Apart from the Chilean miners, the big news story for me this week was the proposed increase in university tuition fees.
I just don’t get the whole ideal of making people pay for education. In my ideal world, all education would be paid for by the tax payer so that anyone could go to university regardless of how much their family earn.
And in the past it was almost like that.
I spent 4 years in higher education before starting work as a teacher and it didn’t cost me a penny. And that will be true of many current teachers, doctors, social workers, civil servants etc. etc. If I’d been faced with the prospect of having to pay back over £20, 000 at the end of my training, I would have thought twice about going to college as would many of my school mates. So what impact would that have had on public services?
And by allowing a free for all for universities to charge what they like for tuition fees, what messages will be sent to young people? There are 8 highly intelligent young men in my year 11 mentoring group. All of them are on course for university and all of them have the potential to make very valuable contributions to society. It would be tragic if they decided not to gain the high qualifications of which they’re capable because of a fear of debt in later life.
So what can be done?
Well, it seems that the decision has been made and tuition fees will rise significantly.
But maybe something could be done in Consett.
The lead sponsor in the consortium behind the Consett Academy is the University of Durham. Perhaps they could guarantee that all Consett Academy sixth formers who gain a place at the University of Durham would pay no tuition fees.
This would be massive gesture of commitment to the Consett community and I am sure would immediately boost everyone’s confidence in the academy project.
Talking Head
Sunday 24 October 2010
Friday 15 October 2010
More on Independent Learning: PLTS
Following on from last week’s blog, I was moved to receive this message:
“Phil. is still very much missed and it was lovely to read that he is living on at Moorside in the form of the Learning Centre. Thanks to the dedicated staff the students can enjoy a resource that I am sure is a credit to everyone involved. I hope the PLLC goes from strength to strength.”
It’s from Sheila Morrison, Phil Lewis’s sister. It means a great deal to us that Phil’s family are following Moorside’s progress.
So with Phil in mind, I know that he would have loved the weekend conference we’ve just held for staff. You might know that Moorside’s improvement plan is divided into the SHINE priorities: Staff Effectiveness, Healthy Environment, Independent Learning, New Technologies and Extended Services. Anyway, as you’ll recall from last week, Phil rightly saw that our students were too dependent on teachers’ help and needed to learn more independently, especially if they were destined, as at least half of them are, for university. That’s why we devote so much effort to finding ways of making them more self reliant.
Coincidentally, the last government brought in a new national curriculum with a great deal of emphasis on all subjects teaching independent learning generically across the curriculum. So that’s functional skills like literacy but also Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS). These are Independent Enquiry, Teamwork, Effective Participation, Self Management, Reflective Learning and Creative Thinking.
Jeff Allan has been leading us on this and we’ve made good progress with staff targeting PLTS in their planning and students using their learning passports and an on line system to assess themselves.
But it’s still a bit patchy.
To be honest, not all subjects are on board yet, so we need a big push this year to teach these vital skills consistently in all lessons. It’s the sort of challenge we thrive on because of the top priority we give to teaching an learning and our culture of staff willingly sharing their good practice with each other.
After a lot of thought, Jeff and I decided that staff needed an extended period of quality time together to decide on a whole school policy for PLTS and a toolkit for all staff to teach and assess them. So we took a gamble by deciding to invite people to a Friday evening/Saturday morning conference on PLTS.
This would mean working what amounts to a six day week and constraining precious weekend hours with friends and family. And, if you’re a young newly qualified teacher, losing that Saturday morning lie in you need to compensate for the long hours of lesson planning. We invited the Teaching and Learning Focus group first because they’re the powerhouse behind classroom innovation and then threw it open to all classroom based staff. Oh, and we also offered 6 places to Consett Community Sports College as part of both schools’ strategy to bring people together in the run up to the academy. More of that later.
Anyway, we received a great response – every place was taken- and, even though I haven’t seen the evaluations yet, I’m pretty sure that we hit the bullseye. The level of debate was very high and I think the plans we made will have the required impact across all subjects. The opening session seemed to go especially well because Jeff and I volunteered all of the leadership team to teach mini lessons, each one featuring at least one of the PLTS. So this meant that the staff had to pretend to be the students so that they could see learning from their point of view and also decide how the ideas could be transferred to their own subjects. So together we learnt Design Technology, English, Maths, History and Drama and the experience made me think how exciting it must be to be a pupil at Moorside moving from one fascinating lesson to another.
So we moved a long way on PLTS in just a couple of days and by Saturday lunchtime the policy and toolkits were in the bag.
But successful conferences like this also have a huge team building effect because of the rich opportunities to work with friends from other subjects. They also show the commitment of staff (and can I just say that all of our 5 very busy newly qualified staff gave up their time to attend) who are prepared to sacrifice their entitlement to free time for the good of the students.
