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.

Consequences For Actions

FACT: If I told my boss to "F*** Off" I'd get the sack.
FACT: If I repeatedly told colleagues to "F*** Off" in anger, I'd get the sack.
FACT: If I prevented colleagues from doing their job, I'd get the sack.

The constant moan from employers is that schools aren't preparing the youth of Britain for the world of work, so why don't the same consequences listed above apply to school children?

The summer is a period when many schools send students on work experience. Many students, if they had been bothered to find a placement that they might be interested in, find work experience extremely rewarding, but the number who act like they do at school (ie. refusing to follow instructions) seems to be on the increase and turn up at school having had a strop and stomped off from their placement.

Why is this?

In my view it's purely down to a lack of consequences for actions in schools for students.

Now I'm not advocating that schools should kick out every child who misbehaves, and I also realise that school children are liable to make more "mistakes" than adults, but part of the problem is that when a student seriously crosses the behavioural line, a day spent out of circulation and then a return to a regular school day is perhaps not enough of a deterrent.

Behaviour of children is a major gripe amongst teachers (although politicians are up there too). Every school, no matter what the headteacher says, has challenging students who you would think would be in line for possible exclusion. As a colleague of mine was saying the other day, there are a few things you need to weigh up when prioritising who should possibly face this (extreme) sanction:

• Do they regularly misbehave?
• Is there evidence for this behaviour? (Evidence is crucial now due to the appeals process.)
• Has the school put a plan in place to help this child modify their behaviour?
• Is this plan making a difference to their behaviour?
• Does the child regularly prevent other children from learning (a consequence of preventing the teacher from teaching in many cases)?

I don't want to see loads of children excluded from school - they have to go somewhere after all, but does repeated poor behaviour mean that they relinquish their right to choose where they are educated? The problem is that if there are no obvious consequences for poor behaviour, the problem will only get worse as those students push the boundaries further and more students jump on the poor behaviour bandwagon.

At my school we have a few students whose names regularly crop up in behavioural discussions, but none appear to be on the brink leaving for good despite the fact that their behaviour is getting worse. One child who I have had the "pleasure" of teaching recently appeared on the board yesterday, presumably for swearing at the teacher, constant disruption of lessons, refusal to follow instructions, storming out of class and then telling a senior member of staff to "F*** Off". I don't actually know why they've been excluded, but that is what has happened on numerous occasions in the past, and still that child will come back in a few days as if nothing has happened, despite having been told repeatedly that they are in "last chance saloon". 

Government introduced red tape, including the right to appeal, doesn't help as schools lose money every time they exclude a child permanently, but they would lose a lot more if they kept a child who affected the results of many due to their behaviour. If politicians genuinely want standards lifted (a debatable issue) then they may want to think about allowing schools to excluded children who keep those standards low through their choices regarding how they behave. Teachers often complain that most of their time is spent on the minority of students who misbehave rather than imparting knowledge that may actually raise standards. This clearly isn't right - teachers shouldn't essentially be stewards, predominantly keeping control in their classrooms, they should be teaching, the job they were trained to do (in most cases). How are standards going to improve if teachers aren't allowed to teach?

And then we get to parental support...

It is often no coincidence that many of the students who fall into the category above have parents who either don't set consequences for their children's actions, or will defend their children until they are "blue in the face". But that's a subject for another blog.

Lesson Observations

Let's be honest, lesson observations are a necessary evil; an evil that few teachers enjoy. When I first started teaching lesson observations were a pain but generally supportive and useful. I think it's fair to say that nowadays their usefulness is generally limited. It all depends who is doing the observing of course. The trouble is that many observations are given by senior leadership who rarely teach (and occasionally never have) due the the mountainous paperwork now involved in school management.

So what's changed? Essentially, not a lot. They have always been an indicator of whether a teacher should be encouraged to move on, whether to another school or another career. The main difference, and the teaching profession has Ofsted to thank for this, is that feedback is a lot more aggressive nowadays.

What does that mean though?

Ten or more years ago the lesson observation was there to check that your classroom wasn't a warzone and that you, as a teacher, were imparting the correct knowledge in a meaningful way to your cohort. Plenty of warning was given to the teacher (which probably shouldn't have happened as it gave the opportunity to refine their lesson which made it too artificial) and a relatively simple lesson plan required. There wasn't a particular style of teaching or focus (unless that was thought useful); individualism was acknowledged and respected. Students were expected to listen and do what they were asked. Feedback pointed out your good points and areas that needed work, with suggestions made as to how lessons could be improved. Phrases like "What you could have done was..." and "Something that you could try is..." were commonplace. There was little or no threat of competency, or if there was, it was uncommon and probably deserved. The grading was essentially pass or fail.

