Small Victories

Being a parent can be so tough sometimes, a series of challenges being constantly laid before you. One of the trickiest times is first thing in the morning: getting the children up, dressed, breakfasted and cleaned; checking they've finished homework and have practised piano/recorder, returning school notes, making packed lunches, arbitrating in the seemingly endless stream of arguments; getting them out the door in time, rushing (always rushing!) to school. All this before 9.00 in the morning when there's a slight muzziness in the head and a natural early-morning grouchiness.

Every morning.....so much potential for things to go wrong.........and usually.........something does.

And you walk home with time to think and you feel BAD.......and that worst and most common of parental emotions........GUILTY!

But, you know what, this morning..........everything went smoothly...... and God did it feel good!

Monitoring, Regulation and Accountability (Part 1)

One of the main reasons I had had enough of teaching in Britain 3 years ago, was the constant pressure generated by the government and its heavies (stand-up and take a bow OFSTED) on schools and teachers. This manifested itself in the concept of school self-evaluation, whereby Heads and Governors were obliged to provide evidence that their schools were meeting the required standards and generally being good little robot-puppies. If they could prove that they were a good, obedient little school through the evidence presented in mountains of paper and folders, then the big bad bully OFSTED would leave them relatively unscathed when its regular visit loomed.

The problem was that in order to gather the necessary self-evaluation evidence, particularly in a school like the last one I worked in which had only just scraped through its previous inspection, a spiral of accountability was created; the LEA(through its advisors) put pressure on the Heads who put pressure on their managers who put pressure on the teachers to prove that they were being good little robot-puppies.

What did this mean in practice? Primarily: lots of paperwork, from planning, to an increase in the amount of completed work in a child's exercise book, to assessments and record keeping. And that's without even mentioning the paper needed for plannning for all of these things! Secondly: lots of evidence of good teaching practice: photos of fabulous displays, marking and feedback that provided detailed constructive feedback and future targets, reams of assesment sheets showing progress of children against various value-added measures, annotated and levelled examples of work.....The list goes on and on (and bear in mind that all of this was supposed to be done in addition to teaching), but ultimately the best evidence of good teaching was from lesson observations. And it wasn't just the Head sitting at the back of the class looking over her spectacles as she scrawled away on a clipboard and made judgements about you. Suddenly there were governors, curriculum coordinators (your colleagues) and LEA advisors queueing up to get a glimpse and give you their tuppence worth. And bloody stressful it was too. But you did get a nice piece of paper or five saying what although your lesson was very good, had you ever thought about trying x, y and z. Even when there was nothing but glowing praise, it was hard to take seriously because you knew that you had just produced and starred in a showpiece lesson based upon someone else's criteria of what constitutes a good lesson. It would not have been  your typical lesson, which would have been a lot better no doubt: less well-planned, less well-resourced, less good at ticking all the boxes, but more spontaneous, more likely to develop according to the children's responses rather than following a pre-prepared script, funnier, noisier perhaps, certainly more exciting and unpredictable and lively.

Deep sigh.......it's so bloody obvious how wrong it all is.

When I first started teaching in 1990 life was simple. I was given a topic, through which I had to teach the national curriculum requirements (as outlined in an armful of hefty but pretty, colour-coloured folders- maybe life wasn't quite that simple!). How I did this was up to me, and apart from having to produc a 'topic-web' outlining the activities I planned to do, what I did and how I did it was up to me. I had my own classroom and was pretty much free to do as I pleased in it. And for the vast majority of teachers this worked fine and we taught to the best of our abilities. We didn't need to be constantly checked on because we were motivated by a combination of our professionalism and our consciences: we had a ethical duty to the children and their parents to help them learn and progress.

The downside of this relatively laissez-faire attitude was that inevitably some teachers survived in the profession despite being either incompetent or just downright lazy. Which isn't acceptable of course. But it wasn't until I became a parent myself, and in particular until my children encountered one or two of these teachers, that I started to appreciate more the need for tighter regulation and a more rigorous approach to ensuring good teaching standards. (See part 2)

MOT test for teachers

Read this on the Guardian website yesterday. Here's my response:

God this is so depressing.

I left teaching a couple of years ago, worn down by the needless, soul-destroying red tape, the ham-fisted attempts by robotic LEA advisors to make us teach in a New Labour way, the monitoring and constant lesson observations, the over-planning, the target culture, the language of 'value-added' as if children were tins of beans on a factory production line........I could go on and on and on.............

