Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning

1. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Geoff Barton Head, King Edward VI School, Suffolk Wednesday, September 24, 2014 Download presentation at: www.geoffbarton.co.uk (Presentation 106)

2. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Today: the content … Session 1: Exploring the changing context: changes to the National Curriculum and Ofsted Session 2: Ensuring the basics: re-visiting whole- school literacy and making it happen Session 3: What teaching looks like: a practical exercise Session4: Implications for how we develop better teaching in our schools

3. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Today: the approach … www.geoffbarton.co.uk/teacher-resources (106)

4. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Background

5. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ground-Rules

6. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Old Joke

7. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Q: What’s the collective noun for a group of headteachers? A: A ‘lack’ of principals

8. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning A: A ‘lack’ of principles

9. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got" Bill Clinton US President, 1993-2001

10. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning “Those who stand for nothing fall for anything” Alexander Hamilton Founding Father, 1755-1803

11. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning HOW we teach it WHAT we teach

12. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning 3 Ice-Breakers

13. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning 1 The what and the how … What is your current curriculum like? What is it for? Does any of it serve the school more than it serves your students (eg EBac)? What does it teach young people to know or be able to do beyond what is tested in exams? Is vocational content for the disaffected? Will it be there after the recent cull of vocational courses Is all that ‘learning to learn’ stuff a bit of a fad that serves the middle classes? Is the quality of a student’s experience in a subject dependant on who their teacher is?

14. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning 2 The basics Are we angry enough that only 50% or so of students leave school with C in English and Maths? What are we doing about it? Does ‘more of the same’ actually make them get worse? What more innovative approaches could we use? Does early entry help or hinder learning? Who is it for? Is the biggest problem in Maths, if you are an insecure learner, your Maths teacher?

15. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning 3 The Management of Teaching What is the profile of teaching at your school – outstanding, good, satisfactory, inadequate? Could you name your three most effective teachers and the five whose teaching gives most concern? What has been done to harness the former and try to improve the latter? Have they been ‘covertly’ or overtly managed? Does developmental observation happen and what is its impact?

16. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning • 1: Teaching & Learning against a • Changing Landscape: • Revised National Curriculum • Revised Ofsted framework

17. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning The National Curriculum Review • Slimmed-down and oddly optional • Best that has been thought and said • No pedagogy, no guidance • International benchmarks • Broadly academic • Consolidation of basics • Qualifications drive behaviour • A big distraction from teacher quality

18. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning

19. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ben Levin: • Much of the research on change in schools is pessimistic: Milbrey McLaughlin once wrote that ‘policy cannot mandate what matters’

20. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ben Levin: We need to distinguish change from improvement.

21. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ben Levin: I put teaching and learning practices far ahead of curriculum as a means of improving student outcomes and believe that the emphasis on curriculum in many places has not been the best priority for limited time, energy and resources.

22. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ben Levin: Writing new curricula or writing performance objectives is not a good way to use teachers’ time in comparison wit improving daily student assessment practices or learning new pedagogical practices

23. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ben Levin: The curriculum matters less than quality of teaching, as shown by the very significant differences in achievement from one teacher to another in the same course or curriculum

24. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ben Levin: Myth that you have to address students’ personal problems before you get to their learning: “as more kids learned to read and were successful, behaviour problems declined precipitously”: “good teaching was the best strategy to improve student behaviour

25. Thinking Time Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning • In this age of so-called freedoms, what would your curriculum ‘values’ be? • A national curriculum? • Containing what? • Assessed how and when?

26. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ofsted • Satisfactory is unsatisfactory • Outstanding wasnt always outstanding • Short notice (SEF? lesson plans? data?) • It’s about teaching and marking • It’s about literacy (aka R,W,C) • No formulas • Corrosive tone • What does progress mean?

27. Thinking Time Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Ofsted So … implications at your school? • Preparation and non-negotiables? • How to ensure consistently good and outstanding teaching: do teachers know what it is? • Are there Ofsted games that have to be played? • Implications for training and monitoring and performance management?

28. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning An expert’s impression: I guess that few heads would take serious issue with the points identified here and on the surface the priorities of inspectors appear little different from what they were 20 years ago. What seems to have changed, however, is the way judgements are seemingly being made from what sometimes amounts to little more than circumstantial evidence. The tone of the whole thing seems to have changed significantly too: inspectors appear to be taking a very negative view of what schools are trying to achieve. Kevin Haddock, former senior inspector, Suffolk

29. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning An expert’s impression: So be ready to fight the good fight ! I have highlighted the things you need to do. Get professional support. Prepare a strong argument with telling evidence and refuse to be brow-beaten by lead inspectors. It might seem a good thing that inspectors are now more keen to involve you in making the judgements, but this can lead to pressures that leave you complicit in your own downfall. Kevin Haddock, former senior inspector, Suffolk

30. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning Look at our ‘house style’

31. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning How would you use a document like this?

32. Whole-School Leadership of Teaching & Learning 2:Getting the basics right: Whole-School Literacy Revisited

33. The Matthew Effect (Robert K Merton)

35. The rich shall get richer and the poor shall get poorer Matthew 13:12

36. “The word-rich get richer while the word-poor get poorer” in their reading skills (CASL)

37. “While good readers gain new skills very rapidly, and quickly move from learning to read to reading to learn, poor readers become increasingly frustrated with the act of reading, and try to avoid reading where possible” The Matthew Effect Daniel Rigney

38. “Students who begin with high verbal aptitudes find themselves in verbally enriched social environments and have a double advantage.” The Matthew Effect Daniel Rigney

39. “Good readers may choose friends who also read avidly while poor readers seek friends with whom they share other enjoyments” The Matthew Effect Daniel Rigney

40. Stricht’s Law: “reading ability in children cannot exceed their listening ability …” E.D. Hirsch The Schools We Need

41. “Spoken language forms a constraint, a ceiling not only on the ability to comprehend but also on the ability to write, beyond which literacy cannot progress” Myhill and Fisher

42. “The children who possess intellectual capital when they first arrive at school have the mental scaffolding and Velcro to catch hold of what is going on, and they can turn the new knowledge into still more Velcro to gain still more knowledge”. E.D. Hirsch The Schools We Need

43. Aged 7: Children in the top quartile have 7100 words; children in the lowest have around 3000. The main influence is parents. DfE Research Unit

44. Every teacher in English is a teacher of English George Sampson, 1922

45. The Matthew Effect: The rich will get richer & the poor will get poorer

47. Understand the significance of exploratory talk Model good talk – eg connectives Re-think questioning – ‘why & how’ – and hands-up Vary groupings Get conversations into the school culture

48. Demonstrate writing Teach composition & planning Allow oral rehearsal Short & long sentences Connectives

49. Know your connectives Adding: and, also, as well as, moreover, too Cause & effect: because, so, therefore, thus, consequently Sequencing: next, then, first, finally, meanwhile, before, after Qualifying: however, although, unless, except, if, as long as, apart from, yet Emphasising: above all, in particular, especially, significantly, indeed, notably Illustrating: for example, such as, for instance, as revealed by, in the case of Comparing: equally, in the same way, similarly, likewise, as with, like Contrasting: whereas, instead of, alternatively, otherwise, unlike, on the other hand

50. Demonstrate writing Teach composition & planning Allow oral rehearsal Short & long sentences Connectives