Tag Archives: Curriculum for Excellence

A short post -So what exactly are we developing on development days?⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

Here’s where I am on teacher education after nineteen years of teaching.

If you have, on average, six Development Days every year, and those last, let’s say, six hours each  at a conservative estimate. That’s thirty six hours of development time every year. If a school has one hundred teachers, which is not unheard of, then that adds up to, unless I’m worse at Maths than I thought, 3600 hours of development time. Imagine what we could achieve if all of those hours were focused on improving pedagogy which directly improved the education of our children, instead of meaningless processes of management speak.

Looking back at how much of my development time over those nineteen years has been wasted with comically time-wasting processes, box-ticking and time-serving, passively sitting in front of forty pages of someone’s Powerpoint presentation, is it any wonder that we become passive in our approach to Development Days?

Have we failed to learn from the past?⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

It’s important to stress, as I’ll go on to discuss Water Humes’ recent article ‘Seven reasons why Scottish education is under-performing’ , that I don’t think that our education is failing.  However, that it is ‘under-performing’ may or may not be up for discussion  and it would be difficult to argue that it has been flawed in its implementation. I tweeted last week that I agreed with each of Humes’ seven reasons but I want to go further by dealing with each in separate posts. These are just a collection of thoughts, so please argue with me if the need is there.

1.  Failure to learn from the past

I’m cheating slightly here but I wrote about this very subject about six years ago. There was a danger of us ignoring the voices of ‘previous reforms’ at the time, something I compared to ‘The Diderot Effect’. The Diderot Effect stems from a short essay called ‘Regrets on Parting with my Old Dressing Gown’, by French Philosopher, Denis Diderot. In it, the writer contemplates his life choices after the gift of an expensive new dressing gown plunges him into debt and despair. He’s delighted with the new gift but starts to believe that this beautiful new thing has begun to make everything else look dreary and old. The essay deals with his quest to replace his possessions with shiny new things, in the hope that his new gown won’t seem so out of place. He descends into poverty and ruin.

It seems to me that part of the difficulty in ‘implementing’ the Curriculum for Excellence, or any shiny new curriculum really,  has been the assumption when any great change takes place, that everything that came before it is now defunct – dreary and old, in effect. Experienced teachers have every right to feel slighted by this, even if it is only a perception.  A situation should never arise where previous practice is dismissed, whether that is done mistakenly or not. Effective ways of informing, collaborating and engaging with teachers have been missed. Communication has come across as flawed but it is not too late. The biggest challenges still to come are surely in preserving the best bits of what is happening and merging them with newer ideas.

There are those who may cry ‘I told you so’ but we ignore experience at our peril. This ‘arrogant sense that the past has little to teach us’ has come to pass but it is not too late. A mature and robust education system must be able to admit that mistakes have been made: if there are flaws then we can fix them. But let’s not ignore the voices who’ve been though change. Diderot’s character merely changed a dressing gown. We have so much more to lose.

‘Nothing Ever Mattered More Than Not Doubting’ – A huge year for Scottish Education?⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

On the first day of teaching practice in 1998, in the school at which I still teach, I entered the staff room nervously, eventually sitting down beside a kindly gentleman who greeted me warmly. We chatted for a while before he offered me some advice: get your jacket on and go and do something else. Teaching will ruin your life. Of course I was shocked and outraged; I looked upon what I assumed to be a cynical old fool and vowed that that would never happen to me. We went on to be friends over the next few years until he retired, but I never got over that first meeting, especially when I got to know this brilliant man who had been worn down by the education system.

Twenty years on and I can understand what he meant. Continuous change is exhausting and often demoralising. It often feels – like a repeat of ‘It’s a Knockout’ (wee joke for the kids) – that, while we’re trying to do our jobs there seems to be buckets of water being thrown over us from all angles. It’s so easy to allow yourself to become cynical and forget the younger teacher who walked in to the staff room for the first time. But we have to try. It’s why I like to mentor new teachers; they often remind me of me.

I wrote a post yesterday about where I thought we should be going in Scotland and what it might take to get there. I wanted to make the point that we should be prepared to push aside all of our resentments and gripes, all of our reasons to be cynical – of which there are many – and be prepared take control of our curriculum. It will take a huge shift in policy and approach to allow us to do that and it may well be naive; but whoever got anywhere without a bit of that. They may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one…

I hope that message came across in the post but I’m not sure I made that totally clear. I’m not asking for time; I’m not asking for a period of stability; I’m not even asking for any specific changes to the curriculum. I want to see a period where we take what we have now and start to talk about how it fits the needs of our children. We can debate forever whether the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence has been good or bad, how we’ve spent an inordinate time on S4-6 assessment, whether consultation has been non-existent or not. I’m bored with that. It’s like a revolving door of resentments – perceived or not  – and it’s getting us no where.

