LeadingLearner

Upside Down CPD: R and D Communities

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for teachers often tends to stem from whole school priorities around raising attainment and achievement, improving teaching and learning including assessment or responding to various local, national or Ofsted agendas.  These whole school priorities tend to monopolise the resources available including funding, access to external courses and use of INSET Days.

I’ve read blogs and tweets that liken INSET days, with training on these whole school priorities from external consultant, headteachers or members of the senior leadership team, to a little bit like the proverbial being dumped on teachers from on high.  Suggestions about people leading the CPD, particularly when it is about teaching & learning, include things like mirroring the strategies (the two hour talk on actively engaging students is a classic misjudgement) are important but miss a key point.

Part of our human nature leads us to enjoy and engage with issues that we have a particular interest in or ownership of.  If we really want to personalise CPD for staff then we need to shift the power in the decision making process from school leaders and external pressures to classroom teachers.  It is not simply improving the delivery it is moving the decision making by tipping it upside down and distributing the authority to make decisions about their own professional development to teachers.  This is not an either or – too often in education in England we take an extreme position and then seek to defend it – it’s about rebalancing CPD so that teachers’ particular pedagogical and curriculum interests are afforded time and resource alongside whole school priorities.

I’ve blogged before about setting up some new Research & Development Communities in the post “Improving Teaching Not Simply Measuring It” and the proposals are now in.  The basic structure behind the R&D Communities is:

• A R&D Community can be set up to develop and embed best or emerging good practice within the College.
• A R&D Community can be used to take forward an idea, innovation or approach by a group of staff that will lead to improved standards of attainment, levels of achievement, student well-being or student personal development.  A R&D Community can be set up by any member of staff.
• Each R&D Community must have a named leader who will be responsible for the community, its outcomes and leading a group of staff between 3-8 people in size.
• Funding of £100 per person in the R&D Community will be made available to fund the community’s work, the leader will have their teaching commitment reduced by one period (periods are 100 minutes in length) per fortnight and supply vouchers for use by community members can be bid for.
• Funding will be released following the R&D Community’s idea and success criteria being accepted.
• Approximately half termly a voluntary meeting slot will appear in the calendar for R&D Companies that may be used if some/all of the company members wish to.
• Applications can be submitted in April/May each academic year, but no later than two weeks before the late Spring Bank Holiday and the funds will remain in place for the following academic year.
• Student research and developers may be useful additions to the R&D Community.

R&D Communities for Next Academic Year

What impact does using SOLO taxonomy in peer assessment have on the quality of formative feedback, and learner responses, over one academic year, on an English writing assessment at KS3 and KS4?
 
Our R&D community wishes to look at various elements of technology in teaching and map them onto the SOLO taxonomy.  Similar work has been undertaken by various teachers globally with Bloom’s taxonomy which shows which tools are most useful for developing each skill area, and we would like to do the same for SOLO, providing a pedagogically sound platform for implementing the use of various technologies/web 2.0 tools/apps across the College.
 
How can we embed SOLO success criteria into the classroom in a way that encourages pupils to take ownership for their learning?
 
How far can student attainment be improved by implementing a ‘flipped classroom’ within their daily teaching and learning environment in order to accelerate their deep learning over a one year period?
 
The group would aim to carry out action research exploring ways by which students develop their moral awareness and “proclaiming, worshipping, service and civic duty” can be developed within the college.  Initially, the group would look to identify key moral threads from the PSHE / Citizenship curriculum that could be developed and lead into delivery via the peer mentoring ‘plenary team’ introduced this year.  The main vehicle for development would be through peer mentoring across Key Stages 2, 3, 4 and 5. 

Narrowing the Gap for FSM students: Improving achievement through participation in enriching experiences.

I’m not sure what you think about the different proposals and the good news is it doesn’t matter.  They are of interest to the staff groups that devised them.  All of them could potentially “develop and embed best or emerging good practice within the College” and that was the key requirement.  CPD has been flipped and turned upside down in this particular instance.  Teachers have decided what interests them and been given the resources to pursue it.  This is part of an increasing blend of different learning opportunities including INSET days, Thursday afternoon CPD and external and internal courses that staff may choose to go on.  The R&D Communities add a dimension we have never had before and fills a gap in provision.  All proposals were accepted.  The SOLO Taxonomy features heavily and this is something that has been a consistent theme of development for the past three or four and there are a couple more posts on this blog about using the SOLO Taxonomy to increase challenge and how we have sought to spread and embed it.

