Raising Your Game in Your Subject Area Geoff Barton Head, King Edward VI School, Suffolk Download today’s presentations (Presentation 49)

Approach:

RHETORIC

REALITY

5 PROVOCATIONS

The Things that Great Subject Leaders Always Do Despite the Changing Landscape

RHETORIC

The core purpose of the subject leader Subject leaders provide professional leadership and management for a subject to secure high quality teaching, effective use of resources and improved standards of learning and achievement for all pupils. TDA

Key outcomes of subject leadership: Pupils – Sustained improvement, know purpose of activities, are enthusiastic Teachers – Have enthusiasm, shared aims/policies, plan/teach appropriately Parents – Informed of child’s achievements, targets and how to support Head teachers – Understand needs of subject, make informed decisions Other adults – Are informed and able to play a supporting role TDA

Professional knowledge and understanding Subject leaders will know/understand … Subject links with whole school priorities Statutory requirements for the subject (including assessment) Characteristics of high quality teaching in the subject Up to date evidence from research and inspections about the subject How to use data / other assessment information to set standards How to develop cross curricular aspects eg ICT, literacy, PSHE, Citizenship TDA

Skills and attributes: Lead and manage people to work to common goals Solve problems and make decisions Make points clearly and understand views of others Plan time effectively and organise self TDA

Key areas of subject leadership TDA 1.Strategic direction and development of the subject 2.Analyse relevant information to inform policy, plans, practice 3.Involve staff in establishing plans for the development of subject 4.Monitor progress made against plans and expectations 5.Teaching and learning 6.Ensure curriculum coverage, continuity and progression 7.Ensure teachers are clear about objectives and share these with pupils 8.Guide staff on teaching approaches 9.Ensure information on pupil achievement is used to secure good progress 10.Set expectations for and evaluate pupil achievement and quality of teaching 11.Use evaluations to improve teaching 12.Establish partnership with parents / links with community 13.Leading and managing staff 14.Establish constructive working relationships (with colleagues, pupils) 15.Appraise staff as in school policy 16.Audit staff training needs and lead/arrange training 17.Work with SENCO to match work to pupils’ needs 18.Efficient and effective deployment of staff and resources 19.Advise head teacher on staff/resource needs/deployment 20.Ensure efficient and effective use of resources 21.Create a safe, effective and stimulating learning environment

DCSF

Recent research has found that: Middle leaders have a vital role in sustaining and developing all pupils’ learning experiences and achievements and raising standards for all Senior leader teams need and expect all middle leaders to be engaged in whole-school developments The most effective schools have leadership that stretches beyond the senior team and includes various levels of leadership within the school DCSF

Ofsted has said of subject areas where practice is effective: there is a systematic approach to the monitoring of teaching and learning and of progress in implementing action plans departments evaluate regularly and pupil progress data is routinely analysed there are clear lines of accountability and the structures for performancemanagement are known, understood and implemented senior leaders support departments with planning, training and observation analysis of pupils’ performance has improved and targets are set for individual pupils, validated against previous results underperformance is tackled promptly and rigorously. Ofsted

Main Findings: 1 Middle leaders (subject leaders, middle managers, heads of department, curriculum co-ordinators) play a crucial role in developing and maintaining the nature and quality of the pupils’ learning experience, but the ways in which they do this are strongly influenced by the circumstances in which they work.

2.There is a very strong rhetoric of collegiality in how middle leaders describe the culture of their departments or responsibility areas, and the ways they try to discharge their responsibilities. However, this is sometimes more aspired to than real, and it may sometimes be a substitute term for professional autonomy.

3. Middle leaders tend to show great resistance to the idea of monitoring the quality of their colleagues’ work, especially by observing them in the classroom. Observation is seen as a challenge to professional norms of equality and privacy, and sometimes as an abrogation of trust. Subject leaders who managed to introduce some sort of classroom observation procedure did so as a collaborative learning activity for the entire department rather than as a management activity for the subject leader.

4. Subject leaders’ authority comes not from their position but their competence as teachers and their subject knowledge. Some primary subject co-ordinators doubted if they had sufficient subject knowledge, which made it difficult for them to monitor colleagues’ work. However, high professional competence did not appear to carry with it the perceived right to advise other teachers on practice.