So in a year where we will have pay discussions, we should, as part of a modern day ‘McCrone Settlement’ be prepared to demand a say on the future of the curriculum. We should make promises that we will engage with research if we are given the space to do so – more teachers required please. I understand that there’s a lot of resentment out there, often rightly so, about time wasted. But if there’s a real chance of a curriculum approaching anywhere near ‘Excellent’ then it’s worth fighting for.

A few years ago, I bumped into that crusty old teacher. He’d gone back to Uni to study something he loved and he looked twenty years younger. He’d been burned out by the system. I don’t want that to happen to me. I want to look back and be proud that I was part of something special.

In this together – there’s no other way⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

There’s a tendency to slip into absolutes in education: this works, that doesn’t; this has failed, that’s a success. In Scotland, it’s remarkable to notice that if , on Twitter, you make a positive comment about our curriculum, the same people will retweet and ‘like’; similarly, if you tweet a comment seemingly negative about CfE, there are the same names who jump in behind it. It’s not an especially healthy forum for debate. And, while we convince ourselves that, no matter what ‘side’ we’re on, we are right, it’s likely that both sides are probably wrong. Is there a point where we have to sit down and talk about why we might be wrong if we really want to make things right?

That situation is not helped by overblown, hyperbolic headlines about betraying a generation; I see enough wonderful things happening in our schools to know that that is nonsense. But to bury our heads in the sand and ignore our responsibilities to discuss the direction of travel is worrying. This week Professor Walter Humes threw his twopence into the debate. Seven Reasons Why Scottish Education is underperforming  It raises a host of difficult challenges which may rest uncomfortably with some, but I find it difficult to agree with most of it.

Of course it is easy to dig our heels in and ignore these questions; after all, we often dislike to venture outside of our comfort zones. But to see these issues not as criticisms but genuine attempts to take us on to the next stage, with unity and purpose, is an opportunity not to be passed aside. There are incredible things happening in Scottish Education, inspirational. Our focus on Health and Well-Being is truly a wonderful thing; SCEL is changing the way we learn as teachers;  and many more. But there are undoubtedly issues with Literacy; there are issues with how we look after our teachers’ Health and Well being and how we allow them to take part in the process of change. It would be foolish to ignore those.

Teachers’ disquiet stems from a long term perception that our own knowledge and skills and experience are often by-passed by the next strategy or next ‘big thing’. We work ourselves into the ground for our pupils but, while we are allegedly ‘consulted’ about changes in the curriculum, things come to us from above, with an edict to implement. We may have been involved in the process of implementation but our views on pedagogical relevance are rarely sought. We have no emotional involvement in changes, no awareness that our prior experience has been taken to consideration. It’s not difficult to see why as professionals, we feel deflated and marginalised.

Real change takes hard work;  it’s not a document or a directive. As teachers we should be taking more responsibility to try and make sure our voices are heard on pedagogy. We are a talented, professional and vastly experienced work-force. However, it is essential that we are also a questioning profession. That doesn’t mean we don’t like what’s going on; it means that we want our say and we want to be a part of the process. In a year when teachers’ pay is once again about to be a huge focus of the public discourse, our ability to shape our own future is more important than ever. If teachers are given the time and space to shape the future of our curriculum, unlike in the shallow, piecemeal way we’ve had for the last few years, then we are capable of shaping the the futures of the children in our classrooms. And, remember, they deserve no less.

If we’re serious about the poverty gap in Scotland…⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

Get past this first paragraph: it’s not what you think.

I have a really nice house and have just had and incredibly comfortable, happy Christmas break. I’m dabbling with learning to play piano and often listen to Jazz, classical music less so. I try and eat healthily, for the most part, and have money in the bank. I enjoy gardening have a season ticket at my football team, occasionally listen to Radio 4 and get annoyed at Question Time. I am, to all intents and purposes, living the archetypal Middle Class Life and, while I grew up in a reasonably comfortable working class background, I recognise that I have ‘escaped’ a life I could have had.

I teach in the area in which I grew up and would have attended this school. I see problems with inequality all the time, recognise the poverty gap and want to support our Government’s attempts to narrow that gap. Inequality means we have a huge imbalance in our society: an imbalance of wealth, opportunity, services, voice. While school is a core part in society it must never be seen as the hub of all our problems but we do have our part to play. As an individual I have a responsibility to do what I can to help alleviate society’s problems. But what am I prepared to do?