I was thinking of going back. After all, I used to love the job once- it was fun and I loved the challenge of using my imagination and thinking of creative ways to stimulate the children and help them learn. I ran after school sports clubs and lunch-time guitar clubs and wrote plays and musicals which the children and parents loved. I think......(hesitation here because my self-esteem is still a bit wobbly after several years of attempts by the system to turn me into a mindless automaton and reader of scripted QCA lesson-plans) .....I think.......I was a good teacher.

I was thinking of going back. After reading this.........not a chance. Never was any good at pretending to be something I'm not. Unlike the really crap teachers- the 1% or so before anyone gets too upset. They're experts at passing this sort of test- they thrive on it, come out with flying colours and as soon as no-one's looking, go back to being lazy plodders again.

Too depressed to carry on.

Homework.......and reputation

Last night Joey came home with some homework. It was a planning sheet for a piece of recount writing and contained a small box in which Joey seemed to think he was supposed to write an account of his childhood. There were a few reminders on the side like "use time connectives" and "make sure events are in chronological order", but Joey seemed pretty clueless as to what these meant. In fact he was increasingly vague about what he had to do at all. We tried to work out if he just hadn’t been listening in class or whether the teacher hadn’t explained properly. Initially blank looks soon started to morph into rising panic as the poor boy tried to remember/guess what he was supposed to be doing…..so we left it there and got down to the time-consuming business of helping him plan a recount text.

Why was he given this homework? Was it something that hadn’t been finished in class? Was it so that we as parents could do the teacher’s job, and teach our child about (yaaaaawwwwnnnn) recount writing? This was the first piece of homework Joey had had from this particular teacher. Why now?

My guess is that it has something to do with the fact that it’s Parents’Evening next week. If you’re anything but a top-notch teacher, then you dread parents’evening. It’s an opportunity for parents to come in and put you on the spot with difficult questions to which you’ve had no time to prepare answers. If you’re a decent teacher, or at least have a decent reputation (unless they help out in class, parents rarely have much idea about what goes on in school) they can be fun of course, because you’ll often get glowing praise from parents who compare you to the idiot who ‘taught’ their child the previous year. This particular teacher, from the few clues we’ve had so far, is of the former variety (I’ll talk a bit more about her in a future blog), and I would wager that the homework is her rather desperate way of impressing the parents because parents LOVE homework. In fact I would almost go as far to say that if you want to get a good reputation as a teacher, then set homework every night and you’ll be laughing.

Cynical I know, but I think it is the main reason that primary schools send work home at all. When I started teaching in 1990 it was rarely given other than a bit of reading and some weekly spellings. Nowadays there is increasing pressure to set homework, not just to the oldest kids but also to Reception age children. The poor wee things have just spent a long day at school, working and playing their hardest we hope, when they arrive home to be greeted with yet more school work. If they’re lucky they’ll get it finished just in time to squeeze in something to eat before rushing off to their after-school club. And if it’s anything like our house, that means stress.

What makes the gratuitous setting of homework even more baffling is that teachers hate it. Why? Because it means more marking (unless you’re Joey’s teacher- another blog, another time!), and teachers hate marking. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if you knew that the child had actually done the work herself, but seeing as it’s quite obviously been completed (immaculately) by an older sibling or parent, it feels a particular waste of time and energy.

So the children hate it, teachers hate it, and some (highly stressed) parents hate it, so why on earth do so many parents demand it? The answer lies, I think, in our experiences this year with Lily. Lily was given the dubious distinction at the start of the school year of being placed in a class with a teacher whose reputation has got to be the worst I’ve ever encountered. Every parent I spoke to assured me that she was an awful teacher, and were full of grisly tales of her extraordinary incompetence. I even heard that a group of parents a few years earlier had hired a lawyer to try to get her sacked. We decided to give the poor woman a chance, and so far we’re really happy with Lily’s progress and experience this year.

How do we know about Lily’s progress? Partly by observing how happy she is, and that she’s made friends. But we haven’t seen her school work, haven’t worked in the classroom and haven’t spoken to the teacher at parents’ evening yet, so how can do we know anything about her academic progress? Yes, you’ve guessed it……HOMEWORK. Every night Lily is expected to do 15 minutes of reading, and 15 minutes of another activity, usually either spelling, maths or something designed to improve her thinking skills. It is a bind, it does lead to some pretty stressful, rushed evenings, and I wish it wasn’t quite so relentless, but it does have several benefits.

