Accountability and Resilience - Give Me Your Vote

There's an election in around 6 months, a troubling time for every public service as controversial policies are either rushed through before a party is voted out or idiotic statements by desperate politicians searching for your vote are made. The latest fad amongst the political classes regarding education is character, resilience, grit and the ability to pick yourself up and have another go. A couple of links are below (there will be more as the election looms):
BBC Education
Telegraph

It seems that the military are going brought in to teach "grit" and "character" and teachers must back this up, with Labour's Education spokesperson Tristram Hunt stating that if he were in charge then all new teachers would be trained to teach "character", which would no doubt be eye opening.

As you've probably guessed, I have a couple of issues with these noises emanating from the offices of Westminster.

1. At what point do parents get involved in the process of bringing up their own offspring? It seems to me that parenting has all but been abolished by government and the various agencies/quangos that claim a stake in education. The number of times I get a note in a child's diary to tell me that a child didn't understand (despite links to tutorial videos that apparently can't be accessed or weren't known about) or that the child "had a busy weekend" just shows how a complete lack of resilience, grit or any other character trait that might aid a young person in the big wide world is condoned by parents in general. And if parents won't allow their children to have "grit" what chance have teachers or military personnel?
2. Why do students at school need resilience nowadays anyway? Students have no responsibility whatsoever regarding their academic outcomes; teachers claim all that whether they want it or not. Students know this and realise that if a teacher wants to avoid capability proceedings then the teacher will essentially do the work for them, in fact only recently this very problem hit the media (The Guardian's coverage is here). DfE and Ofsted obsession with data, or in layman's terms, exam results means that this is an ever increasing phenomenon; kids aren't stupid, they know it and literally let the teachers get on with it. The days of "you get out what you put in" are no longer with us for some, but fortunately the majority of students are conscientious.
3. What on Earth are MPs doing telling anyone about resilience and grit? The first whiff of scandal and there's a resignation and expensive inquiry.

Politicians in the UK need to make their mind up and choose one of the following two options:

1. Insist that parents play a role in the upbringing of young people rather than just blindly blaming public sector workers.
2. Remove every newborn from their mother at birthand bring them up in their own vision in thousands of state sponsored workhouses.

I'm pretty sure they'd prefer the second option but it's unaffordable in times of austerity. More importantly it might lose them a vote, so it's definitely off the menu.

Rewards - something for nothing?

This news story was floating about on social media today, a story about a middle school that held a "mufti day" only for those who had reached their accelerated reading targets. Click here to see the full story from the Telegraph.

This got me thinking about the expectations of students about to sit their GCSEs and A Levels. The Easter holidays have just begun but many secondary teachers will spend some time in school delivering revision sessions, or in the case of many of their charges, "desperation" classes for those who didn't listen in class first/second/third time around and can't be bothered or don't have the discipline to revise independently.

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day who described this telephone conversation with a parent about their underachieving child in an option subject (names have obviously been changed):
Teacher: I was just ringing to say that Alice is currently on about a C grade but is very capable of getting an A grade if she puts in a bit of effort and knuckles down for the remaining 5 weeks or so at school.
Ms Smith: "Knuckling down" isn't really Alice's I'm afraidt.
Teacher: It really wouldn't be that arduous, in fact I can tell her specifically what she needs to improve upon.
Ms Smith: I really can't see her doing it, but it's great that she's capable of getting the A grade. Is there any way she could get the A grade without putting in the work?
Teacher: Not really I'm afraid, but I was thinking that if you had a quick word that might give her some encouragement.
Ms Smith: It won't work so I probably won't, but I look forward to her A grade in August.
Teacher: *Sigh*

I'm not embellishing this conversation; it actually happened. It's not untypical in the school I work in either. Something for nothing is almost expected. The entire culture of holiday and after-school revision sessions is a toxic one that encourages this "something for nothing" attitude; one no longer has to bother to listen in lessons as you will get numerous other opportunities to be taught what you've missed. After all, teachers have to do all they can to get their classes through 4 levels of progress or whatever ministers and their quangos decide is acceptable nowadays. Ofsted's and the DfE's obsession with data/exam results is the root cause.

