A Year 7 parents' evening after levels are abolished

A Year 7 parents' evening after levels are abolished: A play in one Act.

Act 1: A cold school hall in October

Headteacher: Can I help you?
Parent: Yes, I'm a little confused.
H: Why is that?
P: Well, last year, in primary school, my son was blue for maths but this year he's been told he's a circle.
H: Well, yes, we don't use colours, we use shapes.
P: So is a circle better than blue?
H: Err, I don't know.
P: So how can I tell whether he's doing better?
H: Err, I don't know.
Parent 2: Excuse me, I couldn't help overhearing but my daughter was a giraffe last year for English but they tell me that, this year, she's a rocket.
P1: Oh my son is a satellite in English.
P2: I think a rocket is better!
H: I'm sure both your children are doing well.
P1: But mine is doing better, surely?
H: Err, I don't know.
P1 & P2 (together): Whatever happened to levels?
H: They were abolished for being too confusing.
P1 & P2: ????

Curtain falls

We've had enough of League Tables

This is the text of a letter I want to send to my local newspaper.  I don't know if the Governors will support it but I would like to ask them to:


Over the last two years we have changed our curriculum in Years 10 and 11 to allow students to take their Maths and English GCSE exams at the end of Year 10 and then again at the end of Year 11.  We chose to do this because giving students two opportunities at these important qualifications gives them the best chance of achieving the best grade they can.  Those students who do very well at the end of Year 10 can progress on to more advanced courses such as GCSE statistics or even begin their A-Level courses in Year 11.  Our plans are about raising attainment and increasing progression.

However the government has announced that this is 'cheating' and has made it almost impossible for a school to follow this curriculum without being badly affected in the school league tables.  They have decided that only the first attempt at any exam will be published in the tables.  This means that we could see 70% of our students leaving with higher passes at the end of Year 11 but only 40% being counted in the league tables.

We have been placed in the impossible position of doing what we believe is right for our students or doing what is right for the league tables.  It is wrong for a school to prioritise a league table position at the expense of student achievement.  So from this point on we will do what is right for our students and ignore the school league tables.

We realise that this will mean that the school will fall down the league tables and may come under pressure from the DfE, Norfolk County Council and Ofsted to change this policy.  We also know that parents would want us to do the right thing for their children.

Schools have been pushed about by the government's use of league tables for too long and it is time to say, "enough is enough".  Education is far too important to worry about where you are in a made-up league table which no longer reflects what students actually achieve in schools.

PRP: One school's suggested way forward

We want to make PRP as fair, open and transparent as possible and allow all to progress where they can.  We have based our policy on a points system.  The details are given here for information and further discussion.

Points are calculated by putting a tick in each column and adding up the total score.

NOTE: APS is calculated by giving each observation a score 1=Outstanding, 2=Good, 3=Requires Improvement, 4=Inadequate then taking the average of the last four observations.  This helps to smooth out the data to get a better picture.

• The rate of progression will be differentiated according to an individual teacher’s performance and will be on the basis of absolute criteria.  Progression will be determined by allocating points according to the table in Appendix A.

• Teachers will be eligible for pay progression of £800 (pro rata for part time staff) if they achieve a point score of 140 or above.

• Teachers will be eligible for pay progression of £1,600 (pro rata for part time staff) if they achieve a point score of 250 or above.

• Teachers will be eligible for pay progression of £2,400 (pro rata for part time staff) if they achieve a point score of 350 or above.

  Appendix A

	Teacher Standards / Proficiency		Contribution
Points	Last 4 Lesson Observations	Student progress	Appraisal Objectives	Development of other staff	Smooth running of school	Active part in life of the school
200	·   Almost always Outstanding ·   APS < 1.5 ·   No Inadequate ·   No Requires Improvement
100	·   Always Good or Outstanding ·   APS ≤ 2.2 ·   No Inadequate ·   No Requires Improvement	All student progress is above average.	All objectives have been met beyond the standard set.	The teacher has made a substantial contribution to the development of other staff by coaching or mentoring at least two staff members and delivering CPD sessions.
50	·   Generally Good or Outstanding ·   APS ≤ 2.2 ·   No Inadequate	Student progress is mostly above average.	All objectives have been met.	The teacher has made a good contribution to the development of other staff by coaching or mentoring another member of staff or delivering CPD sessions.		The teacher has made a substantial contribution to the wider school life by being involved with a substantial trip and/or regular extracurricular activities (including intervention)
30	·   Generally Good ·   APS ≤ 2.5	All student progress is at least as expected.	Most objectives have been met.	The teacher has made a contribution to the development of other staff by coaching or mentoring another member of staff or delivering a CPD session.	The teacher has made a substantial contribution to the smooth running of the school by meeting all deadlines, and requests for information.	The teacher has made a good contribution to the wider school life by being involved with a trip and/or extracurricular activities (including intervention)
20		Most students have made at least expected progress.	At least one objective has been met.		The teacher has made a contribution to the smooth running of the school by meeting almost all deadlines and requests for information.	The teacher has made a contribution to the wider school life by being involved with a trip and/or an extracurricular activity (including intervention)

Can all get 5A*-C Inc EN&MA?