But back as promised to CCSC.
The presence of six colleagues from Consett added a new dimension to the event and led to very valuable sharing of ideas. And I must say that if their professionalism is indicative of the CCSC ethos, and I hear that it is, then the combined power of the two schools will be truly awesome.
To put it bluntly, if we can’t make the Consett Academy work, nobody can.
“Phil. is still very much missed and it was lovely to read that he is living on at Moorside in the form of the Learning Centre. Thanks to the dedicated staff the students can enjoy a resource that I am sure is a credit to everyone involved. I hope the PLLC goes from strength to strength.”
It’s from Sheila Morrison, Phil Lewis’s sister. It means a great deal to us that Phil’s family are following Moorside’s progress.
So with Phil in mind, I know that he would have loved the weekend conference we’ve just held for staff. You might know that Moorside’s improvement plan is divided into the SHINE priorities: Staff Effectiveness, Healthy Environment, Independent Learning, New Technologies and Extended Services. Anyway, as you’ll recall from last week, Phil rightly saw that our students were too dependent on teachers’ help and needed to learn more independently, especially if they were destined, as at least half of them are, for university. That’s why we devote so much effort to finding ways of making them more self reliant.
Coincidentally, the last government brought in a new national curriculum with a great deal of emphasis on all subjects teaching independent learning generically across the curriculum. So that’s functional skills like literacy but also Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS). These are Independent Enquiry, Teamwork, Effective Participation, Self Management, Reflective Learning and Creative Thinking.
Jeff Allan has been leading us on this and we’ve made good progress with staff targeting PLTS in their planning and students using their learning passports and an on line system to assess themselves.
But it’s still a bit patchy.
To be honest, not all subjects are on board yet, so we need a big push this year to teach these vital skills consistently in all lessons. It’s the sort of challenge we thrive on because of the top priority we give to teaching an learning and our culture of staff willingly sharing their good practice with each other.
After a lot of thought, Jeff and I decided that staff needed an extended period of quality time together to decide on a whole school policy for PLTS and a toolkit for all staff to teach and assess them. So we took a gamble by deciding to invite people to a Friday evening/Saturday morning conference on PLTS.
This would mean working what amounts to a six day week and constraining precious weekend hours with friends and family. And, if you’re a young newly qualified teacher, losing that Saturday morning lie in you need to compensate for the long hours of lesson planning. We invited the Teaching and Learning Focus group first because they’re the powerhouse behind classroom innovation and then threw it open to all classroom based staff. Oh, and we also offered 6 places to Consett Community Sports College as part of both schools’ strategy to bring people together in the run up to the academy. More of that later.
Anyway, we received a great response – every place was taken- and, even though I haven’t seen the evaluations yet, I’m pretty sure that we hit the bullseye. The level of debate was very high and I think the plans we made will have the required impact across all subjects. The opening session seemed to go especially well because Jeff and I volunteered all of the leadership team to teach mini lessons, each one featuring at least one of the PLTS. So this meant that the staff had to pretend to be the students so that they could see learning from their point of view and also decide how the ideas could be transferred to their own subjects. So together we learnt Design Technology, English, Maths, History and Drama and the experience made me think how exciting it must be to be a pupil at Moorside moving from one fascinating lesson to another.
So we moved a long way on PLTS in just a couple of days and by Saturday lunchtime the policy and toolkits were in the bag.
But successful conferences like this also have a huge team building effect because of the rich opportunities to work with friends from other subjects. They also show the commitment of staff (and can I just say that all of our 5 very busy newly qualified staff gave up their time to attend) who are prepared to sacrifice their entitlement to free time for the good of the students.
But back as promised to CCSC.
The presence of six colleagues from Consett added a new dimension to the event and led to very valuable sharing of ideas. And I must say that if their professionalism is indicative of the CCSC ethos, and I hear that it is, then the combined power of the two schools will be truly awesome.
To put it bluntly, if we can’t make the Consett Academy work, nobody can.
Friday 8 October 2010
In Praise of the PLLC
It’s funny how places have their own language.
Newcomers to Moorside must struggle at times to understand what they’re hearing because I’m sure that our conversations are peppered with unfamiliar jargon like IS, blues, The Den, house style, ER, passports, passport control, traffic lights, LSU, DFL...
And PLLC.
Sometimes that gets shortened to PLC, but it means he same. PLLC stands for the Phil Lewis Learning Centre.
