Ofsted Fallout

The summer holidays may be here but the fallout from our Ofsted inspection casts an almighty cumulo-nimbus over the 6 weeks off. Plans are afoot to deal with the "issues" highlighted by the ever-so knowledgeable inspection team and the teaching staff are to bear the brunt of the average inspection findings.

Some teachers (those who are deemed "not up to scratch" by those at the top) are to be mentored by those considered "outstanding" on the staff. Rumours of two lists being drawn up in leadership meetings have surfaced:
List 1 - "Good" teachers who could perhaps achieve a regular "Outstanding" in observations.
List 2 - "Satisfactory" teachers who need to be got rid of.

I'm on one of the lists - I know that because I have been told that I'm being mentored from September and observed for part of a lesson every month. The pessimist in me would suggest the former, and that may sound bad, but having talked to colleagues, I've got off pretty lightly. One particular colleague is to be observed every fortnight - formally. All observations have been described as "supportive", meaning that the unions have little grounds on which to complain. Clever!

What's even cleverer is that all discussions over these "supportive" observations have been held in complete secrecy, meaning that upon entering the staffroom and finding a colleague with their head in their hands and asking what the problem was, they were in the same boat (pretty much) as me. The relief that crossed their face as I told them that I had had the same conversation and they had found out that they weren't alone was a joy to behold.

It appears to be clear that the Head, Deputy and Governors clearly hold the teaching staff to account over the Ofsted inspection, and as the legislation to dismiss "inadequate" teachers is becoming easier to navigate for senior leaders, teaching at the school is becoming a pretty unpleasant experience - and it's not even September yet!

What no-one (or perhaps everyone, but no-one will admit it) seems to realise is that had the senior management not given the school an over-inflated SEF (Self-Evaluation Form), which Ofsted read before actually visiting the school, and given a realistic SEF of "Good" then any other arguments we, as a school may have had with the inspection team might have actually been listened to. Instead, the inspection team quickly realised (correctly) that the Head and Deputy were hell-bent on achieving an "Outstanding" grade that was never going to materialise, and they would say anything in order to achieve that goal.

There's nothing like passing the buck though I suppose.

Cheers Pontius.

Summer Holiday!

It's finally here - six weeks off! It couldn't have come quick enough.

Now what to do?
Holiday? How much?!
Shopping? It's very busy!
Sit at home and look after the kids? Probably!

Don't let any teacher tell you that the best thing about being a teacher is making a difference to all those lovely children in their classrooms. They are lying to you. Holidays is what it's all about, and I'm not too shy to say that 13 weeks per year is very good compared to most peoples' 4 or 5 weeks per year.

There are downsides though:

1. The travel companies kindly bump up all their prices making it almost impossible to actually go anywhere. They don't even offer last minute jobs. The price is often prohibitive if you are paying for more than just yourself - and that isn't a moan about teachers' wages, it's a moan about the legality of the holiday companies' policy of increasing prices hugely.
2. All the kids are off too. This may sound an obvious point, but everywhere is busy and more often than not worth avoiding as a result, unless you particularly enjoying queuing that is.
3. If you have kids, you have to look after them or pay for them to go on some kind of activity scheme, which are often charged at an extortionate rate.
4. You therefore end up having very little holiday at all, unless watching Nick Junior can be classed as a holiday activity.

I'm not moaning really (well, perhaps just a little bit) but even though teachers get a lot of holiday, I think they do deserve it (I'm biased, I know) purely because they have to suffer it with all the human beings they are holidaying from. Not to mention the fact that teaching is actually quite knackering and the fact that there would be very few teachers at all if the volume of holiday on offer was shorter.

I, for one, would not touch the profession with a barge-pole if it weren't for the time off!

Dear Parents, Your Child May Lie To You

When I first started teaching all those moons ago, most parents were pretty supportive. I remember one particularly challenging child refusing to stay for a detention so I rung home. His parents (you wouldn't want them on your Trivial Pursuit team, I hasten to add) brought him back and sat there whilst he washed the tables that he'd spent an hour defacing. I couldn't ask for any more, and after that had few problem with that child - a punishment that worked!

Nowadays however, it's a little different. Approximately the same amount of children misbehave (I personally think that it's more, but I'm probably kidding myself) but parents actually believe the yarns spun by their offspring.

What parents have to bear in mind is the following:

• Teachers don't really want to set detentions as they are essentially detaining themselves. Ok, that teacher may be hanging around for that time,  but you get far less done when you have a detainee darkening your classroom.
• Children, in fact most people, will tell a lie to get out of a tricky situation. It's a survival mechanism, so parents shouldn't be surprised that it happens.
• When you enrol your child in the school the teachers become "in loco parentis", meaning that essentially the teachers can do what they like to punish a child who has done wrong - within reason obviously.
• A teacher has absolutely nothing to gain by making up stories about a child. I repeatedly get children in my tutor group telling that such-and-such a teacher hates them. Believe me, teachers have far better things to do with their time than make a child's life difficult. It's far too much time and effort.