Produced by Pam Hook (@arti_choke) http://pamhook.com/wiki/The_Learning_Process

The total funding for the six projects involving thirty four staff – thirty one teachers and three support staff – is £3,400 though I don’t think the actual spend will be anywhere near that.  Teachers aren’t that great at spending money at school.  In addition, one hundred and twenty three cover vouchers have been asked for.  The use of the cover vouchers will need to be monitored as we won’t be able to release a large number of teachers all at once but leaders have been very clear that a number of cover vouchers will simply be used to keep staff “free” and our cover supervisors will support the release time for staff.  I can almost hear people shouting about the missed classes but this cover equates to about one day per member of staff per year.  This is equivalent to a one day course each, which often has no impact back at school, against what may well end up being about one hundred and fifty days equivalence of collaborative planning, lesson observations and peer evaluations with this deliberate practice developing staff’s pedagogical knowledge and skills.

The six R&D Communities are being led by two teachers who are currently Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs) in their first year of teaching with us, three staff who have other middle leadership responsibilities and a part time main scale teacher.  It’s a wonderful mix and I just think a fantastic opportunity to develop leadership skills.  One of the responsibilities of the R&D Communities is to capture and transfer knowledge so I will be blogging about the successes, failures and lessons learnt by each group during next year.

What would you want to research and develop with a group of colleagues if given a £100 of funding each and a bit of time?

Reflections of an Apprentice 2040 Visioner

Today’s first meeting of the SSAT Vision 2040 Group was a fascinating if sobering moment for me.  By 2040 I will be 77 years of age.  Despite what others think they might have in store for me, the one thing I can say with certainty is that I will be retired, probably for quite some time.  My own children have all been through the state education system and currently seem pretty well balanced and content young adults.  The challenge of thinking of 2040 is that my grandchildren, none currently born or on the immediate horizon, I am reliably informed, may also have been through or approaching the end of what is currently the secondary phase of education. Continue reading →

Advice to New Senior Leaders

#SLTChat is providing a whole raft of great issues to blog on and I’ve picked up another one this weekend proposed by @ChrisHildrew.  He posed the question, “What single piece of advice would you offer to someone taking up a senior leadership post in September?”

The chance of me limiting myself to one piece of advice is negligible but I do have some thoughts.  This February we attracted the largest and most outstanding field of applicants, for two Assistant Headships, that I have ever seen in my time at St. Mary’s.  In taking a number of candidates around the College, prior to the closing date for applications (by the way it is a really good idea to go and have a look at a school and meet the headteacher when you are applying for this type of post), I was asked various questions.  I tried to give them honest and frank answers so they could determine whether St. Mary’s was a place where they could be happy and make a contribution.  It was also important that I gave them some idea of the type of person we were looking for.  In the end we appointed five of the applicants, the governors often think it’s a BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free) offer when it comes to appointments.

Here are some thoughts if you are taking up a senior leadership post, this September, or hope to be taking one up in the coming years.  This is my six of the best pieces of advice I can offer.

Outstanding Teaching

You must have credibility in the classroom.  Don’t make the mistake I did as a Headteacher of the three part lesson – arrive late, give it some tap, apologise and go early.  In the end I was doing more harm than good.  My symbolism had in fact become tokenism.  Staff forgave me as they realised that there were other issues I had to deal with at the time – they will not be as forgiving to others in or new to a senior leadership team.  Everyone will expect you to lead by example in the classroom.  Model the behaviours and the quality that you want from others.  Follow the systems and processes like any other member of staff just do it with the exceptional skill and talent you undoubtedly possess.