The experience isn't even close to that now. Schools try to replicate an Ofsted inspection by giving little notice for observations (a day or so is fairly commone, which should be enough in all honesty). Full lesson plans and detailed seating plans are required which show all the students with special needs and whether they speak English as a second language or receive free school meals which is a current target group for government/Ofsted and therefore schools. Books must be marked with current grades or levels and a dialogue between teacher and student which will probably involve an individual question that forces the student to practise a teacher-noted gap in their learning. During the lesson the teacher must continually assess each child individually and refer back to the lesson objective. Each child must be called upon by the teacher to give or explain an answer by name and be able to tell the observer exactly what they are learning and convince them that this happens every lesson. Lessons and activities must be "active", which means that the students discover new concepts rather than get told/taught them. The feedback then gives the teacher a grade from 1 to 4 (3 and 4 are no go areas and risk competency - they should be renamed "You are crap") and involve phrases like "They will pick up on..." and "They will expect to see...", with the "they" referring to Ofsted. Any positives are glossed over and the weaknesses are pointed out endlessly, although often no ways of improving are suggested coherently. The teacher will often leave the feedback feeling pretty down, regardless of their grade.

So the differences are:

• It has gone from a relatively positive thing (possibly too positive at times) to being a threat to a teacher's livelihood when there is a shortage of decent teachers.
• The focus has moved from how you could improve your teaching to what Ofsted would want to see, which is usually a guess as it's not clear that Ofsted really know what they want either.
• Individualism was encouraged to a certain extent but now frowned upon for fear that the inspectors have a particular teaching model.
• Teachers aren't allowed to teach; the sudents have to teach themselves as the "teacher" wanders around "facilitating" discussion.

This is purely because Ofsted now have ultimate and unquestioned power over all state funded schools in England. Their judgements are unquestioned with the impression being amongst teachers that the inspectors make their judgement before they turn up and find evidence to back that judgement up. Despite what Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector of Schools says, inspectors have a set image of a "decent" lesson and if you don't do that you are knackered.

But apparently education in England is rigorous and fit for purpose. I beg to differ.

Performance Related Pay

Michael Gove announced that the DfE would be pushing for teachers to be paid in line with their students' results, as suggested by the Education Select Committee.

Head of Department: "Who wants to teach the bottom set?"
Try to avoid the crush as the entire department rush for that one!

This is the latest in a line of policies that will drive teachers out of the profession. There will be numerous people who work in the private sector who will say "I can't see the problem - that's what we have". I can understand that things could be seen like this, but there's one vital factor that is being ignored: "children".

Now the drive behind this is to improve standards of teaching and encourage the better teachers by paying them more, at the same time getting rid of poor teachers. Again I have no problem with this theory, the trouble is that a good, even outstanding teacher could appear to be inadequate depending on the class sat in front of them. Some children are simply unteachable, whatever you do, and somebody has to teach them because they have to be somewhere. This could affect that teacher's pay through no fault of the teacher, which I think you'd agree is unfair.

The government want all children to aspire to great things, but what they fail to grasp is that not all have or will ever have any aspirations beyond their state provided home, sofa, satellite TV and any other vices they may take a shine to. It's like trying to force a car to go at 100mph when it has no petrol in it; it ain't gonna happen.

Politicians seem fixated on getting everyone "above average" (I know that's impossible by the way, if only the politicians did), and squeezing teachers in order to do this. The lack of aspiration in the country, due to being able to live relatively well on benefits is the issue, as children learn these attitudes from their parents. But millions of voters being slated by politicians isn't the way to win elections; destroying a profession annoys far less people; a no-brainer.

Unions are up-in-arms of course, but cleverly the government are getting all these unpopular policies out at the same time to make it appear that the unions are whinging constantly which goes on to erode any public support they may have.

No wonder election turnouts are so low: they are all pathetic excuses for human beings with no idea what goes on outside of their publicly funded mansions, and therefore not worth the effort of voting for.

My dream: we have an election that no-one actually votes in. It might actually send a message, although no doubt there will be someone paid a lot of money to put a positive spin on it.

Blame

It's all our fault, come on just admit it, teachers are at fault for most of what's wrong in the world:

Global warming - teachers' fault.
Riots - teachers' fault.
Over-fishing - teachers' fault.
The cancelling of Gladiators - teachers' fault.
Chelsea's under-performance in the Premier league this season - teachers' fault.
The lack of ambition in youngsters - teachers' fault.
Paper cuts - teachers' fault.
Middle East Crises - teachers' fault.
The existance of X Factor - teachers' fault.
Cuban Missile Crisis - teachers' fault.
The dog ate my homework - teachers' fault.
The dog ate my enthusiasm - teachers' fault.

Fine us until we are forced to work for nothing.

Great idea - well done.

Idiots...

Teacher Bashing Season Is Open!

As the schools go back in September, so the non-teaching critics pipe up, usually at the behest of government ministers and their thirst for political points. This year is no different and it's maths teachers who are the focus of the seemingly bad press. I wasn't aware of this until I opened The Sunday Times to page 7 last weekend and saw the following headline: "Number of clueless maths pupils soars". It was accompanied by a picture of "celebrity mathematician" Carol Vorderman and two maths exam questions:

1. O-Level Maths 1979: "Prove that the internal bisector of any angle of a triangle divides the opposite side in the ratio of the sides containing the angle".
2. GCSE Maths 2010: "Write the number 50,000 in words".

