teacherhead
leadership
10 essential discussions to have in any teacher team.
Towards the end of last academic year, I wrote a post outlining what might be in a typical school’s development plan: Here’s your school development plan – no, really, don’t thank me. All of those ideas are still relevant for next year. But what about at a departmental level or a year level in primary? Here … Continue reading
The inspirational story of Cardiff’s Eastern High School.
This week I had the pleasure of hearing a presentation from Armando and Innes, Head and Deputy Head at Eastern High School in Cardiff at a Headteachers’ conference run by the school improvement team GwE in North Wales. The story of how they have turned this school around is truly inspirational. Joining the school (Armando … Continue reading
Annoying things controlling schools still do that have no basis in evidence:
As trailed on twitter… a short round-up of annoying things controlling schools still do that have no basis in evidence. 1. Grade individual lessons There is no justification for this in terms of professional discourse. It’s voodoo; a control device. No human observer can reliably maintain graded judgements over time, let alone ensuring that this … Continue reading
Developing Writing. Exploring the process from YR to Y6.
At the end of term I spent a fantastic day working with staff at Cirencester Primary School. As part of the day, we ran an exercise to explore standards in writing – a process I have now facilitated a few times; it is always absolutely fascinating. As part of my talk earlier in the day, … Continue reading
Building Great Teachers: Theory of Action
Most, if not all, of my current work is geared towards building great teachers. It’s such a fascinating, complex and challenging process. Even if the focus is on yourself, or on one teacher, the process of enabling that one person to become a ‘great teacher’, more effective, more confident, more successful, more able to self-manage, … Continue reading
Understanding Assessment: A blog guide
In my experience, assessment is widely misunderstood by a lot of people in education – which is a worry given how much of it we do and how high the stakes are with formal assessment issues. There all kinds of confusions, false premises, false promises and circularities across the system. There are too many … Continue reading
Curriculum Building: Every step matters; know your role; make it count. e.g. Writing YR to Y11.
In the last few weeks I’ve had a lot of conversations with teachers and leaders in schools in challenging circumstances at both primary and secondary. A common experience has been the difficult process of trying to build a coherent curriculum in a context of staff turbulence, curriculum reform and recruitment challenges. I’ve also worked with … Continue reading
Priority One: Improving the Quality of Teaching.
The dominant issue in delivering a great education to all young people in a school or college is to ensure that they are being taught well, by someone with the confidence, knowledge and skills required, relevant to the school/college context, in every lesson. Recruiting, retaining and developing great teachers should be a total frontline priority. It already is … Continue reading
School Leadership – what an extraordinary job!
One of the great joys of being a consultant and ex-Head is meeting leaders in their schools and colleges and hearing them share their thoughts. It’s always an amazing privilege. Without exception there is a sense of them being on a mission, a palpable purposefulness that drives them and enormous pride in … Continue reading
Tackle Workload. This bandwagon actually matters.
Everyone is talking about workload and rightly so. It’s even becoming a line of enquiry for inspections. The folk up at Wizard of O HQ are banging on about it – because they are the new Good Guys – and Headteachers now have an extra incentive to make sure they are doing something. This time, … Continue reading
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