Phil was our much loved deputy headteacher who tragically passed away while competing in the Great North Run of 2005. We’d just been designated as a specialist technology college and Phil was director of specialism. Phil rightly saw that our students needed to improve their independent learning skills, so he decided to devote much of our extra specialism funding to transforming an old community area into a modern resource centre which would be open for study and research before, during and after school. Sadly, he didn’t get to see the fruition of his idea, but I think that it’s apt that every time we mention the PLLC it’s a small tribute to Phil and his service to Moorside.
When I worked for OFSTED (I know what you’re thinking, but no one’s perfect), I inspected school libraries and learning centres so I’ve seen quite a few of them. The vital ingredient is who’s in charge and I can think of at least one manager/librarian who just didn’t like young people (full stop), especially if they wanted to do naughty things like looking at the books or asking for help with finding information.
So I know how lucky we are to have Gem Horth at the helm of the PLLC.
Gem is a gem.
She provides as much learning support to students as she can and is constantly seeking to innovate and to think of new ways to encourage plenty of use of the PLLC. She’s made it the heart of the college and to me it’s a microcosm of everything we stand for: love of learning, support for one another and having fun.
You’d see what I mean if you spent just a brief amount of time there. First of all there’s a fair chance that Gem and several others will be in fancy dress as she’s a dab hand at spotting national days like...and this is true...Talk Like A Pirate Day. There might even be food available as there was on Australia Day when Gem somehow managed to rustle up a beach barbecue.
So they’re examples of the fun side of the PLLC, but you’ll see lots of learning too. Every computer will be in use and Gem encourages individual and small group tuition. So all at one time you’re likely to see Vicki Lakehal our learning mentor at work as well as Elspeth Bain our literacy tutor and Michael Dynes our Connexions adviser. Gem herself, without being asked, takes a special interest in helping students with English as an additional language, possibly because she herself is a gifted linguist and knows how to develop their fluency in a second language.
Anyway, as you can tell, I think the PLLC is great. So we mustn’t lose it in the move to the academy building. Twelve months ago I suggested to the sponsors that the learning centre be at the front entrance to allow community as well as student use but also to announce that learning is the academy’s central purpose. I’m glad to say that my idea has made it into the building design.
So wouldn’t it be good if they called it the PLLC?
Newcomers to Moorside must struggle at times to understand what they’re hearing because I’m sure that our conversations are peppered with unfamiliar jargon like IS, blues, The Den, house style, ER, passports, passport control, traffic lights, LSU, DFL...
And PLLC.
Sometimes that gets shortened to PLC, but it means he same. PLLC stands for the Phil Lewis Learning Centre.
Phil was our much loved deputy headteacher who tragically passed away while competing in the Great North Run of 2005. We’d just been designated as a specialist technology college and Phil was director of specialism. Phil rightly saw that our students needed to improve their independent learning skills, so he decided to devote much of our extra specialism funding to transforming an old community area into a modern resource centre which would be open for study and research before, during and after school. Sadly, he didn’t get to see the fruition of his idea, but I think that it’s apt that every time we mention the PLLC it’s a small tribute to Phil and his service to Moorside.
When I worked for OFSTED (I know what you’re thinking, but no one’s perfect), I inspected school libraries and learning centres so I’ve seen quite a few of them. The vital ingredient is who’s in charge and I can think of at least one manager/librarian who just didn’t like young people (full stop), especially if they wanted to do naughty things like looking at the books or asking for help with finding information.
So I know how lucky we are to have Gem Horth at the helm of the PLLC.
Gem is a gem.
She provides as much learning support to students as she can and is constantly seeking to innovate and to think of new ways to encourage plenty of use of the PLLC. She’s made it the heart of the college and to me it’s a microcosm of everything we stand for: love of learning, support for one another and having fun.
You’d see what I mean if you spent just a brief amount of time there. First of all there’s a fair chance that Gem and several others will be in fancy dress as she’s a dab hand at spotting national days like...and this is true...Talk Like A Pirate Day. There might even be food available as there was on Australia Day when Gem somehow managed to rustle up a beach barbecue.
So they’re examples of the fun side of the PLLC, but you’ll see lots of learning too. Every computer will be in use and Gem encourages individual and small group tuition. So all at one time you’re likely to see Vicki Lakehal our learning mentor at work as well as Elspeth Bain our literacy tutor and Michael Dynes our Connexions adviser. Gem herself, without being asked, takes a special interest in helping students with English as an additional language, possibly because she herself is a gifted linguist and knows how to develop their fluency in a second language.
Anyway, as you can tell, I think the PLLC is great. So we mustn’t lose it in the move to the academy building. Twelve months ago I suggested to the sponsors that the learning centre be at the front entrance to allow community as well as student use but also to announce that learning is the academy’s central purpose. I’m glad to say that my idea has made it into the building design.
So wouldn’t it be good if they called it the PLLC?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)