Getting to Know Straight Away

Paul Brasington

A group of us attended Paul’s funeral last Monday. It was an extremely moving event and I’ll never forget the eulogy given by Paul’s best climbing friend. It encapsulated Paul’s great love of life and made us all keenly aware of the great loss caused by his early passing.

Getting to Know Straight Away

All teenagers have a double life.

It’s typical teenage behaviour to try to jeep your life in boxes filed family, friends and school. To have maximum lifestyle control, the trick is to make sure that those three know as little as possible about each other.

So when you come home from school and someone asks what you did today, the answer has got to be along the lines of: “Nothing”...or...”Usual stuff”...or...”It was boring”. And then you launch a decoy operation by descending on the contents of the fridge like a plague of locusts.

And it’s that kind of behaviour (and it’s completely normal, by the way) which explains why the annual reports to parents and carers often provoke surprise – pleasant and unpleasant. So you hear comments like: “I didn’t know she was so good at Maths.” “How long have you been a peer mentor?” or, depressingly, to me or the staff, “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

Anyway, we’re going to shake things up a bit and try to put an end to conversations like that.

You might already know that parents can access daily information about their kids on line via our virtual leaning environment. It’s called the parental portal. This means that you can find out all sorts of data about your little darling without having to ask them to give you their highly selective version of events. The parents who use it now absolutely love it, but we need to relaunch it so that even more can benefit.

Not only that, but we’re also going to shorten the annual report process (it takes a staggering 8 weeks to complete at present) and make it available via the internet. Parents will still receive the at a glance information we’ve always given about individual subjects as well as a comprehensive prose appraisal from the form tutor. We think we can have that to parents in a fortnight. So watch this space. Jeff Allan is leading the initiative and is planning to trial it first with year 10 next term.

Comic Relief Red Nose Day

Another happy day to add to the annals of Moorside thanks to the Student Council and many members of staff who all joined in with the utterly daft spirit of the event. By the end of the afternoon the cash total raised stood at £888 and this will no doubt increase in the final reckoning. It was a mad hair day too, so here are some photos:

Praise over criticism

If you know Moorside, you’ve probably come across this catch phrase of ours. It lies at the heart of how we try to motivate students and is a basic principle in our behaviour policy or DFL as we call it.
 
Praise over criticism sounds great, doesn’t it?
 
But it’s very hard to put into practice.
 
And to be honest, and please keep this to yourself, the student council say that we’re not very good at it. They say that they like lessons where the teacher sets a positive tone by using encouraging language and voicing praise for jobs well done. They think that good teachers give them a warm welcome and use our merit system in every lesson and that a consequence is a much better climate for learning.
 
As much as I don’t like to admit it, they must have a point, so I’m thinking of asking the Teaching and Learning Focus Group to prioritise praise over criticism for the rest of the school year to ensure that far more of Moorside lessons are as positive as the pupils want.
 
Bu just in case you think that I’m running the Consett equivalent of Dotheboys Hall, I want to say a few words in staff defence.
 
There’s definitely a link between achievement and motivation and that’s why we have a well developed system of merit points and awards which students can collect throughout the year. It’s a good system of praise and we even differentiate it for year 11. They have to work very hard so we put them on a special tariff which means that they automatically amass merits for meeting their learning targets, attending revision classes and good behaviour and attendance. Sixteen year olds tend to be a bit wacky, so we try to organise reward events for them which appeal to the teenage sense of irony.
 
Let’s take last night as an example.
 
Year 11 are doing well at the moment so we took over half of the year group out for a treat in Newcastle. At 3.05 pm they walked out of school to find an old fashioned, London Routemaster double decker bus waiting for them (and thanks to Elaine Robinson for tracking it down) and this conveyed them (slowly) to the Quayside with a restive queue of traffic behind it all the way to Gateshead. And yes we did have a sing song on the top deck with Hannah Collingwood as choir mistress who led raucous renditions of The Wheels on The Bus, Summer Holiday and, bizarrely, YMCA. We were dropped off at the Millennium Bridge for a photo opportunity and then walked in the rain to Uno’s Trattoria for pizza or pasta and soft drinks. The other customers looked devastated when all 63 of us marched in on their “the weekend starts here” glass of wine but they needn’t have worried. The students’ behaviour was excellent and they made me feel proud. Then back on the bus to Consett.
 
And they all thanked the six staff who gave up their Friday evening to accompany them.
 
So praise over criticism works both ways.
 

So Now We Know Part 2

So Now We Know Part 2
 
This week I could tell you about “Raising Achievement”, our excellent staff training day courtesy of the Teaching and Learning Group and The Student Council (brilliantly).
 
I could fill a paragraph or two about the year 11 case conference and how well some of them are doing and how committed the staff are to gaining historic GCSE results this year.
 
Or what about some quite barmy plans for Comic Relief Day or the London double decker bus which is going to whisk off some reward winners for a celebration meal in Newcastle?
 
All great things, but, as you’ll see on our home page, we’ve had some dramatic news.
 
We’ve been working on plans for  Consett Academy for several years now, so it does seem very last minute to bring in a new sponsor from outside. Obviously, we knew that might happen when the University of Durham withdrew its lead sponsorship, but I for one never predicted that the whole of the Durham Excellence in Education Partnership (aka DEEP ) would be kicked into touch.
 
This means that we’re in a completely new situation and will have to adjust to working with a new set of partners.
 
 And it might be really good.
 
Like Moorside, New College has transformed itself to outstanding status and we’ve certainly noticed that increasing numbers of our students are choosing it for A levels and other courses. Everyone involved seems to agree that the academy should bring back top quality sixth form provision to a Consett location and New College should be able to make that a reality.
 
Whatever happens, I can assure you that my staff and I will endeavour to make the project work and to collaborate fully with CCSC, New College and the county council. We’ll certainly do our level best to protect the children’s interests during the rapid changes which are surely on their way.
 
But one last thing.
 
You might know that we at Moorside proposed a local solution to the issue of lead sponsorship. We suggested that an association be formed entitled the Consett Parents Educational Collaborative. CPEC would have been an alliance of interested parties in Consett and would have  played a decisive role in leading the amalgamation of both secondary schools and determining the ethos and curriculum of the new academy.
 
Just in case you were wondering, we always knew that it was a long shot. For one thing, time was against us and it was obvious that the government would prefer a quick and tried and tested solution. After all, New College is already sponsoring the academy in Stanley.
 
Anyway, even though I’m disappointed that the idea won’t come to fruition, I don’t feel that our time and efforts have been wasted. I was amazed at the speed and enthusiasm of the widespread support our idea attracted. I learnt that there is huge local confidence in Consett educators (not just teachers, but governors and school based staff too) and that the community would have entrusted us to deliver the 21st century school it wants.
 
So if you played your part, many thanks to you.
 
The idea is not dead; it’s only sleeping. Perhaps we’ll be able to wake it up one day.