Now I hate to be picky, and I regularly read what I would normally regard as a reasonable newspaper with well rounded and balanced articles, but I am very tempted to change my allegiances from now on. The article is the most shoddy piece of work I have ever read, and I have read the some shoddy stuff in my time.

The first thing I'd like to point out is that the two questions illustrated by the picture of our Carol are aimed at two totally different students. The O Level question is aimed at a high achieving student, maybe A or A* grade, possibly B at a stretch. The GCSE question is G grade, and no more. And let's face it, a G grade isn't worth the paper it's printed on in many cases (not all, I realise that for some, a G grade is an achievement, although ultimately useless). The newspaper's education correspondent, Jack Grimston, ought to have been pulled up on this by the editor.

I would also like to question the relevance in everyday life of bisecting the angle of a triangle so that it divides the opposite side in the ratio of the of the sides containing that angle. When is anyone ever likely to do this? They might be have to write the number 50,000 in words if they write a cheque though. Some of the billions of pounds spent on mathematics in the past 30 years has gone on making the curriculum more relevant and therefore accessible to the majority, meaning that less pupils are left in the cold by an irrelevant and archaic curriculum that Vorderman and Grimston clearly pine for.

A "specially devised test" on algebra, ratio, decimals and fractions was taken by 14 year old in 1979 and 2008/9 and the proportion of pupils getting level zero approximately doubled. Now this is probably a fair point but to lay the blame purely at the feet of maths teachers is unfair. Part of the reason for this increase in "cluelessness" is down to the fact that parents who struggled with maths at school pass their phobia onto their children. This means that numbers will increase and could go towards explaining the rise.

There's also the fact that governments over the past 30 years have taken away any powers teachers once had, and it is now nigh on impossible to get a student to work if they don't want to. I'm not calling for a return to corporal punishment, but it would be nice to feel as though I had some power in my classroom.

Vorderman does make a reasonable point towards the end of the article though when she says that those who struggle initially are thrown on the "scrapheap" to be taught predominantly by non-specialists. This doesn't happen in every school, but happens in most, and can be placed squarely at the feet of government once more, as they aim to cut budgets by making tiny little savings in some areas that have a huge effect on education in schools rather than saving a whopping £200 million per year plus by abolishing Ofsted and other pointless quangos that are remarkably still in existence. It's not fair on those students who are "taught" by non-maths teachers but schools often don't have a choice. The statements seem to suggest that those teachers don't really try, which in almost every case won't be true.

Apart from Vorderman a Professor Dame Julia Higgins, chair of the government's education committee is quoted as saying that we need to get more specialist maths teachers in schools, and she's absolutely correct. The problem is that teaching is becoming a genuinely unpleasant profession to be in, and most people who are competent at maths could earn more or the same in a different profession which almost certainly has a far more pleasant environment. It is for these reasons that poor maths teachers do get employed, because there aren't enough good ones to go around.

Maths teaching is not in any way desirable nowadays; many students don't want to learn the subject but are (rightly) forced to do so, however staff have zero comeback on a student who refuses to make any effort. The pressure on teachers to achieve unrealistic targets of C+ grades also makes many teaching positions untenable. Why do people who advise not actually try the job for a year or two before criticising those who do? Wasn't George Bernard Shaw who said "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach". Perhaps he should have added "Those who can't teach, advise".

I would agree that gaining a C grade is now a lot easier (political targets need to be met people), but it's still just as tough to get the top grades of A and A* and don't let anyone tell you different - the article claimed that an A grade now is equivalent to what a C grade was at O Level. That's harsh, and in my opinion wrong. C grades are now probably equivalent to about an E grade at O level, but you can't blame teachers for that. Government set targets, and grade boundaries are lowered in order to meet those targets. It's a badly kept secret in education.

The only way these sorts of comments from Vorderman and Higgins could be of any use is if it forces central government to put more money into education, but I reckon there'd be a snow day in Hell first.

Good News For Current Qualified Teachers

Trainee teachers are a bit of a lottery - you never know who the university are going to send you. We've had a bit of a mixed bunch this year to be honest. The first cohort, before Christmas, were very good and will make excellent classroom practitioners.

The second cohort however was a different kettle of fish altogether. We had one who couldn't write on the board, another who ignored the class entirely and talked to themselves whilst facing the board, and an English trainee who couldn't read - I jest you not!

You'd have thought that all three would have failed, but "No". They are all able to qualify as teachers in the future for reasons beyond my comprehension: if they aren't good enough they should be failed. So perhaps the inability to allow people to fail goes beyond teaching children in schools.

To be honest just one look at these trainees should have told the universities that they weren't up to the job, but in today's market someone will take the money that comes with each trainee, so it might as well be them.

The moral of the story: don't believe the governement when they say that loads of people are training to be teachers, because even though numbers are reasonably high (although not as high as they used to be I believe), the standard of some is appalling. Quantity rather than quality seems to be the order of the day.