Those in poverty very often see schools as the enemy; that might seem extreme but it’s true. Parents who’ve had generational resentments of authority see us offering something which is not for them. Families with unemployment running through generations look upon educational aspiration as a middle class conceit. They don’t believe that their cultural heritage- whatever that may be – is valued and see themselves being mocked and derided; the fast food they eat, the TV they watch, the way they talk. To say that education is the way out of that mindset is naive and misguided.

As educated professionals, it is easy to think that we have all the answers, that we know what’s best. What if we gave up that ‘voice’ in order to listen to the problems of our communities? How often do we really listen to the concerns of the parents of our students, instead of voicing annoyance when they don’t turn up to Parents Evenings? How do we create communities where teachers have to give up some of their free time to go and listen to these communities? Would that be a sacrifice? Would that help us understand?

Would we be willing to pay a little extra in tax if we we’re convinced that it would improve the lot of our poorer communities? We see high tax societies working well in Scandinavia but shudder at the thought of paying more here. Why is that? Because we’re not convinced our Government would put it to good use? Because we don’t see evidence of it yet? What would change?

If we are serious about alleviating poverty and improving the lives of those who live in poorer areas then how much are we really prepared to do? How much are we willing to sacrifice? As educators we have the knowledge and the tools to help but need to involve ourselves in the lives of our students and their families. Otherwise the gap will widen. And keep doing so.

If we are serious about closing the attainment gap and alleviating poverty then those of us in a position to do so will need to make some sacrifices. It’s not enough to get annoyed at Question Time or, dare I say it, write emotional blog posts. Otherwise let’s stop wringing our hands and pretending we care.


It’s Time to Nail The Curriculum in Scotland⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

As we enter 2018, wearily and warily, we face up to the prospect of new Scottish Government proposals for Education reform. At this stage, these proposals look something like this:

• Creating a Headteachers’ Charter (more autonomy for headteachers)

• Increased parent and community engagement in schools

• More pupil participation

• Regional Improvement Collaboratives (a way to help local authorities work together)

• Creating an Education Workforce Council for Scotland (to replace the General Teaching Council for Scotland)

Taken from:

http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/CurrentCommittees/107248.aspx

Of course, this all stems from a very worthy policy of closing the attainment gap. However, I struggle to see how any of these ideas move beyond the concept of ‘sounds like a good idea’, and if there’s anything we really need to avoid in Scottish Education is a range of strategies which sound like they should be good.

I’m very privileged to be a teacher: I love my subject, get paid comfortably well, despite below inflation pay increases for too long to remember, my holidays are great. But, as a profession, we are overloaded with change, weary with the next thing. Perhaps what is most frustrating is the lack of real consultation – asking us to participate in something when we’re neck deep in work is not an acceptable scenario – about what we feel about that change and how we help bring it about rather than just as part of a delivery system. Without that, any reform is bound to get bogged down.

So where to now? What might be my suggestion? If we’re serious about narrowing the gap, serious about attempting to eradicate poverty, or at least alleviate it, then education is part of the solution, of course. Where we fall down is an ability to really come to a consensus as to what our curriculum means, what the key aims for Curriculum for Excellence were really all about, especially in the Broad General Education years, upon to the end of S3. What do we want for our children? Where do we want them to be? What do we want them know or be able to do?

Dozens and dozens of E’s and O’s – experiences and outcomes – are not helpful. They lead to confusion and misinterpretation. We need to nail this curriculum once and for all. Get educators in schools to sit down and talk about what it is. Get it in writing on one side of A4, ten bullet points at most. That’s all. Own it. Then stick to it, never veering off the page. Every school can then work out a path to achieve what’s on that page, creating local solutions to local problems. But never veer from that page. Keep BGE separate from exam years by all means, but BGE must be leading the way, not the other way around.

Of course, if we genuinely want to ‘close the attainment gap’ then we need to resource our curriculum properly, whatever that may take. If tackling poverty is a genuine aim then we need to throw everything behind a movement that will do that. If that means a move towards health and well-being issues for a time and less of a focus on the academic side then do it. But own it. There will be criticism; there will be a firestorm from those who will claim that it will be a race to the bottom. But what I’ve found in my time as a teacher is that unless we are united behind one way – and telling us to just get on with it never works – then it will be doomed to disappointment. There is a lot of good will in classrooms around Scotland; we want this to work. But we do have things to offer to the debate. Just give us the opportunity and listen.


