Week 17: Medley

1 – Pace

Pace is the teacher’s responsibility, I realised this week. Until now, I tended to think “these pupils are just not working hard/fast enough”! Even though I plan lessons that contain fun and engaging activities, these lessons have sometimes felt like they are dragging on. The idea that I have to motivate and rally 30 pupils to work at a certain pace feels daunting. Why should I have to do it? Can’t they motivate themselves? Well, I guess they’re teenagers and I can’t expect the entire class to be intrinsically motivated and physically disposed to learn. There are five periods in a day, and a variety of subjects that to be engaged with more or less willingly, and pupils do not attend school of their own volition… so how can I maintain the pace of activities during lessons without expending all of my own ? How do I know when to give the class an extra few minutes on a task, and when to force them to move on? So far I have been unwilling to move on:

• either because the activity wasn’t the right fit for the class but I was still enthusiastic about it (the lesson here is probably to let go, cut my losses, and trust that serving my intellect/ego isn’t the same as serving the pupils’ learning)
• or because I was making a point: with some top-set (but sluggish) Y10s, my sense was that if I moved on from an activity that they were not engaging with, but were capable of, then they might risk “boycotting” future activities because they know that I’ll move on or do something different

From what I have learnt through observing my colleagues so far, maintaining pace in the classroom is somewhat similar to acceleration: the initial input of energy to get a vehicle [= teacher and/or pupils] from 0 to 60 km/h is lesser than the energy to maintain the vehicle cruising at 60. So, hopefully, if I can get the right start to the class, then maintaining that level of energy will be sustainable.

 

2 – Saying thank you

My last blog post included a few anecdotes about implementing some positive teaching habits, as suggested by a colleague. Here is some feedback on another of his recommendations: when a pupil says “thank you”, thank them for saying thank you. I thought this might be a bit over the top, but the reasoning behind it is that humans in general (and teachers in particular) can be quick to chastise undesired behaviour, but take desired behaviour for granted. Thanking students for saying thank you was described by my colleague as a simple way of showing pupils that we notice and appreciate it when they  are cooperative and respectful. I tried it out once, and the pupil was quite surprised, but smiled broadly.

3 – Being the most valuable resource in the classroom

One of my objectives between my first and second placement was to use existing resources (namely PowerPoints and worksheets) in the English department’s database rather than develop everything from scratch, as I had done last placement. Obviously I am quite glad that I have the experience of developing things from scratch, because when studying newer books in particular, there are fewer resources “out there” (eg: last placement I studied The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge with my Y7s and there was no existing SOW), so it is valuable experience to have. That said, I had also slaved away at my own SOW for Macbeth, a text for which there is an abundance, a profusion, an excess of schemes of work. Was it worth it? Pareto’s principle (aka the 80/20 rule) suggests not. Even without the 80/20 rule, it is obvious that spending 3h preparing a PowerPoint that I lasted me for 50mins of lesson time is a poor use of my time! (But it didn’t stop me from doing it repeatedly…)

This term, by focusing on adapting and tweaking existing resources, I have managed to stay on top of a workload that is greater than last term’s while overall feeling in better mental and energetic shape. I feel like a better teacher, and being more rested / having more leisure time has definitely contributed to this. Nevertheless, I have been nagged by pangs of guilt over the course of this second placement, or self-deprecating thoughts like: “I’m not creative/original/innovative enough”. A conversation with my tutor helped me to realise that PowerPoints and worksheets are not the most valuable resource in a classroom. I am. My creativity is still evident: it is channelled into lesson plans and activities, and for pupils it is far more important and enjoyable to have a happy, rested teacher than one who is worn out by preparing innovative resources.

4 – Data

One of our recent EPS sessions was led by a member of SLT and it focused on Data. I have very mixed feelings about data-driven education: part of me viscerally rejects it, part of me is seduced by how compelling and sensible and sleek it all sounds.

What I learned:

• The UK educational philosophy is that data is important, because it gives the government information about what happens across time for different social groups (eg: how well the Pupil Premium demographic – eligible for Free School Meals – has evolved in terms of university applications, perhaps). In short, the point is to track trends and to use the emerging information in order to improve social mobility and reduce gaps. I think what would be interesting (although of course it seems difficult to measure) would be to compare the overall educational progress made by the UK since they started using data, compared to the overall educational progress of a country where data is not a driving philosophical force in its educational system (eg: France). Actually, I’ve just looked at an interview with a Finnish teacher (Finland being the PISA score giant) to see what Finland’s stance on data is and this is what he says:

Q: How does your country measure school success and hold schools accountable for educating students effectively?

