Show and Share

If I want to cheer myself up I go and watch some good teaching.
 
It’s a one of the perks of the job and I have the whole curriculum to choose from.
 
Not that teaching is easy. I still say that the hardest job anybody does in   school is teaching a good lesson. And if you’re not a teacher just imagine what it’s like to plan, prepare and deliver 22 one hour lessons a week. And here’s another thing, the next time you feel annoyed by a gang of teenagers on the bus, Metro or in the shopping centre, just spare a thought for the people who have to teach them iambic pentameter and quadratic equations.
 
And in teaching you can’t spread out the  hard work like you can in some jobs.
 
I know this because  for a few years I wasn’t a teacher. I was a local authority inspector . Now, before you get offended, I am not slagging off the great work done in other occupations. For reasons that I’ve forgotten, I chose to become an adviser for a local education authority and   I just couldn’t deal with the transition from  classroom to  office. So the fault was all mine. Even though working for the town hall  was a fascinatingly varied job, the teacher guilt was awful. I’d find myself sitting at my desk on a Monday afternoon, waiting for the rattle of the tea trolley, thinking (and I know that this is irrational), I should be teaching poetry to 9Z right now – that’s real work not like this pen pushing.
 
Anyway, it got the better of me in the end and I went back into a school  (I even took a drop in salary and, yes, my wife is a saint) because I missed the buzz of of learning.
 
And that special sense of community and teamwork you can get in a really good school.
 
Anyway, I’m leading up to telling you about Show and Share Week which has just ended. One of my ambitions has always been to work in  a school where it’s cool for the staff to talk about teaching and there’s a spirit of sharing good ideas, rather than a lot of cynical hot air like you get in some staff rooms.
 
I know I’m biased but I like to say that we’ve got that at Moorside.
 
One reason why I think that is because Rachel Harding suggested we have a Show and Share Week. She said that Moorside people do come to watch lessons but it’s always to judge them. Why can’t we have a system where you can visit a lesson to learn from someone else’s good practice?
 
Well, I thought that this was inspirational.
 
So we ear marked last week on the calendar as Show and Share Week and then brought out a prospectus of outstanding practice. We did this by asking subjects leaders to identify major strengths in their departments as well as  teachers and lessons where these would be on show. We then published the prospectus to staff who   chose lessons they’d like to visit.
 
(By the way,  I don’t know of any other school that does this and I’d love to hear from you if you do.)
 
And it did get  a bit competitive. I offered an Enrichment Drama lesson and only one punter signed up. Yet superstars like Mike Davis and Barry Marshall sold out immediately with tickets fetching a fortune on E-Bay. What have they got that I haven’t got?
 
Anyway, if you observed a lesson you had to fill in a form saying what you learnt and asking for advice from the observed teacher  – all on a neat user  friendly proforma  designed by our resident genius, Gem Horth.
 
We haven’t evaluated it properly yet, but very nearly all subjects offered access to lessons and 27 staff gave up their non-contact time to observe. So far the feedback has been good, but we’ll find out for certain in a meeting after school on Wednesday.
 
And whatever happens, I think we can say that Mary Hannon was right when she said that the concept of Show and Share Week showed the rich professional culture we have at Moorside.
 

In Praise of the Student Council

Timing is everything.

Take fish and chips.

Fish and chips can be the best meal in the world (and I know that Team IT agree with me because they practically live on the stuff) but the timing has got to be right.

First of all you have to be really hungry and secondly you should have just done something which justifies feasting on something so calorific. My preference would be after a long, cold and wet walk on a Northumberland beach in thick mist, ideally involving some serious sand dune jumping justified by the presence of small children. So you take your self to the brink of exhaustion and hypothermia and then head for a hot ,steamy cafe in Seahouses for haddock, chips and luminous green mushy peas with a jug of tea and thinly sliced white bread and butter served up a by a grumpy woman in a nylon tabard.

Nothing could be finer.

Anyway, just in case you've forgotten, I'm talking about timing and I must say that my timing was impeccable of Friday afternoon.

I'd realised that it had been a while since I'd had some quality time with our student council. Because of the opening of the academy in September, we have two momentous terms ahead of us so I need to be closely in touch with how the students feel. It's also vital that they feel part of the process and that they have a say in the inevitable changes. They’re the reasons why I decided to have an all afternoon meeting with them in The Phoenix Centre.

By the way, you might be surprised to learn that the student council is sometimes on the receiving end of adult criticism. The main complaint is that the group is unrepresentative of the full range of ages and abilities at Moorside. Well, there 's truth in this but it's not the fault of the student councillors. We should thank them for giving up their time every week for meetings and for the contributions they make to self evaluation, recruiting staff and fund raising. If there are any shortcomings, I suppose that they might lie with how we organise the student council. I guess that we could do more to ensure that more students put themselves forward, but for the time being we have to work with those who do volunteer, even though they tend to be female and in the top sets.

And if you'd been with me on Friday afternoon, I guarantee that you would have been impressed by them. Here was a group of young people passionately devoted to their school, united by a desire to improve it, especially it's climate for learning. In fact they were so passionate that Lindsey Bell and I couldn’t shut them up! We only covered half of the agenda, but still made great progress.

I particularly wanted their views on why girls tend to do better in exams. Thanks to them, by the end of the afternoon, I understood much more about what needs to happen in lessons to even up the gender gap. The main outcome was that the student council has agreed to run a workshop on this issue at our next staff training day on February 28. So the students will be teaching the staff which sounds good to me.