5.Subject knowledge provides an important part of professional identity for both subject leaders and their colleagues. This can make the subject department a major barrier to large-scale change.

6.Senior staff expect middle leaders to become involved in the wider whole-school context, but many are reluctant to do so, preferring to see themselves as departmental advocates. This is exacerbated by the tendency of secondary schools, in particular, to operate within hierarchical structures, which also act as a constraint on the degree to which subject leaders can act collegially.

The core purpose of the subject leader Subject leaders provide professional leadership and management for a subject to secure high quality teaching, effective use of resources and improved standards of learning and achievement for all pupils. TDA

RHETORIC

REALITY

The Things that Great Subject Leaders Always Do Despite the Changing Landscape

5 PROVOCATIONS

1 Schools are becoming immune to school improvement Beacon SchoolsTraining SchoolsCoasting Schools London ChallengeNational ChallengeNational Strategies Leading EdgeConsultantsSchool improvement partners Super HeadsConsultant HeadsExecutive Heads Gaining GroundLeading Light SchoolsTrust Schools

2 More of the same = more of the same

3 There’s no cavalry

4 Harold Wilson was right

5 To a worm in horseradish the world tastes of horseradish

The Things that Great Subject Leaders Always Do Despite the Changing Landscape

5 Words 1 Image

Visible

Optimistic

Work

Hungry

Resilient

1 image

Raising Your Game in Your Subject Area Geoff Barton Head, King Edward VI School, Suffolk Download today’s presentations (Presentation 49)

Developing Effective Teaching & Learning Geoff Barton Head, King Edward VI School, Suffolk Download today’s presentations (Presentation 49)

An Evaluation Culture

Developing a self-evaluation culture Whole-school culture: Some opening assumptions Michael Fullan: “20 years in teaching is … 1 year, repeated 20 times”

Developing a self-evaluation culture Good teaching is a set of learnable skills, not a God-given gift Performance management is about performance We should encourage experimentation and occasional disasters We should be intolerant of mediocrity A genuine evaluation culture builds improvement Real change comes from within Whole-school culture: Some opening assumptions

Developing a self-evaluation culture 1.Map out the essential skills of teaching / tutoring / behaviour management are for your own context 2.Build everything else around them 3.Use evaluation to monitor impact 4.Use self-evaluation for teachers to reflect on their own improvement Whole-school culture: Some opening assumptions

Developing a self-evaluation culture Carol FitzGibbon (Durham): Get data into school life, without necessarily doing anything with it THREE GURUS

Developing a self-evaluation culture John MacBeath (Cambridge): “We should measure what we value, not value what we can measure” THREE GURUS

Developing a self-evaluation culture THREE GURUS David Reynolds (Exeter): “Within-school variation”: Aim to be a ‘high-reliability’ organisation …

Developing a self-evaluation culture Such complex social organizations as air traffic control towers continuously run the risk of disastrous and obviously unacceptable failure. The public would heavily discount several thousand consecutive days of efficiently monitoring and controlling the very crowded skies over Chicago or London if two jumbo jets were to collide over either city. Through fog, snow, computer-system failures, and nearby tornadoes, in spite of thousands of flights per day in busy skies, such a collision has never happened above any city, a remarkable level of performance reliability …

Developing a self-evaluation culture … By contrast, in the U.S., one of the most highly educated nations on earth, within any group of 100 students beginning first grade in a particular year, approximately 16 will not have obtained either their high school diploma or a General Education Development certificate years later. In Britain, just under half of all 16-year-old pupils will not have the benchmark of 5 or more high grade public examination passes in the national system. Obviously, many nations have even lower levels of educational performance.

Developing a self-evaluation culture Creating a self-evaluation culture: Tools for school evaluation: Student performance data - results, targets, etc Staff, parent, governor feedback Ethos data Questionnaires and focus groups Faculty reviews - inc observation sheets Self-evaluation

Staff Evaluations …

Routine monitoring …

Planners

Book sampling…

Focus groups run by Governors… What is it like to be a tutor here? Good bits of the job:Frustrations: Good Year Teams Good communication with Year Team Trainees are helpful Role will be strengthened by learning plans / target-setting days Lack of time Amount of admin Always dealing with the same students