Finland is not very inspired of measuring education but we take educational assessment very seriously. This is perhaps because our definition of school success is very different compared to how success is understood in the United States or in much of the world. Successful school in Finland is one that is able to help all children to learn and fulfill their aspirations, both academic and non-academic. Many educators in Finland think that measuring of what matters in school is difficult, if not impossible. That’s why assessment of and in Finnish schools is first and foremost a responsibility of teachers and principal in school. They are reporting to parents and authorities how successful their school is in achieving commonly set goals. By this definition, school success is a subjective thing that varies from one school to another.

We don’t use term ‘accountability’ when we talk about what schools are expected to do in Finland. Instead, we expect that teachers and principals are responsible collectively for making all children successful in school. There is a big difference between social responsibility for all children’s learning in school and holding each teacher accountable for their own pupils’ achievement through data from standardized tests. External reviewers of Finnish education have repeatedly recognized this difference between Finnish schools and American schools, for example. Shared responsibility has created strong mutual trust within Finnish education system that is one frequently mentioned success factor of Finnish education. As a result, we don’t need external standardized tests, teacher evaluation or inspection to assure high quality.

• We revised how Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores are calculated. Full details here. In short: a Y11’s predicted grade in their GCSE exam (the average grade across 8 subjects) is a linear extrapolation of the grade they achieve in standardised tests in Maths and English when they left primary school. So, an individual pupil’s Attainment 8 score is their average grade across GCSE subjects with certain subjects weighted more heavily than others (Maths and English count double). That individual pupil’s Progress 8 score is the difference between their predicted grade and their achieved grade. Progress 8 scores of any “group” can be analysed: a school, a particular demographic (eg: boys vs girls, PP versus non-PP, BME vs non-BME, etc).
• Key Stage leaders write data reports, and teachers are expected to respond to these by implementing strategies to assist pupils who are a cause for concern: following data input, the excel spreadsheet automatically highlights the names of pupils who are currently working at a level that is two or more grades below their predicted GCSE grade.
• The main thing I learnt/realised, which made no sense to me, is that a pupil’s predicted grade is not subject-specific. For example, someone who is great at Maths and mediocre at English and History wouldn’t have a predicted grade of 8, 4 and 4 respectively, but one single predicted grade that was somewhere in between! Apparently, schools have tried to have subject-specific predicted grades, but the results in GCSE exams suggest that pupils are more likely to attain their predicted grade if it is one single predicted grade across all subjects, rather than a tailored target grade for each subject. When I asked about how come this was, and wasn’t it unrealistic to expect students to aim for a 6 if they’re worth a 4 and vice-versa, the session-leader said he had moral objections, out of respect for his colleagues, to letting students think that they can get away with studying one subject less than another (if, say, a pupil had a predicted grade of 8 in Math, they might neglect studying History for which their predicted grade is 4). I was quite nonplussed by this statement, coming from an educational background where our final exam is weighted differently across different subjects. It is undeniable that in French schools, it can be a battle to convince pupils to work for your subject when they have other, much more heavily weighted subjects, elsewhere: last year, I was teaching a subject worth a coefficient of 2 in learning path where the two main subjects each had coefficients of 7 or 8, and some of my pupils disappeared from my lessons altogether from May onwards. But overall, the headmaster and teachers’ (and national) message to the baccalauréat pupils is that points are points, and it is unwise to neglect any subject. In short, while coefficients are not equivalent to predicted grades and may not be directly comparable, I don’t buy into the validity of defending single-prediction grades on “moral” grounds.
• The Progress 8 system is geared towards students operating at a higher level: there is more value (in points) in moving a pupil from a Grade 5 to a Grade 6/7 than in getting a pupil from a Grade 3 to a Grade 4. This is of particular relevance to the school where I am working, what with its strong demographic of pupils with English as an Additional Language, whose access to the higher band of GCSE scores may be impeded by linguistic limitations.
• To quote the man giving us the talk (verbatim, I wrote it down) “we want everyone to plod along and jog along at the same level”. Saying that data shows that on the  whole, on average, progress from standardised end-of-primary scores follows a linear pattern to GCSE is one thing: that’s taking numbers and looking at how they evolve, and noticing a trend of an average. That is mathematical predictive modelling: using statistics to predict an outcome based on a given set of input data (Wikpedia definition of prediction modelling here). I’m not going to pretend to understand the complex algorithms behind Progress 8 enough to challenge it, but what this Senior Leadership Team member said to us really caught my attention because it sounded like he was conflating prediction (“overall, the trend is that progress will be linear”) with some kind of norm (“everyone should be making this linear progress”). This academic article explains the difference between explanation and prediction, and points to the need to separate the two. Again, I’m not a mathematician (though I have a good understanding of mathematics), and it looks to me like what started off as an explanation model led to a predictive model, which in turn served as a basis for high-stakes norms. In other words, there has been a shift from: “Now that we have this cohort’s results, let’s draw a line on a graph between where they were at in primary school, and where they are now after GCSE exams… Oh look! On average, the slope of all of the lines seem to indicate that, over the course of 5 years, learning has occurred in a roughly linear fashion. That explains the trend of learning over time…” to “Based on what we know about how scores tend to evolve, the probability is that this summer, X% of pupils shall get a GCSE score that is an extrapolation of their SAT score” to “Schools where pupils don’t make the expected progress at GCSE will be inspected and potentially put in special measures“. I can see how reasoning can take us from one stage to another. I can see why, for philosophical/social/political reasons, you would choose to move from one step to another. But intuitively, there’s a nagging sense in me that something is wrong or dangerous in using predictive modelling in a punitive way.

