wouldn’t it be great if the 60% figure meant anything more than adding 50% to Gove’s 40% which just doubled the number Ed Balls first thought of. Wouldn’t it be great if accountability wasn’t driven by the Regional Schools Commissioners’ academisation targets? Wouldn’t it be great if teachers had been consulted? Wouldn’t it be great if the progress measures weren’t loaded at the top end to make it easier for leafy or grammar schools? And has anyone thought about teacher supply? Even academies don’t have spare mathematicians stacked ready in cupboards. However, all will be well if you have a credible plan, hard to devise on Planet Incredible.

Item 4 to ensure that our cups runnethed over: OFSTED published a jolly new handbook.  

Our professional associations are desperately trying to help the DfE understand that you can’t simultaneously promise stability but bring upheaval if you don’t want to look like an idiot. I blame the posh schools they all went to: did their character education not include honesty or restraint (let alone foresight, common sense or an understanding of averages)?

Anyway, we continue tripping and the glorious galleries and museums of the capital are alive with Tallis turquoise. We have a brilliant photo of year 9s looking at Tracey Emin’s bed. Concentrating hard and respectfully, knowing it’s an important piece they still look slightly bamboozled, as if they can’t quite see it yet, as if they don’t quite get it. They will, because it does make sense and skilled teachers will get them to articulate a measured personal appreciation and decide if its art or not.     

I’ve seen the same expression on the faces of headteachers this week. We’re looking hard at all the policies but we don’t quite get it yet. It looks like Gove, but Nicky Morgan said she would take it steadily. It looks like playing politics with schools the same as everyone else has, but she says some Heads are complacent. I know heads who are tall or short, saints or loons, tutting or sobbing but I’ve not met a complacent one this century. This week’s policies are Tracy Emin’s Bed so bear with: I haven’t quite got it yet.  

CR 1.7.15

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What's the point?

1/2/2015

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Arne Olav, The Dorse, 2013. You can see more of his animal hybrids here.
What’s the outcome of a pointless conversation? Civilising year 9 is a recurrent theme and the Novelty Double Act had another go this week. Chat to each other, we said. Talk about the weather. Practice your small talk, it’ll take you anywhere. Sitting at my computer in the gloaming there’s a sturdy rap on the door and three youths materialise politely with a whiff of conspiracy and no punctuation: ‘Sorry miss but we were going down the back stairs admittedly we shouldn’t have been there but then we heard something in the assembly hall and when we went in some big people year 11 or something yelled at us to get out they might be intruders we think’. I was able to reassure them that year 13 drama students preparing for tonight’s assessed performance probably didn’t need their critical insights so they pottered off.  Time will tell if this conversation has any outcome. 

Twenty-six years ago I sat in a seminar in Durham called Designing Learning Outcomes. Mike the linguist and I scratched our heads, but he’d just told me that cars moved forwards because of the exhaust coming out of the back, so I didn’t know how reliable his understanding would be. How can you design an outcome?
Don’t you design a curriculum, differentiate it as best you can and then the outcome takes care of itself? For most of the intervening years designing learning outcomes has meant Getting Kids To Grade C, but the times, they are a-changin’. 

We’re tussling with curriculum and assessment at Tallis and trying as ever to peel the onion of learning. What are the basic building blocks of the curriculum? What should children know? How can we make them independent and able to manipulate powerful knowledge to understand the world (and change it for the better)? How do you get them from not knowing very much about anything to being able to get a useful qualification with currency for the adult world? We’re digging into our key stage three curriculum and building it up from first principles, designing proper learning outcomes from the very start, progress outcomes. Not just the nine terminal exams of GCSE triple science but the assessed practicals of the arts, with or without uninvited proto-critics. Progress in learning and effort, proved in examination and assessments. Progress from each child’s starting point.

The best teachers do this brilliantly well and we’re reviewing the usefulness of grading lesson observations so that we can recognise it better. Observations with cliff-edge gradings are not only flawed (and hugely stressful to teachers) but probably useless now that schools understand what we’re doing a bit better. Proof of the pudding et cetera: would you rather have a dull-ish teacher with a solid curriculum and good progress outcomes at all levels or an exciting teacher with equally mercurial results? Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or ten duck-sized horses? (Forgive me – it’s a question we’ve been asking at Tallis. We have our reasons).

I’m convinced by typicality. To me, a consistently good teacher is outstanding because of the extra reliability. You can‘t judge that in one or three classroom visits a year. You can judge it by looking in regularly, examining children’s books and behaviour, assessing test results and progress outcomes. You can add really valuable understanding by asking the children: ‘Is it always like this?’ Most children like teachers they’ve got used to, especially the cheerful and effective ones. Reliable teaching with flashes of inspiration, sky-high expectations, good discipline, good humour and good progress. They’ll tell you the truth and then go back to thinking about food.

So we’re designing learning outcomes by writing curricula that build up knowledge and skills, assess effort and progress accurately and aren’t driven by cliff-edge scores. I’m full of hope in what we’re doing. It’s taking us a bit of time, but the conversations are models of professional dialogue and not in the least pointless.

Small talk is shaping up nicely not just in year 9 and, despite appearances, is far from pointless. We’ve got a community learning outcome about confident talk with adults so that the quiet ones who never have a conversation with an adult in school have more confidence to contribute in class and articulate their knowledge. The horse-duck scenario was last week’s school-wide conversation topic. For the record, I’d prefer the horse-sized duck, as I told my class. Ten duck-sized horses would be really annoying, and how dangerous is a duck likely to be?  But they said: ducks are birds which are really dinosaurs so a horse-sized one could do you some damage. Had you thought of that? Let me tell you, it haunts my dreams.

CR 29.1.15

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Everything in between

4/5/2014

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Picture
Michael Kidner, Circle after Image 1959-60
Have you seen our field of jeans? Do potter along if you haven’t. The jeans on poles at the front of our building are part of a brilliant experimental programme called Catalytic Clothing. It’s the brainchild of artist designer Helen Storey and chemist Tony Ryan – people from different worlds in a highly successful art and science collaboration. They’re working with the R&D departments of big laundry brands, exploring how clothing and textiles can be used as a catalytic surface to purify air. Saving the planet while you wander about. Yet another practical use for teenagers.

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

It was at this point in composition that I looked at the clock on Tuesday. It was 12:05, and I bethought myself that (a) OFSTED were due sometime after Easter, (b) they always ring immediately after 12:00 and (c) is that the phone? Time has behaved oddly since then and the last 54 hours seems like (a) weeks or (b) seconds. Thank you, but I can’t tell you how it went. Rules are rules.
Anyway, I have had cause to consider the measuring of what we do. Is it reasonable to measure the progress of children and schools?  Yes. Is it reasonable to investigate whether that achievement, behaviour, teaching and leadership are up to scratch? Yes. Does this damage schools?  Probably not: the new schedule, as we winsomely call it, is much more sensible than it has ever been before. Does it give a full picture? Maybe not. As Dougal once said to Father Ted about bishops ‘Ah Ted, they just come in, fumigate the place and then they’re gone.’

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

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

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

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

CR 2.5.14    

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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
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