As I've said in a previous post, I've had to endure a torrent of abuse down the phone from a child I was only keeping in for 15 minutes for not doing her detention, but have also received a letter from a "well-to-do" parent saying, and I quote, "I'm sure you would put a child in detention for not understanding the work". Now let me put this into context:

• The child had a week to complete the homework.
• This meant that they'd seen me 3 or 4 times that week.
• I had actually done about a quarter of the homework (workings and all) to help out those who didn't "get" it. This child failed to take down the answers.
• This child is in my tutor group, so had actually seen me on 5 extra occasions when they could have asked for help.

Basically the child couldn't be bothered - CBA in text speak (they can't even formulate proper sentences now).

Since children don't get punished as their parents won't allow it, misbehavior cannot be dealt with and the classroom becomes anarchic.

It really is a sorry state of affairs, education in England at the moment. And it's only going to get worse as those who hated school in the first place breed (it's their meal ticket after all) and poison their offspring (the politest word I could find) against school too.

What a terrific career choice one has made.

Marking Time

It's part of the job marking, and anyone who's a teacher should realise that it has to be done at some point. I personally hate doing it and think it's a total waste of time as whatever I write is almost exclusively ignored by the students. I reckon that I could write something really quite insulting in every child's book and only a tiny amount would complain.

It's a different type of marking that teachers have been doing recently, and that's marking time. The last 3 or so weeks of the summer term are what can colloquially or educationally be called "a total waste of time". At our school the final breaths of the academic year are filled with work experience and "different" activities (known as "developmental" or "enriching" activities in some schools) for the students, as well as sports days and other such things. Now I'm certainly not complaining about these "different" events, in fact I think that in general they are really good and I wish that I'd been given those opportunities when I was at school. The trouble is that interspersed throughout the "different" stuff are normal lessons, and herein lies the problem.

Our school has. in recent times, opted to start the new academic year at the start of the final half term of the official academic year, the idea being to focus the students as they are then taking on new information and in some cases, a totally new subject. It also makes a teacher's life a little easier because you no longer have to fiddle about on the internet finding time consuming "end of year activities" to keep the hoards occupied, as they have generally taken all their exams and are winding down to the long summer break (as are their teachers, I hasten to add).

This is another case of the educational tail wagging the educational dog, in the sense that the people who make these decisions don't actually have anything to do with delivering them. In other words, the Head and their Deputy, who teach a combined timetable of approximately 39 lessons per year (that's one per week people, and that's a pretty full timetable for most), come up with and make it happen, whereas the minions have to suffer the decision by delivering the new policy to the masses.

I know that I'm going to have to cover all the stuff again next year as they will all have forgotten it all by September, but what can you do? Finish the school year earlier?

I have a number of friends in the building trade for one reason or another. When they were younger many of them (although not all) used to go out on a Thursday evening for a few alcoholic beverages as they only had to get through one more day of work. Some then decided that it was pointless therefore working with a hangover and took Fridays off, which meant that they then moved their drinking nights to Wednesdays, which led to them taking Thursdays off and so on until they ended up not working at all - in fact most realised the error of their ways pretty quickly and just worked with a hangover on Fridays.

The same thing would happen in schools if the year finished 3 weeks earlier, the previous 3 weeks would then become a period of time marking until ultimately schools would never open. I am therefore not suggesting that we do anything about it, but parents, please don't expect your children to actually learn anything in the run up to the summer break as it really won't happen, and you'll more than likely get a response from your child's teacher that you didn't really want to hear; eg. the truth about your wayward and unpleasant child, from whom the sun does not shine and who lies to you on a regular basis.

Rant over, for now.

Publication of the Report

The school's Ofsted Inspection Report has been published recently, and what a terrific read it is too. Full of generalisations and nonsensical statements.

The school was essentially judged as being "Good with bits of Outstanding" a few years ago. The report tells us that the school has addressed all the points made in the last inspection effectively and has therefore gained a grade of "Satisfactory". So what they are essentially saying is that although the school has progressed since the last inspection, the grade has gone down - significantly. Does this not suggest that either the goalposts have been relocated or that the inspection team are clueless? I'll leave that up to you to decide.

The inspection also names some major departments in which an inconsistency of teaching was observed, hence teaching and learning can only be judged as "satisfactory". I would like to say at this point that less than half of the teachers in those departments were observed, and the majority of lessons, sorry, parts of lessons (they can't be bothered to watch a whole one), were "good" or better. How can they make such statements? Actually, silly question, they can say what they like without fear of reproach.

The whole thing only supports my view that these people are clueless, the entity that employs them is out of touch and they write reports based upon their mood at the time, with little regard for what actually goes on in a school. Their teaching experience (if they've actually got any) dates back to the days before ICT was a proper subject and the cane was freshly oiled before a breakfast of gruel and unpasteurised milk.