Some teachers tell me that not every student can achieve 5A*-C in EN&MA.

I disagree.

Try this experiment.

Think about any mainstream student you know currently in Year 9 or lower who you believe CANNOT achieve 5A*-C inc EN&MA.

Now imagine I give you £1m to spend on that student.

Imagine also that I promise you another £1m to keep for yourself if that student achieves 5A*-C inc EN&MA.

Do you think you could get them to achieve it?

I do.

The issue is not whether every student can achieve 5A*-C inc EN&MA but whether they can within the resources that are available.

It makes you think, doesn't it?

Collaborating: How to do it

I wrote in a blog recently about the importance of collaboration but I want to go a little further and discuss the conditions that make collaboration possible.  The hope is that others may decide to work together and do so successfully.

So here are my key features for successful collaboration:

1) Identify at least one other person / organisation who wants to collaborate
OK, this is just stating that you can't collaborate with yourself but it is important.  There are many people / schools who do not like collaboration, they see it as a waste of their time, or, at least a diversion from the important tasks they are getting on with.  There are those who might like to collaborate, if they can find a good reason to and those who will collaborate with anyone over anything.

The best way to identify who will and who won't collaborate is to talk to them and find out their views.  If they are not interested then don't waste your time, you need them to be at least interested, if not enthusiastic.

2) Agree what you are trying to achieve
Collaborating without an aim in mind will just lead to nice, friendly but pointless chats.  Whilst these are needed in the early stages of building relationships, you need to identify why you are getting together.  There are many reasons, here are a few to think about:

• Widening curriculum choices
• Raising attainment
• Developing joint CPD
•  Sharing resources

The best approach is to discuss issues you are each struggling with and see whether any of them are common to most partners.

3) Build trust through openness
If the people involved do not trust each other then it won't work.  The best way of building trust is to be open about successes, failures, strengths and weaknesses.  This will take time and it is worth taking the time to get right.  Some partnerships establish a broker role, to liaise between the partners.  This is a very useful role when things don't work out as they should, though it is not vital.

4) Don't get too legalistic
It's very easy to spend a long time making all sorts of agreements and then trying to write them down so that everyone agrees etc.  Whilst you are spending time doing this, there are few actual results.  Get a few basic principles going and work to those.  One successful collaboration I worked with had the following:

• Put your best foot forward. (If offering something to the partnership make sure it's your best resource, don't fob them off with rubbish)
• Before reacting, listen to the other side. (This was the best way to resolve conflicts between partners)
• Do the right thing.

 5) Be willing to compromise
There will come a time when the needs of the partnership clash with your own needs.  You need to be willing to solve that dispute.  If every time a clash occurs each partner does what is in their own interests, the partnership won't last.

6) Work on maintaining the relationship
In the early days this will involve getting key people together and giving them time to bond.  (This does not mean a raft-building workshop!  I would walk out of any collaboration that required me to do something like this.)  A day out of school in a hotel for key people on a regular basis really helps.  When key personnel leave and are replaced, work on rebuilding the relationships.

Whilst writing this I realised that the best sort of model for a collaboration is a good marriage: find yourself a partner, woo them, get hitched and stay hitched.

Michael Gove denies that Tory activists are "Swivel-eyed loons"

Tory activists are "Swivel-eyed loons" claim is denied by Michael Gove.

Raising the participation age: A wasted opportunity

I know that several schools have been taking time to consider the implications of Raising the Participation Age (RPA).

Those with Sixth Forms are thinking about how they can create spaces for students who traditionally leave at 16.  Those without are thinking about how they can help their students make progress to other provision.

The DfE state that:

From summer 2013, young people will be required to continue in education or training to the end of the academic year in which they turn 17, and from summer 2015 they will be required to stay until their 18th birthday. This does not mean young people will be required to stay in school. There will be three ways in which young people can participate post-16: full-time education in a school or college; an apprenticeship; part-time accredited learning if they are in full-time employment or volunteering.

Many people assume that this means that NEETs will no longer exist.  However, the sad fact is that they will.  To understand this we need to consider what happens in the future if a student leaves school aged 16.