And who can blame the students exclusively? At home students receive rewards for nothing. An obvious example immediately springs to mind: a student who has had to leave one school due to his behaviour and is lucky to still be at his current one received but a brand new vehicle for his birthday, despite being woefully below target in every subject on his timetable. So what chance have we, as a school, got? None is the short answer.

Deadlines are not deadlines and students know that if they wait long enough a teacher will essentially be forced to write coursework for them, having been pressurised by a nervous SLT who fear a visitation if the following summer's results are below par. No wonder employers think that schools don't produce young people ready for the workplace (as this story from January 2014 highlights). I'd have to agree that they don't, but aren't allowed to, despite what ministers say.

So when a headteacher tries to highlight the fact that if you work hard you get rewarded, like the workplace, loads of people moan and pick out that those who miss out, for whatever reason, have their self-esteem damaged. You can't win.

How will those children, future members of the workforce no less, how will their self-esteem be when they can't get a job that feeds their excessive lifestyle that they see in the media because they didn't work hard? Where do you draw the line? They have to learn the lesson at some point.

The Chinese Are Coming To Save Us! Or Are They?

In a desperate bid to make British children better at maths the DfE, via Liz Truss, have decided to jet in 60 Chinese mathematics teachers to run maths classes in 30 "maths hubs", whatever they are. The story from the BBC website is here: click me!

I can see numerous business leaders and politicians breathing a huge sigh of relief that we will finally have a numerate generation ready for employment and a set of Pisa results that can be boasted about around the world. On second thoughts, business leaders aren't that stupid and surely can't believe that these 60 visitors from the East will make any difference whatsoever; politicians, however, are stupid enough to believe that this will work despite being told otherwise by various people (read the comments on the BBC article).

So why won't it work? Why the negativity?

I shall answer the second question first, as it's quick and simple:
This is just the latest in a long running campaign to denigrate the current teaching profession in the UK. For a while now ministers from the DfE have stated in various speeches to anyone who will listen that we need top graduates in teaching, and mathematics is one of those subjects where there are relatively few top graduates working as teachers. This because mathematics top graduates are like rocking horse poo (rare, if you're unsure) and get snapped up on big wages, that schools can't really afford to compete with, by industry. And anyway, would a top graduate really be the best person to get algebra across to a stroppy bunch of teenagers? Probably not, as the aforesaid top graduate won't be able to understand why these teenagers struggle to see the point of "letters in maffs". All the government are currently doing is ensuring that no-one will really want to become a maths teacher and the crisis will build in schools from what is already a critical state.

So now we move onto why flying in 60 maths teachers from Shanghai is frivolous at best:
What ministers fail to realise is that the results from certain provinces in China aren't truly representative; statistics are doctored to show them in their best light, something that politicians, particularly those from the DfE are well practiced in. What ministers, and clearly Ms Truss also fail to acknowledge, is that the learning culture of Chinese students is completely different to that of UK students. I'm not saying that UK students shouldn't be like their Chinese contemporaries, but the fact is that they aren't and are highly unlikely to change due to a guest speaker from Shanghai. The consequences of not doing well in maths in China is poverty and starvation; the consequences in Britain is the entitlement to endless benefits which allow you to have much of what you desire without any personal outlay. The incentive to succeed in maths is just not there in the UK. So no matter what these Chinese teachers, very good they may well be, if the horse doesn't want to drink, forcing its head under water will be pointless and will likely end up in a four-lettered tirade towards the guest. Until attitudes towards mathematics change in the UK, the DfE may as well save on the air fares.

This is yet another example of pigheadedness from a DfE minister designed to fool the public into believing that they actually care about anyone but themselves in the run up to a general election. Fortunately, I think that the general public have been under-estimated by ministers and they can see through their smoke and mirrors; at least I hope they can.

The Problem With Top Graduates...

The government has been on about attracting more top graduates into teaching for a while now. They've offered bursaries (see here), expanded the remit of the teaching recruitment charity Teach First to allow it to recruit greater numbers (see here), and made various announcements that have been lapped up by the media of varying quality (Telegraph, Independent, Mirror, Daily Mail to link just a few). A simple search online will unearth hundreds more articles I have no doubt, if you can be bothered that is.