The whole thing's a £200 million per year joke - quickly knock up a bonfire in the town square and pass me my lighter. I reckon their suits will go up within seconds.

Accountability - The Teaching Who's Who Of...

We live in an age of accountability - government ministers go on about it, as do local government. Everyone's accountable to someone else apparently.

Or are they?

Teachers:
Accountable to their line managers (heads of department) and their cohort (students) through delivery of lessons, and the quality of that delivery. This manifests itself in good (or bad) exams results based partly upon the teacher, but, and this is often forgotten, it is also based upon a child's desire to learn/listen and their discipline during the lead up to exams. Basically, do they get all the notes down, try quite hard and revise before an exam. A teacher lives (and dies) by their exam results essentially, and that's fair enough to a certain extent.

Line Managers (or Heads of department on old money):
They are accountable to the member of the senior management team who oversees their department, and ultimately the children and parents of those who attend the school. That line manager  can be an expert in the subject, but more often than not, isn't. This is not a criticism just a fact that a school can't have an assistant head who has taught every subject which they oversee - that would be very expensive and unnecessary. What they should be (although in the public sector, the cream doesn't always rise to the top) is a good teacher, and therefore able to offer support in the classroom to those who require it. I emphasise the word "should" at this point. They do this by observing lessons and offering feedback, which in my experience tends to be a pretty negative experience where the line manager says something along the lines of "you don't teach like me so you must be rubbish" and I respond with something along the lines of "I'm happy that I don't teach like you - I never want to be anything like you because I don't like you". Observations are supposed to be a positive experience - they generally are a demoralising experience.

Assistant Head Teachers:
They are accountable to the deputy head teacher and the students/parents at the school, although they do tend to teach a reasonable amount, so have similar accountability issues as other teachers.

Deputy Head Teachers:
Accountable to the Head Teacher, but tend to do a lot "sitting in their office" pouring over the latest data that has been emailed to them. They do also tend to deal with the major discipline issues.

Head Teachers:
Accountable to the Local Education Authority (if that's what it's still called) and the school's governors. The heat from from these two bodies is dependent on the school's results and how many people they exclude (targets are low, hence the increasing amounts of misbehaviour in schools). Governors are taken from parents, council and staff and ultimately can be hoodwinked to a certain extent because they probably aren't fully aware of what goes on within the four walls. The teacher governors tend to keep quiet for fear of being sacked.

And then overseeing the whole thing is, you guessed it, OFSTED.

Who are they accountable to? No-one ultimately. The government believes that these people know what they are talking about whereas anyone on the "shop floor" will tell you that they haven't a clue. How else would you get away with a comment like one that I was told by a colleague recently.

The scenario - a city school that takes a lot of asylum seekers who barely speak English as they've only just arrived in the country. They'll learn the language, the school has no doubt, but it will be a long and difficult road, and will also mean that exam results will be affected. The conversation went something like this:

OFSTED Inspector:
Your exam results are below average for the catchment area you are in.
Teacher:
That's because a majority, over 50% (the inspector will need this numeric clarification) speak English as an additional language, so considering that we actually do quite well.
OFSTED Inspector:
Maybe you need to think carefully about your stock.

That just about sums them up, OFSTED. Data driven idiots who can say what they like without fear of reprisal.

Failure Can Be A Good Thing

As any teacher will tell you, students are not allowed to fail. They have to leave school or college with some form of qualification. This would initially sound like a good thing, and sure enough, the powers that be believe that. The trouble is that the students know that they can't fail, and actually this is a very bad thing indeed.

So why allow children to fail?

Until someone experiences failure they can have little motivation to succeed. Many GCSE courses are modular or involve some form of coursework. There are pros and cons for this style of examination.

The Pros:
Not everyone is good at exams although they are quite capable at a subject.
Not everyone reacts positively to the pressure of exams, and therefore don't do themselves justice.

The Cons:
Teachers, friends or relatives can end up almost dictating a piece of coursework, because they know that if a child fails their course they will be blamed, despite the lack of effort on the part of the child.
Students pay little or no attention to what goes into their coursework, so although they have produced something, they have actually learnt nothing.

Added to this that colleges (and universities) are funded by the number of students they have on role, they will let people in with sub-standard qualifications, meaning that the student has to spend extra time (and get the college extra funding) retaking the exams they failed. There's no "well that's it - you've failed and can't do this" culture any more, which once experienced, will almost certainly drive young people to make sure that they don't fail again.

No-one likes the feeling of failure, and the "once bitten, twice shy" theory comes into play.

If teachers and schools were allowed to fail students in subjects that they deserve to fail in (I firmly believe in "you reap what you sow") then I am convinced that results would improve. All that happens at the moment is that students continually get extensions and have little motivation to hand in work because they know that their teacher will get something in for them.

I overheard colleague of mine phoning one of his students on the final posting day for coursework pleading for the child to bring in their project; a project they had completed I hasten to add. The child couldn't be bothered to bring it in.

If that student doesn't deserve to fail, then we might as well all give up.