As the school leaving age has not been raised to 17, parents are not responsible for ensuring that their child remains in education until 17.  Schools have no additional duties to ensure that students remain in education or training.  There are also no requirements for the students themselves.  The only duty is upon the Local Authority.  The DfE guidance states that:

The Education and Skills Act places additional duties on local authorities in relation to RPA:

• Promoting the effective participation of all 16 and 17 year old residents in your area; and
• Making arrangements to identify young people resident in your area who are not participating

So any student who refuses to stay on until 17 will be 'identified'.  Then what?  Nothing as far as I can see.  Once students realise that nothing happens then nothing will change for the NEETs.  What a wasted opportunity!

Pupil Premium: Keeping Ofsted happy

With the total cost of the Pupil Premium reaching £2.5b, the government wants to make sure that schools are using the money the way it was intended - raising the attainment of traditionally underperforming groups (see ASCL speech by David Laws).  Rather than forcing schools to spend the money on certain pre-defined approaches they have opted to give schools the freedom to spend the money on 'what works'.  However, Ofsted have been tasked with checking that schools are using the money wisely.


What makes that job even harder is, for most schools I know, the Pupil Premium doesn't feel like additional money.  Cuts elsewhere mean that, once again, schools are under pressure to do more, with less.  Still, mustn't grumble, eh?

This feels like some sort of high-stakes guessing game where the price of failure is a poor Ofsted report and all that entails.  So how do you keep Ofsted happy?

Helpfully, they have given an Analysis and Challenge Toolkit which provides some guidance.  The basic advice seems to be as follows:

1) Know who the Pupil Premium students are
I know of several schools recently receiving an Ofsted inspection (I am in Norfolk after all!) and I have been told about Inspectors walking into classrooms and asking the teachers, "who here is on free school meals?"
Every teacher should be able to identify which students are eligible for the Pupil Premium.  This task is harder now that it is those students who have been on FSMs sometime in the last 6 years (FSM6).  The data is available from the Key-to-Success website (data managers should have access).  If you have access to FFTLive you have access to a report in the Development Section called New Student Explorer.  This will also list all the students who are currently in your school who are on the FSM6 list.
You will need to know which students are currently looked after (LAC or CLA) and those who are children of service personnel.  Both of these should already be on your MIS as they must be reported to the government at the Census points.
It really helps inspectors if you are able to provide seating plans with students' attributes (LAC, FSM, FSM6 etc) and their current grades.  One product which might help is Class Charts. This does more than seating plans and others may be available.

2) Know how well they are doing
Schools track the progress of those students who claim Free School Meals.  Now we need to ensure that we track the progress of all students who are eligible for the Pupil Premium.  Use it to COMPARE their progress and attainment with students in your school who are not eligible and against national averages for non-Premium students.

3) Have a plan for improvement ("closing the gap")
Is there is a difference between the Premium students and the non-Premium students, or, if there is no gap, how are your Premium students doing compared with non-Premium students nationally?  Could your Premium students be doing even better? What are you doing about it?
Use resources such as Ofsted's guidance about how to spend the Pupil Premium or the EFF's Pupil Premium Toolkit.
Also look closely at things you are already doing.  Do you have intervention, SEN support, LSAs, After School Clubs, Breakfast Clubs, additional resources in the Library etc?  Work out the cost of these and make sure your Pupil Premium is contributing to the costs.
Add costings to your plan and show that you are spending the money to raise attainment.

4) Publish the plan AND an evaluation of last year's plan - showing impact - on your website.
This is a statutory requirement under the new Information Publishing requirements.  Academies and Free Schools usually have these requirements as part of their funding agreements.

The sort of impact you can show is:

• Have APS or CAPS improved for Pupil Premium students?
• Has attainment at any of the thresholds improved?
• Has the gap got smaller?

Note: There is an argument that the gap doesn't always get smaller.  Both Premium and non-Premium students' results could be improving rapidly but non-Premium students are making faster progress.  This will widen the gap.  If this is the case, make sure you point it out!

I'm not a great fan of doing things for the the sake of Ofsted but, it is clear that they are asking difficult questions when inspecting schools around the use of the Pupil Premium.  Forewarned is forearmed!

It's not about poverty

I suspect that this blog will be "stating the bleedin' obvious" for most teachers but I feel that teachers' voices are not being heard in the current arguments on education.

The national debate on education appears to be driven by a concern for those in poverty.  The 'close the gap' agenda pushes schools to raise the attainment of those who have been on Free School Meals at any time in the last six years.  The goal is to match the attainment of those who are not in poverty.  The argument made by government is that schools are letting down the former based on schools' low expectations.  The CVA model which assessed how well schools were doing taking into account the circumstances of the children was stopped partially because it was seen as 'too complex' but also because, so they argued, it reinforced low expectations of some students.

