XFacebookYouTubeLinkedInEmail

leadership

What’s it like being a new teacher?

2020-02-09T16:45:53+00:00January 6th, 2015|leadership|

I've been very fortunate to spend time with a variety of new teachers over the past few years. Whether they're on PGCE placements, NQTs, RQTs or Teach First participants they are all, without exception, impressive, hardworking, compassionate, dedicated and brimming with enthusiasm about the difference they hope to make. There is however one consistently ugly blot on this bright landscape. It's not the workload - they're up for that. They're still young and supple enough to cope with the absurd demands placed on a teacher's time. It's not even pupils' sometimes stunningly insolent, casually vindictive and plain bone idle behaviour - they went into [...]

Do we really have a growth mindset?

2015-01-06T00:34:51+00:00January 5th, 2015|leadership|

The ladder of life is full of splinters, but they always prick the hardest when we’re sliding down. Samuel Clemens I spoke at a Growth Mindset conference with Olympian and sports journalist Matthew Syed today. Needless to say, he got star billing. I took the view that whilst we may all profess to value a growth mindset in pupils we have a very fixed mindset to teaching and education. Syed made the point that there are important differences between how the aviation industry and surgeons treat failure. When an aeroplane crashes, airlines go to great lengths retrieve the black box flight recorder in order to [...]

Why ‘triple marking’ is wrong (and not my fault)

2020-05-02T22:15:05+01:00November 29th, 2014|leadership|

You can't blame celebrity edubloggers for teachers' unreasonable workloads - Albert Einstein In his indefatigable efforts to get schools and teachers to recognise that much of what is done in the name of demonstrating progress for Ofsted's benefit is a pointless waste of time, apparently, Ofsted's National Director, Mike Cladingbowl has been blaming me for inventing 'triple marking'.[i] This is an accusation I refute. As I understand it, the phenomena of 'triple marking' of goes something like this: You mark students' work They act on your marking You mark students' work again. The logic is that in responding to students' responses to [...]

What I’ve learned about trust from arguing about driving

2020-07-28T12:33:30+01:00November 28th, 2014|leadership|

Those who trust us educate us. - George Eliot Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. - Bertrand Russell The car seems to be a flashpoint. If my wife and I are going to argue about anything the likelihood is that the argument will take place in the car. And it will be, as often as not, about my driving. You see, opinion is divided about my driving skills; I maintain I'm a pretty good driver, while my wife insists I'm a menace. In [...]

What if we started trusting teachers?

2014-11-23T14:10:08+00:00November 22nd, 2014|leadership|

Who would not rather trust and be deceived? - Eliza Cook The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him. - Henry Lewis Stimson I've been out of the classroom for just under a year now. In that time I've had the privilege of visiting many more schools than I ever visited during the 15 years or so I taught. And in that time I've had the chance to see the sublime, the ridiculous and almost everything imaginable in between. The other luxury I've had is time. Time to think in a way that was never really possible when bogged [...]

Teacher appraisal and the fundamental attribution error

2014-11-09T22:45:30+00:00November 9th, 2014|leadership|

As favour and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before. Jean de La Bruyère You know that lad in Year 9 who gives you constant grief? He's a manipulative little git and he hates you. And that lovely, hardworking girl in Year 11? She's such a warm, kindhearted soul - what a privilege it is to teach her. As we trudge from day to weary day, we are each the hero of our own story and all others we meet merely bit players. But no matter the size of the part [...]

The surplus model of school improvement

2018-01-17T10:06:41+00:00October 15th, 2014|leadership|

As teachers we are sometimes guilty of assuming that all would be well if only children behaved better and worked harder. This is basically sound; everything would be better if kids did what was in their best interests. So why don't they? Well, in some schools they do. In some schools there are strong social norms which ensure that misbehaviour and laziness are the exception. This isn't because only children from more affluent postcodes are capable of doing the right thing, it's because schools and teachers have worked hard to make it easier to do the right thing than the wrong thing. [...]

Back to school Part 1: Routines

2020-07-14T13:07:41+01:00August 19th, 2014|leadership|

This series of #backtoschool blogs summarises much of my thinking as it’s developed over the past few years and is aimed at new or recently qualified teachers. Each area has been distilled to 5 ‘top tips’ which I hope prove useful to anyone embarking on a career in teaching. That said, I’ll be delighted if they serve as handy reminders for colleagues somewhat longer in the tooth. It's normally at about this point in August that the dull, nagging ache begins; the toad, September, squats over the summer. It's bad enough if you're returning to a school where you're well-known, but if you're starting anew or, [...]

Perverse incentives and how to counter them

2014-06-09T20:14:48+01:00June 9th, 2014|leadership|

Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder. Nikita Khrushchev Back in the good old days when the great unwashed could simply be shipped off to the colonies with nary a second thought, transportation of convicts was in the hands of private companies. These companies were compensated based on the number of prisoners shipped. As long as they were signed and sealed, no one cared over much if they were delivered and a depressing percentage of prisoners perished on-board these dreadful hulks. Eventually, the government, realising they were being short-changed and running the risk of running out of [...]

This is what I think

2017-04-04T12:02:05+01:00May 14th, 2014|leadership|

I love a good aphorism, and I also like lists. I keep being asked what I think about stuff so, in the spirit of clarity, here's a list of some of the things I think about education: Behaviour Getting behaviour right is the top priority for schools; when that's cracked everything else will be possible. Until it's cracked, nothing will work well. Blaming teachers for the failure of a school to implement and stick to a robust behaviour system is morally reprehensible. Misbehaving is a choice: if children behave badly in your lesson, it's not your fault. Although it is your responsibility. [...]

On behaviour

2014-03-26T14:39:06+00:00March 20th, 2014|leadership|

Most of what makes classrooms work lies beneath the surface. The here and now of lessons and classrooms is dependent on the routines and relationships teachers have forged over time. If you’re clear about what is (and is not) acceptable behaviour, firm and fair in applying consequences, and provide meaningful feedback on how pupils’ can improve, it almost doesn’t matter what you do in a lesson: children will learn. But that’s by no means the complete picture. One of the most damaging and appalling lies circulating around schools and teacher training institutions is this: if you plan your lessons well, children [...]

What if there was no outstanding?

2014-07-09T23:30:36+01:00March 16th, 2014|leadership|

The cynics are right nine times out of ten. H.L. Mencken Does the outstanding grade retard innovation or drive us towards excellence? This is just a flight of fancy; a thought experiment. What would happen if we did away with the outstanding grade for schools? What if 'good' was good enough? What would be different? Let's remember that Ofsted have acknowledged that there is no such thing as an outstanding lesson, but all schools are still judged on a four point scale with 'outstanding' being the highest accolade a school can receive. Imagine this bauble was taken away. What then? I [...]

Toggle Sliding Bar Area
Go to Top