Every time I visit a school or college -or hear about one – where a dominant system is ‘three formal observations a year’, I feel sad.  Sad for the teachers and their students. Sad for the state of our professional culture that allows this to continue.  Sad that the leaders and the unions – or whoever else is responsible – can’t see a way around it or haven’t yet realised that tons of schools have ditched this pretty absurd process years ago.  

Nothing about three observations a year is inherently good.  It’s a symptom of a culture of mistrust and defensiveness intertwined with ludicrous accountability pressure and mistaken ideas about the value of one-off lesson observation, the validity of lesson judgements and the nature of teacher development. To me, it’s a symptom of things having gone wrong with nobody being able to see past entrenched positions or having thought to look around at what’s going on elsewhere to deliver a system that is truly developmental, fostering a grown-up professional culture based on sound principles. 

I’ve written previously about ‘formal observation’.  

These one-off lessons are always artificial, high stakes and tend to incentivise teachers to put on a performance that is not necessarily typical of their day-to-day practice. We get three show-pony jazz-hands lessons a year.  Typically these lessons are followed up with formal write-ups detailing ‘strengths’ and ‘areas for development’ as if those can be meaningfully established in an hour. (Sometimes, schools even grade the show-ponying but let’s not go there again this time.. )

The truth is that all this really does is satisfy an accountability itch.  Teachers are being checked up on, not checked-in on.  It’s on the institution’s terms, the observer’s terms – not the teacher’s.  Any claims that these are three ‘developmental observations’ are spurious because their infrequency and high stakes nature precludes that.  I would contend that nobody really improves because they are observed once every four months, receiving a list of things to work on.  The timescales for thinking about and making changes to aspects of professional practice are far shorter; feedback loops that lead to sustained change need to be tight and, significantly, iterative – each building on the previous one.  With three observations a year, too much time passes between each one for any meaningful iteration – all the issues that arose last time are a lifetime ago.  300 lessons have been and gone since that one last observed one… 

With only three lessons to base teacher evaluation or appraisal on – even if triangulated with data outcomes – it’s natural that teachers in this system regard them with some trepidation or even fear and dread.  Teachers talk about getting through them, getting them over with – presumably so they can then get back on with teaching like they normally do.  And, of course, if there is any level of shared bad experience in relation to the feedback given – the word around the staffroom and in the union meetings is that we don’t want to encourage any more of them. Three a year is the absolute maximum!  Well of course – three bad experiences are three too many; why would you be inviting more?

In addition, the middle leaders – those who de facto function as team coaches, motivators, as the key drivers of change – can’t get into see the members of their team in action.  In some schools the idea that, say, the Head of Science, will routinely drop in on every teacher in the team on a regular basis to see how things are going – is foreign. It’s not in the culture; sometimes it’s forbidden – because Three Max is absolute.  This means that discussions about teaching at the level closest to the action are not informed by observation – by eyes on the practice.  This is akin to a football coach having to sit in the dressing room during a match, then having to ask the players how they did. Did you press the attackers, did you pass and tackle well, did you run the set pieces like we talked about?  This kind of blind coaching just doesn’t work.  

Sometimes the leaders running these systems blame external forces – the remote MAT or central remote Headquarters that gives directives.  These on-high executives are apparently demanding regular updates on the quality of teaching as if this can be quantified and reported up the chain like figures on a balance sheet or data points on a graph – a graph that must go up!   Of course the quality of teaching cannot be captured in this way and anyone demanding data or information of this nature literally doesn’t understand what they’re doing.  I almost feel sorry for them, looking at this data imagining it to be meaningful.  It’s all a façade.  I sympathise a lot more with leaders in these systems where they recognise that change needed but it is beyond their power to enact.  Often they just quietly rebel  –  submitting information that is essentially a fiction to satisfy the machine.  But this isn’t a neutral – it still transmits to teachers as a top-heavy accountability system, not a truly developmental one. 

When schools ditch the Three Max formula – only good things happen.  They are replaced with multiple short lesson drop-ins that are low stakes and more frequent.  Middle leaders buzz in and out of their team’s lessons on a regular basis, seeing the realities their team experience, gathering information about what is typical. Teacher discussions are informed by recent information about the challenges presented by the curriculum and its resources.  Teachers stop feeling the need to show pony, the jazz-handsing stops. The drop-ins are more casual, and teachers appreciate that, over time, they are seen in the round; their challenges are appreciated and they have more opportunities to discuss details of their practice in a dialogical manner. Feedback can be co-constructed in team meetings or coaching sessions, leading to action steps that provide an immediate focus for the next few weeks. It’s all more dynamic, lighter touch and more meaningful – thereby leading to more rapid and deep change.   

All it takes is for the people with power to make the change, to bring the barriers down. Open your eyes people!  In literally every single one of the very many schools and colleges I’ve been to where they ditched the Three Max paradigm.. they look back with some horror at what they used to do.  What were we afraid of? What took us so long?  Now – it’s just SO much better.  Sometimes schools introduce learning walks and informal drop-ins alongside the existing Max Three regime – testing the water. This half-way house allows them to fade one system in as the other fades out – but really the culture doesn’t really shift until the formal observations go. It’s one of those changes that just seems like all gain, no pain. A win all round. And why wouldn’t you want that?