Be Present, Be a Presence
There is a price to pay for all of us as senior leaders and people will expect you to be there early and to stay after school.  It is no good pretending that you can arrive at the last minute and be off early – I’m not going to be dishonest and pretend to you that it is.  This isn’t a macho thing but just a matter of getting the job done.  Teachers in particular, who have full teaching timetables, may need to see you before the start of a school day or when classes have finished.  You need to be there for them.  The number of meetings you have will increase and you need to have thought of how you will mange this alongside other commitments as part of preparing for the job.

When in school make sure you are visible to students and if possible parents – the latter almost a daily requirement in primary schools but a bit more difficult in a secondary where students are happier for their parents to stay away.  Stand on corridors, chat to students at break, lunch time and start and end of days.  When I was first became a Headteacher I use to keep a tally chart of how often I stood on a corridor and how often I popped into classrooms.  For many years these were part of performance management measures for my senior staff.  Being a presence is important.

Head for Trouble, Don’t Create It
When various prospective Assistant Headteachers turned up for a tour I told them I was looking for someone who would “head for the gunfire”.  Sadly with events most recently in America but also in other countries I don’t think the phrase is appropriate any more but I’ll try to give a sense of what I meant by it.  Schools need people who make them tick like clockwork, at an operational level, day in and day out.  The Assistant Headteachers I was looking for would be people who just couldn’t help but get involved in and resolve an incident that could potentially disrupt the smooth running of the College.  They just simply wouldn’t be able to walk by.  Don’t walk past any potential trouble, get involved.  De-escalate the situation, discern what has happened and then consequences can follow.  As you tell classroom teachers, “follow up and follow through.”  Don’t rush to judgement as you will make a mistake in your haste and back tracking is a real pain even when it is right and necessary.

Overview & Detail
Life gets a bit more complex in the senior leadership team as you are expected to take into account a far wider whole school perspective.  You are now expected to see the dots (issues) but also connect them together into a coherent picture.  This is important as staff will now look to you to make sense of what is happening in school, be clear about the direction of travel and how the separate parts make a coherent whole.

This is one of the most challenging but crucial parts of a senior leader’s role.  If you are to get everyone “into the same boat, all rowing in the same direction” than staff need a connection between the vision and their part in helping it be realised.  You stand at the critical point where you can connect the two.  Make sure you have this as clear as possible in your mind.

Publicly Support, Privately Challenge

As a headteacher I expect the total loyalty of my senior leaders.  This loyalty has two dimensions.  The first is, whilst happy to debate vigorously and at length a whole variety of issues, once you walk out of the SLT Meeting you must actively support and implement what has been decided, irrespective of whether you argued for or against it.  No half hearted engagement, no distancing yourself from the decision and no undermining the team.  If you think that is difficult the other dimension of loyalty is even more challenging – being honest with the headteacher if s/he is making her/himself look like a total wally or doing something that has had an unforeseen negative impact on the school.  This is tough but it goes with the job.  A Head may not immediately thank you for your honesty – ride out any momentary storm – but the ones that are worth working with will take a chance to reflect and recognise if s/he has got it wrong.  Your wise counsel and early warning will be valued.

This is similar when you work with teachers.  Don’t criticise anyone in public, stop gossip don’t add to it.  Teachers need public support both when they get it right, as they mostly do, but also when they make a mistake.  The honest and sometimes difficult conversation is a private matter.

Get the Ronseal Moment

For those not familiar with Ronseal, they make products that go in a tin that has a very simple description on the label.  A series of adverts have been run on television with a strap line, “Ronseal, it does what it says on the tin.”

I always talk with candidates at interview about the College and alert them to the Ronseal moment.  “St. Mary’s Catholic College, it’s like Ronseal, we do what it says on the tin.  You’ve applied to join a Catholic school and this is what we expect …”  It’s like the Blackpool rock analogy, no matter where you cut into the stick of rock you find the word Blackpool.  All good schools will have a root, a touchstone or a Ronseal moment that helps clearly define the ethos of the school.  This may require some unpacking for new staff but are you clear what the school is about?  You must be clear in your own mind what is at the core of the school’s ethos, what its driving force is.  Your actions as a senior leader will need to be in congruence with it.

If you have a new job for the coming academic year, good luck and I hope you enjoy it.

I’ve blogged before about “What Kind of Leaders Do You Want?” which may be of interest if you have found this post useful.