The requirement to actually have a qualification to teach in the state schools of England has been relaxed in the most favoured types of school for the Department for Education, namely academies and free schools. The qualification requirement has never been compulsory in private/public schools, the type of school that a high proportion of MPs attended, or in the case of my local MP, wish they'd attended. Now you may say that if it's worked in private and public schools, what's the problem? They get great results that state schools could get after all. It's a question of intake, student motivation and support from home that is a major difference my friends. Anyway, that's a separate point; what I wanted to cover is the myth regarding top graduates.

There are a few subjects that have been highlighted by DfE ministers and other MPs on programmes like Question Time that really ought to have top graduates teaching the youth of today; namely mathematics and science. You could throw "new subject" computer science into that mix too, as you are either very good at it and therefore probably did it at university; there is no middle ground with computer science: either you're brilliant or you're crap. I'm the latter.

At A Level and Degree I couldn't agree more that maths and science could do with being taught by top graduates, although they need not be the be all and end all. Teaching of those courses is to children who have chosen to take those subjects and already have an deep-seated interest in the subject. They not only want to know how to do something, they want to know why it works that way; something that a top graduate can explain with ease, whilst others would possibly have to do a little research. So, dear DfE and those in expensive suits in Westminster, feel free to attract top graduates for those posts, but don't disregard others. You will have to dangle numerous carrots in front of these high flyers to divert their attention from the lucrative careers that top mathematicians and scientists have traditionally entered. It might help if DfE press releases and various Ofsted employees didn't consistently criticise teachers in the media too. I digress again...

My main query is whether a top graduate really is the best type of person to teach maths and science to disinterested children who have no choice but to be there and just want to get the minimum grade in order to never have to sit through a lesson again? Unfortunately with a total lack of interest in the subject, the likelihood of achieving that grade is minimal. These students need to be taught in a different way. Empathy with the inability to understand a concept first time around is hugely helpful. A top graduate in their subject will invariably have found most, if not all of their subject pretty straightforward. The trouble is this means that our much lauded top graduates will get increasingly frustrated as their charges fail to grasp covalent bonds or simultaneous equations. A teacher who was not a top graduate probably won't have found everything easy, and can therefore understand the frustrations.

If you couple this lack of empathy for a  student's woes with a lack of any teacher training or qualification then the recipe is potentially disastrous. If there's one thing that my PGCE did teach me it was different strategies for dealing with classes, mainly through teaching placements admittedly, but without it I would have floundered even more than I actually did in my NQT year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that top graduates couldn't empathise, they are just less likely to understand. So Mr Gove, DfE, Sir Michael and the various other political types who drone on and on about top graduates, they may not actually be the answer to all your problems!

Behaviour Policies

Frustration is at the heart of many a teacher's day. It can manifest itself in many ways:

1. The kids won't listen and aren't taking their education as seriously as they should.
2. There aren't enough hours in the day to do the various tasks you have to do as a teacher.
3. The photocopier's broken and you need a class set of worksheets.
4. Your computer crashes in the middle of an observation.

There are many frustrating issues that go along with being teacher, and probably most jobs in fairness, but my main frustration has to be exclusive to educators:

How some kids essentially get away with everything: doing no work, being rude, smoking, swearing at staff, the list goes on.

Take an example from last week of a child who is regularly in trouble with the police for offences such as burglary, drug dealing, theft in general and wagging school. His home life is extremely settled, or should I say, should be extremely settled. This child's parents have applied for the child to be taken into care because of the carnage that surrounds their every move. This student, whom I attempt to teach when they are there, last week went nose-to-nose with me and called me a "fucking idiot" whilst I was on duty only to go on and threaten a colleague of mine, warning them to watch their back as you never know what might happen.

Both myself and my colleague wrote the incident up, but bright as a button, the student strolls into my lesson the next day. This student doesn't intimidate me in any way, although perhaps that's pretty foolhardy of me considering some of the people they hang around with, and this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. The student clearly feels that they can do what they want, when they want. In fact they threatened another member of staff a day or so later. Nothing's happened.

Not only is this absolutely shocking, but when you see normally nice kids make a mistake or lose their temper and get the full rule book lobbed in their general direction, receiving time in isolation and phone calls home to explain to their parents just how naughty they've been, it makes me wonder why every child isn't misbehaving more. The more you do, the more untouchable you seem to become.