So, from my point of view, the timing oft this meeting was perfect because it re-focused me on the core business putting teaching and learning first. And I left work for the weekend reminded of what magnificent students we have at Moorside.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

We Did it Fair and Square

Wednesday was a big day.

Not only did we receive early entry results for English and Maths (brilliant, by the way) , but the government also published the performance league tables for secondary schools for 2010.

Now if you're a regular reader of these ramblings, you'll be thinking, here we go - this week’s edition is going to be another Morris bragfest about the Moorside GCSE scores last year.

Well,OK.

Point taken.

I promise to try to tone it down because I know that some of you get annoyed.

But can I just give you a couple of headlines?

Here we go.

First of all, 5+ A*- C GCSE grades (including English and Maths) - previously the gold standard for schools in this country. Our proportion of 62% ( we think it's 63, but that's for another blog) places us 11th out of 36 County Durham schools. Nearly all of the schools above us serve much more prosperous areas like Durham City, so that's a very good result and is our best ever.

Now the controversial bit - the English Baccalaureate. This is the new gold standard and has been imposed retrospectively by the coalition government. So schools are now judged according the percentage of leavers who gain A*- C in GCSE English, Maths, Science, History or Geography and a language. Believe it or not, the government has ranked schools according to this measure according to 2010 results, even though the EB was only introduced a few weeks ago. So we were preparing kids for a measure we didn't know existed!
Well, as it happens, we've done pretty well. Not surprisingly, the national average for the EB is only 16%. Our figure is 18% which a places us 7th out of 36 Durham schools. This time ALL of the schools above us serve much wealthier catchments. So, once again, we've done well. This wasn’t accidental, although I admit that during the process of designing our curriculum and deciding what subjects to offer we did not see the EB coming. Our EB figure is good because we have not sacrificed academic rigour in the race to gain high exam scores. The EB has been brought in because many secondary schools have sought to raise standards by using GCSE equivalents like BTEC. Frankly, these courses are easier and less reliant on formal exams and they can be used to give your league table placing a massive boost.

They are also much more interesting for certain youngsters. They’re often more relevant because they teach skills which can be applied in the work place and also can give a sense of achievement which can' t be gained for these students from traditional academic subjects like those in the EB.

And we do use them for certain classes, but we do so strategically so that we can ensure that all individuals are on the curriculum and career pathway which suits them. It's called differentiation which has been a watchword in effective schooling for many years now.

So we've done well in the EB because we think that students on course for university should experience the intellectual challenge of studying a modern language. This means that if you're in the top set, you have to take French. Sounds a bit heavy handed but they gain very high grades. We're also fortunate in having a strong Humanities faculty in which History and Geography are popular option subjects with some bright students choosing both. And I think you know how good our English, Maths and Science are.

In other words, Moorside 's results are not massaged upwards by choosing easy courses across the board. We've done it fairly and with the best interests of all of the students in mind so that they are prepared for their next career stage, whatever that might be. We could have taught courses which would have brought us over 90% 5 A*-C (although without English and Maths) but that wasn't right for us.

Now just in case you think I'm being smug, can I venture an opinion?

I'm completely opposed to the EB.

Given the rich wealth of the curriculum to choose from I don't agree that History, Geography and a language are essential or even appropriate for most young people. Design Technology, Art, Music, PE, RE, Drama, Sociology, Psychology... Where do I stop? ...are all equally important. All of them can be fascinating for students of all abilities and all can be intellectually challenging. Yes, even PE before you say anything at the back.

So what would I do?

First of all choose one measure and stick to it, giving schools advance warning. Then assess schools according to students' scores in their best 8 subjects with added weighting for English, Maths, Science and ICT all of which should be compulsory for obvious reasons in the 21st century. That 's a no less rigorous solution, but would allow schools to offer inclusive curriculum offers, tailored to the needs of their own students.

Sounds a bit like what we do already at Moorside to me.

See you next week.

New Year...New Era?

First of all, a happy new year to all of my readers.


As you might know, I’m very good at holidays and I must say that I’ve had a happy (even fun packed) Christmas break and some lovely presents. Books and music in abundance, of course, and a radio controlled helicopter which I crash landed in the dining room. I’m hoping that some of the bright sparks in year 7 will show me how to fly it one lunchtime this week.


Anyway, I like to squeeze every ounce out of my time off, so I’ve just treated myself to an icy solo traverse of the Simonside ridge before resuming normal service tomorrow.

And, as always, I’m dying to get back.

Linda Rodham has produced some fascinating data on year 11 which shows that we might score some very good results again this summer so that will be our main focus. Also, I was bombarded with new ideas by the staff last term, so watch this space for news about what we’re going to do with thinking skills, reading for pleasure, boys dance, I-Pads and, believe it or not, jewellery making.

But the big issue in 2011 will be whether or not we become an academy and the massive changes that might follow.


You’ll know from our home page that an offer of over 20 million pounds has been made by the government for the new building. There’s some doubt that this will be enough for the iconic accommodation for 1700 pupils which the sponsors envisage, but we should know if the offer is accepted by the end of this month.


I just want to restate my commitment that, whatever happens, my staff and I will do our best to make sure that the students come first and that Moorside’s standards continue to rise.


So 2011 might see the start of a new era, with many of us doing different jobs and working in a different way.


But the Moorside spirit will go on.