What is it like to be a tutor here? What impact do you have on students and how do you know? Informal feedback from students – eg a disruptive student who admitted privately that he wants to do well Seeing decreasing number of referral slips Can feel a sense of progress How would we improve? Year 12 mentoring can be inconsistent – role of mentors not always clear – but principle of them is good Small minority – importance of planners not recognised by students/parents

What are the key ingredients in an effective tutor? Know and care about students in their tutor groups See monitoring and target-setting as a core part of their job Understand the need to work with students on skills beyond the classroom – emotions, motivation, social skills, courtesy, how to speak appropriately in difficult circumstances Are well organised and manage time well Listen actively Pay attention to small details – courtesy, thanks, etc Treat poor behaviour as simply a choice and good behaviour as a characteristic Apologise when they do something wrong or inappropriate Catch students being good far more than they catch them getting it wrong Have genuine interest in students’ lives and experiences Heads of Year …

Faculty reviews

Student Evaluations …

Student …

Attitudes to learning

Enthusiasm of teacher Fun Good class control No disruptive students Practical activities Teacher interested in the subject Sitting with a friend Clear instructions and expectations What for you is the most important ingredient in a good lesson?

Talk less and let us get on with work Teaching us techniques for learning and revising Practice papers Explain things clearly Acknowledge different kinds of learners Praise us Basic ideas about how to do things Providing lunchtime sessions Teach me in a way that I understand What do teachers do that helps you to learn well?

Longer breaks More trips Don’t give coursework at the end of term Tougher line on disruptive students More guidance with coursework Stop giving detentions for trivial reasons Smarter uniform Regular teacher evaluations by students Clone Mr Green Be more relaxed about uniform and jewellery New headteacher Hotline to support students who are struggling Shorter lessons Bus to Newmarket Longer lessons Fewer questionnaires! Don’t have such high expectations of students What one thing would you do to improve this school?

1: Think of people in music, media, sport, politics. Who do you see as positive role-models? Michael Jordan; Johnny Wilkinson; Richard Branson; Marcus Trescothick; Gary Lineker; David Beckham; Paul Merton; Tiger Woods; Slash; Thierry Henry; Bob Geldof; Rolling Stones

2: Think of teachers who motivate you most successfully. What do they do? Mr G - funny; tells us what we need to know; knows his stuff Mr W - teaches well; encouraging; takes no rubbish from anyone Mr W - honest; encourages everyone, not just the best Mr P - energetic; makes lessons active Mrs C - lively; fun Mrs W - explains clearly; not patronising.

3: How could we encourage you to take on leadership responsibilities around school? Give everyone in Year 11 someone to look after in Year 9 Give us more responsibility Get us teaching younger students - eg how to play the guitar Better rewards policy Extra privileges Give us more say Rewards - eg non-uniform Let us run clubs.

4: Put these in rank order: Lessons Breaks / lunchtimes Extra-curricular activities Weekends 100% like weekends best 79% like lessons least (98% in bottom two) 50:50 split between breaks / extra-curricular

Parent Evaluations …

Developing a self-evaluation culture QUESTION TIME 1.So how high are standards in your subject? How do you know? 2.How do students on FSM do compared to their counterparts? 3.If I asked a Year 10 student her target-grade, would she know it? 4.Does a teacher in your subject know what a good or outstanding lesson looks like, and how to move from one to the other? 5.How good is your leadership? BONUS: Would you be happy for your child to be taught in the class of everyone in your team?

Developing a self-evaluation culture Thinking and planning time 1.Which bits of self-evaluation are you currently doing well (eg is there an established self- evaluation culture across your team)? 2.What could you do more of (eg is self-evaluation for accountability rather than improvement)? 3.What 3 things should you and your team do next (and how will you make them happen)?

Developing a self-evaluation culture The essential skills of good teachers Knowing what good teaching and good learning look like

Eg: Essential Literacy

Developing a self-evaluation culture The essential skills of good teachers Describe the lesson: focus on learning Strengths and weaknesses Ofsted grade?

Steps to success.. 1.Be intolerant of mediocrity 2.Start with the end in mind: how will you know how well you’re doing 3.Don’t underestimate the power of ‘tin-opener’ evaluation drip-fed constantly 4.The job is to improve teaching & learning 5.Children matter more than baked beans

Developing Effective Teaching & Learning Geoff Barton Head, King Edward VI School, Suffolk Download today’s presentations (Presentation 49)