I'm not saying that schools should be excluding every child who sneezes in the wrong part of the corridor, but unless there are consequences for those who misbehave, where's the incentive to toe the line? The government (no surprise there) has made it almost impossible for schools to exclude, although they will obviously claim otherwise. If a school does exclude, it still has to pay for their education. In a climate of decreasing budgets this is not an option for many schools.

Why I Dislike Most Ofsted Inspectors...

Ofsted is a beast that has grown beyond comprehension; they now essentially run education under the leadership of Sir Michael Wilshaw (despite claims of independence from the DfE). All the ignorant ministers think he's wonderful, the media love him because he gives them soundbites that slate teachers (the media really like slating teachers, in case you hadn't noticed) which he later tries to claim have been taken out of context. Teachers, in general, however, can't stand the bloke nor his inspectorate.

Few people actually like or agree with those who judge them, other than those who require a wet wipe for the end of their nose, but Ofsted not only take a biscuit, but arguably the whole packet.

What really gets me about Wilshaw (and the same goes for his mob, sorry, inspectors) is that he's quite clearly forgotten what it's like to be a classroom teacher. He makes statements about "moaning teachers" (here's the BBC link). but neglects to consider that perhaps his seemingly continuous gripes in the media about teachers possibly leads to the "moaning". He became a headteacher at the age of 39, and is nearly 70 now, so it's fair to say that he has had little recent classroom experience.

I know that I'm supposed to be talking about Ofsted inspectors and have spent wordage so far on Wilshaw alone, but he is their leader. Let's face it, the minions follow their leader, and the problem is that I wouldn't urinate on the leader if he spontaneously combusted. That aside, he actually has the right idea at heart: he wants all children to have the best opportunity to fulfil their potential, and no-one (not even me) can argue with that. The methods he employs to impose this, however, are questionable.

So if Wilshaw's so great, why do his minions constantly ignore him? He has said for a while now that he doesn't have a particular lesson style in mind as long as the children learn and progress at a fast rate. Fair enough; most teachers know that. Unfortunately, many inspectors don't (see the blog Scenes From The Battleground for more info) and they expect to see the teacher not teach - group work/discovery etc. Wilshaw is quite clearly a poor leader if he can't get his message across; I shall be struck down for besmirching the good Sir Michael's name!

And so onto my main gripe: Ofsted are very keen on data and contain a huge proportion of failed classroom practitioners (don't believe the "we only employ top quality headteachers" rubbish). Please bear in mind that many failed in the classroom in days gone by, when discipline was a whole lot easier. No, I don't mean that you could cane the poo out of a child who misbehaved back then, although Sir Mike did admit to doing so. I mean that parents' views hadn't been tainted by an acidic media, meaning that now loads of them believe teachers are the spawn of Satan (perhaps they're right in some cases, judging by the abuse cases that seem to be mounting up) and fair game for verbal abuse.

Ofsted hold so much power nowadays that a pretty average inspector (one with little or no track record, and there are plenty) can essentially decide the fate of a school on a whim. We live in a time where anything Ofsted say, goes; if Ofsted wanted winter to be summer, then so be it - they would manipulate data to show that it would be beneficial, believe-you-me. So if the headteacher manages to annoy an inspector early on (I have experienced this), then there really is no point in trying because the outcome has already been determined. Inspectors know this, and in some cases, play on it. Professionalism isn't part of the equation; "I'm going to show you who's boss" is.

I also have a problem with the fact that Ofsted only recruit "outstanding" teachers or headteachers. If the people they are recruiting are that good, why the hell are they wasting their time judging sub-standard practitioners (it's all relative) when they could be getting the UK up the Pisa league tables? They clearly either dislike teaching (so shouldn't be involved in education at all) or are rubbish teachers (so shouldn't be inspectors). Either way, neither is desirable or employable.

That's why I can't stand Ofsted inspectors; and that's why I am rude to them at every given opportunity. If you ever wanted to see "poacher turned gamekeeper" personified, just glance at an Ofsted inspector and stifle the urge to vomit over them. It's a waste of good vomit after all.