I recently read "The Tail" (Ed. Paul Marshall), as it promised to explain what could be done about the 1 in 5 children achieving very few qualifications.  Part of the book tried to define what "The Tail" was and pointed out that only 25% of the children in the tail received Free School Meals.  The point was emphasised that poverty does not define "The Tail".  Yet, during the remainder of the book, other contributors talked about children on FSMs as if they were "The Tail".  Many of the solutions suggested in the book were disappointing in that they relied on market forces, league tables and rising floor targets to drive the system.  I finished not knowing who "The Tail" were, nor what could be done about them.

Many people point out that people who live in poverty can escape their circumstances and achieve highly.  This is used to justify the claim that all people who live in poverty can do this.  As a mathematician I recognise the flaw in this 'proof'.  The fact that one person did well whilst living in poverty disproves the statement "All people in poverty will do poorly in education".  However, it does not prove the statement "All people living in poverty can do well in education".  It merely suggests that "Some people in poverty can do well in education."

This is an important point: Poverty is not a bar to doing well in education as some people have shown.  So what then, is the difference between those who do well and those who don't?

The government's argument is that it is down to the quality of the school.  Some schools with high FSM levels and high attainment are highlighted to demonstrate the impact of a good school.  The rest of us are urged to follow suit.  This doesn't answer the question though.  Some children do well from a poor background whilst in a 'bad school'.

In my experience, whether a child has Free School Meals doesn't matter as much as why they do.  A child whose mother is a young, middle-class widow, for example, and working part-time to support her children is likely to achieve well in school.  A child whose parents did poorly at school and have low-paid jobs or no jobs at all because they have few skills and qualifications is likely to achieve poorly in school.

It is not the poverty that makes a difference but the parent's, or other significant adults', attitude to education and the quality of the support given to the child that makes all the difference.  This is why schools with high immigrant populations tend to do well.  Though the children are classed as FSM and EAL, they and their parents are driven to succeed.  The LSE have recently (published between writing and posting this blog) carried out research which suggest the same thing (as reported in the Telegraph.)

I was once told that I was making excuses for failure but I am not.  Without identifying the reasons that so many of our young children do not do as well as they should, we cannot put in place policies that will truly solve the problem.

Now, that would be something worth writing about.

It's about collaboration, Stupid!

In the same school, I have experienced working independently and, at a different time, working in collaboration with other schools.  We initially chose to work by ourselves because we thought that were were better than other schools, that we had nothing to learn from them and did not want to share our success.  That all ended when Ofsted decided to put us in Special Measures.

Special Measures is a very cruel way of working out that you aren't as good as you thought you were and that splendid isolation is not that splendid after all.

We started to work with schools and the local college closest to us and set up curriculum structures across the different settings.  This enabled us to create courses (such as the Young Apprenticeship in Performing Arts) which any student from any school could apply for and they were delivered with shared staff and resources.  When the Diplomas came along we were already working in a collaborative way and these new courses fitted our models.  This meant that we were in an excellent position to bid for several Diploma lines and we were very successful with our bids.

At its height, the boundaries of each institution in the partnership became very blurred.  At my school we were teaching students who 'belonged' to other schools, with staff who were employed by other institutions.  'Our' students were sometimes elsewhere being taught with students from across the partnership by staff from different places.  It was complicated and it worked.  Students enjoyed much wider curriculum provision that we could have offered by ourselves.

The changes (I can't call them reforms, because that makes them sound like good ideas) introduced by the current government has put the partnership under pressure.  With no Diplomas and no Young Apprenticeships we have moved to BTEC courses.  Most of these 'count' in the league tables but some do not.  The EBacc has encouraged parents and students to 'play safe' and opt for Geography, History and MFL subjects at the expense of the BTEC courses.  Nevertheless, despite these pressures, the partnership is still going and courses are still being run.

In the future, there will be a greater need for this sort of collaboration.

Funding restrictions at Post 16 will mean that shared courses in the local sixth forms will need to increase (the partnership does this to some extent now).  See ASCL Article.

The Primary schools in our cluster are all improving rapidly but all are vulnerable to rising floor targets.  We are working together now more than ever.  We have held several days where different cross-school teams have met to discuss how we can support and develop each other.  This has included SEN, Literacy, Numeracy as well as finance teams.  We are already seeing the benefits of shared working across the cluster.

Since I have joined Twitter, the collaboration I'm involved in has widened even further.  With Teachmeets and the new ResearchEd conference (http://researched2013.wordpress.com/) there has never been a better time for the profession to share and work together.


Sir Michael Wilshaw (yes, him) pointed out that the transformation of schools in London was mainly based upon school-to-school collaboration (what-a-difference-ten-or-so-days-make).  We know the model works so let's get together.


Collaboration has been of great benefit to me, the school and the students in the wider community.  Let's all take the time to reach out to other schools regardless of their reputation or Ofsted grading and look for common issues to solve.  There will be more than you imagine.