Firstly, and I think most importantly to lots of parents, even if she’s not doing much else at school (although I’m sure she is), we know that she is learning something because we’re right there supervising her and helping if necessary. This reason was particularly important to parents in a fee-paying school I worked in, who needed more than most to see concrete evidence of value for their sizeable investment.

Secondly, it gets us involved with her learning so that we can praise her for her successes and help her with her weaknesses. Thirdly, it enables us to actually observe her progress. We can see with our own eyes how much her reading has improved, and her handwriting is almost unrecognisable from the hotchpotch of different-sized scribbles she used 3 months ago. OK, so we’re the ones doing a lot of the actual "teaching" but the teacher has set up the opportunity and the activities.

Most revealingly for me, it’s the first time as a parent that I’ve truly experienced a proper learning partnership, where all 3 parties are genuinely contributing to a child’s progress.

So, am I a convert to the big H? It depends. Not if there’s no good reason for it and definitely not if there’s no benefit to the child. I still think the school day is long enough and that a good teacher should be packing enough learning and stimuli into it so that the children have earned a decent break at the end of it. I don’t really think there’s a need for more than a bit of reading and maybe some tables or spellings to learn.

Looks like it just comes down to good teaching. But how do we know if our child’s teacher is any good? After all, we don’t want to rely on reputation!

Parents' Evening

Joey came back from school with a form about Parents’ Evening yesterday. You know the type of thing: You had to mark down which day you wanted to see the teacher and an ideal time. We’d already filled one in for Lily the previous evening, so I was about to tick the same boxes when I noticed that the teacher had marked a box saying that he didn’t need to see us. And it really pissed me off!

We were hoping to meet the teacher, see some of Joey’s work, chat about his progress, and clear up a few questions. It would certainly be a hell of a lot more useful and personalised than the copy-and-paste report card we would get at the end of term.

I suppose for the school, it’s their way of trying to reduce the workload for the teachers and to focus the available time on those children who need it most. That way, they only see the parents of children with particular learning difficulties or behaviour problems.

Joey is a bright boy who generally does well at school and is motivated, and my guess is that they don’t want to see us because he’s doing well enough. The problem is that this way of thinking doesn’t take account of the progress Joey’s making, whether he is improving in relation to his past achievements and what he could do better. It just says "Joey’s doing OK compared to the rest of the class. He’s no problem to us, so we don’t really need to worry about him."

It seems to me there are so many potential benefits to parent/teacher meetings that it astounds me they don’t want to see us. At the very least, they could have used it as a way of celebrating Joey’s successes, telling us how well he’s doing so that we could reinforce the message and let Joey know we’re proud of him. It would also be a way of getting to know a little more about the child, like finding out about his outside-school activities and interests and getting some feedback about homework activities and his attitude to school. It also ensures that everyone is singing from the same song sheet and know what the teacher’s expectations are. As a teacher, I’ve had several occasions at parents’ evenings when some parents and I have discovered that a child has been playing us off against each other. It’s a great chance not only to clarify things, but also to build up a relationship with parents.

Of course we will be seeing Joey’s teacher, even if it’s after school one day. But it seems a shame that the school didn’t want to see us, and it has sent out a very lethargic and negative message about Joey’s education and the lack of value placed on the partnership between home and school.

Why am I writing This blog?

1. As an outlet for some of my frustrations with the education system and with my children’s education. I am a primary school teacher. After almost 20 years experience, I have plenty to say about the profession and about education in general. I am also the father of 2 children, aged 6 and 8, which offers me some perspective from the other side of the gate.
2. As a way of connecting with other parents and perhaps giving them an opportunity to get advice. If I feel this angry and frustrated about my children’s learning with the experience I’ve had in schools, how are others going to feel?
   So, if you read this blog, and either want to add your own views or seek some advice, get in touch!
3. To start a revolution in teaching! Well, not really, it doesn’t have to go that far, but I would like to provide a forum for teachers to share their views and kick-back against the system a bit. We used to be a feisty lot when I started teaching, but nowadays all the spark and energy seems to have been knocked out of us by the constant stream of government initiatives and the heavy-handed way in which they’re implemented.
4. So I can have a good rant without boring the pants off my family and friends. Hence the name, which is a blend of Parent and Teacher, and also reflects my tendency to preach.
   So…….Hope you enjoy the blog and that at the very least it gives you something to think about. Any feedback and comments welcome. If you like it, spread the word!