In conclusion, I find that the results that data gives us are helpful, as indices of / reflections of what is happening. I can see how data is a vital tool for making decisions at a nation-wide or school-wide level. From what I can see (from my, no doubt, limited perspective) is that the tool has become the raison d’être of schools, senior leadership teams and teachers. I can see why; as humans, we dislike uncertainty and the unknown, so having powerfully predictive models that tell us what to do, particularly if there are quantifiable impacts on social groups, is reassuring and attractive. And when I see this obsession with data-driven education, I think of Albert Einstein:

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a world that honors the servant, but has forgotten the gift.
—Albert Einstein

To my eyes, the education system, with its Progress 8 and Attainment 8 scores, is the world we have created for ourselves, as Einstein says; data is that once faithful servant, now honoured as master.

5 – Routines

Following the observation of a colleague in humanities whose routines are clearly respected by the pupils, I asked her how she managed it. She told me that repetition and consistency at all times (especially in the first few weeks of term) was the key. I was later sent this article by my professional tutor, which further emphasised the point that trainee teachers shouldn’t be fooled by the superb behaviour displayed in some classes they take over: these pupils don’t just have good habits; those habits have been learned and reinforced over a period of time. As I will be gradually taking over Y11 and Y12 classes this term, here’s an opportunity to work at it very intentionally.

Concerning the Y12s, and all sixth-formers, the school’s behaviour management policy is different to Y7-Y11. This was already the case in my previous placement school and the rationale behind it is to make sixth-formers more responsible. So any persistently poor behaviour (like absenteeism or handing in homework late) would result in a “learning contract” being agreed upon between teacher and student. I would like to compare this with my educational experience in France, where the behaviour policy is identical from [the equivalent of] Y7 to Y13. From what I can recall from my own high school days, and from my experience as high school teacher last year, treating all pupils the same until they get their baccalauréat does not seem to make pupils any less responsible; I think pupils just adapt to whatever framework is given to them. So at the start of my teaching in Paris last year, I didn’t really have any clear idea around phone usage or late homework, but when I got sick of it around March, I started applying the school’s policy (phone usage in the classroom could be a motive for being sent out of class, and late homework could have a negative impact on the term’s average mark), and applying it in a draconian way; there was an instant turnaround. One kid even put his phone on my desk at the start of class saying “Miss, I don’t want to be tempted!”. I would say that that is an example of responsibility: making decisions about one’s own behaviour within a set of parameters.

What feels daunting and complex about taking over Y12 next term (beyond the subject knowledge requirements, and needing to learn for myself what I’m about to teach them) is that the routines and expectations which work, overall, fluidly in Y7-Y11 are not in place for Y12-13, or are not applied consistently by teachers (or perhaps a little of both). No fewer than 14 out of 19 pupils did not have their essay ready on time in one Y12 class, and I have seen every single pupil of the Y12 GCSE-resit group on their phone during class. When my colleague asks them to turn their music off, she cajoles: “Not while we’re covering this, but you can listen to music when you’re writing your answer”. The latter does not make sense to me. I understand that GCSE-resit groups often lack serious motivation, and that having music as a prop could help them to focus and make the boring/depressing process of preparing for resits more bearable… but they certainly won’t be allowed to listen to music during their exam! So in a sense, this lenience could be seen as lulling them into a false sense of security.

In short, for sixth form, I have not yet consistent routines modelled, or seen any concrete consequence for undesirable behaviour/academic choices (other than a verbal reprimand or  request). I guess it’s up to me inform myself on what concrete options there are, and create some kind of learning contract with my pupils, upfront.