Dealing With Exam Results- Pass or Fail.⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

(The original text of my article in TES Scotland 20th November 2017)

It would seem, if you follow the progress of our exam system through both social and traditional media, that from P1 to S3 exams don’t matter; then they do for a couple of years, but only if you do well; then we’ll photograph your kids literally jumping for joy and put it in the papers. If they don’t, we’ll create a Twitter hashtag telling them that it doesn’t matter. A conveyor belt of ‘celebrities’ will sympathise, claiming, ‘I got nothing at school and I turned out all right, didn’t I?’ We’ll all have our stories of why exam success isn’t the be all and end all.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in between.

With each year of experience it’s often sobering to think of the number of young people who come through my classroom door. Entering my nineteenth year of teaching, I was shocked to realise that some of the first kids I taught will be well in to their thirties by now. I recently met a former pupil in Glasgow, instantly recognisable and memorable as one of those kids who had been, in his own words, a ‘nightmare’. A polite and erudite young man, he now runs his own business and is married with a couple of kids. He left school with nothing but a whole heap of negative baggage but went on to be a responsible, successful individual.

As a secondary teacher, I do believe that the best thing we can provide for our young people is a strong set of qualifications which will allow them to move on to the next stage of their lives, whatever that may be. That may not sit well with the principles of the Curriculum for Excellence but it is what I’m judged on whether I like it or not: it is what Secondary Schools are judged on. However, this is a damning indictment of those kids who fail to achieve at school, whatever the circumstances. Meeting my former pupil merely reaffirmed the folly of the way our education system works.

Is it not patronising to tell kids who don’t do well in exams that it doesn’t really matter? They, we assume, worked hard at those exams, perhaps expected to pass. Failing is a perfectly natural lesson in life so telling them that it doesn’t matter demeans them as individuals. Is it important to do well in your exams? Of course  it is. Will your life be over if you fail? Of course not. But you will have to reconsider your options. Assisting kids in being able to deal with the disappointment instead of metaphorically telling them to ’cheer up’ is a more responsible and caring way to help them grow and develop.


We Must Do Better Than This⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

(The original text of my article in TES Scotland 6th October 2017, adapted and developed from an earlier post of mine,)

The cup slams down on to the desk. Lukewarm coffee splashes onto the pile of documents I’ve yet to read. I don’t sit down in my chair, I collapse into it. The chair doesn’t invite me. I surprise it. In revenge, the wheels send me backwards into a cabinet. Three ring binders, piled precariously, fall to the ground. I can’t be certain but I’m sure my sighs can be heard in at least three adjacent classrooms. I stare at the ten e-mail requests I have received since the beginning of that last double period. This can’t be what it’s all about. It just can’t be.

‘What just happened there?’ should be the question most on my mind. ‘Why did that lesson go so badly?’ I should think about the endless planning I did for this lesson; the immaculate resources I prepared; the constructive yet essential use of ICT. The clear outcomes set, the challenging but achievable goals. Everything was perfect; it should have been perfect. And, of course, I should have been thinking about these questions. But I wasn’t. I had ten minutes to get ready for the next lesson. Another one I had planned for ages. I didn’t have time for questions.

That the rest of the day went well doesn’t really matter. They usually do. However, when I’m driving home, when I’m eating dinner, when I’m spending time with my wife discussing normal things, I know damn well I’ll be thinking about that lesson. I’ll be blaming myself and punishing myself and coming to the conclusion that I cannot and never will be able to be much good at this teaching thing. I’ll be back at my desk for the obligatory two or so hours of marking and preparation. I’ll be in school at 7.30 next morning to go through it all again.

Perhaps this portrays the reality of an impossible job. Perhaps it merely confirms the reality that you never stop learning. Reflecting on what goes wrong makes us stronger. However, nineteen years down the line I’ve finally arrived at the point where I know that, no matter how hard I’ve tried to get over it, that feeling never leaves you. Twenty four hours a day. I’ve dreamt of bad lessons, of troublesome students, of difficult colleagues. I’ve woken up at three in the morning worrying about course work. It never goes away.

I generally love my job. In all those years, there have rarely been days on which I wasn’t excited about getting into school. Recently though that has been a lot harder. The increasing awareness that the big and bold project that is Curriculum for Excellence is nothing but a pipe dream, crushed under the weight of poor implementation and bad decision-making; the inevitable new strategy added on to the pile of those we barely had time to implement last session; all added to a creeping feeling that, despite everything, nothing much has changed in Secondary School. We attempt to develop a Broad General Education from S1 to S3 without any real commitment to changing our timetabling structures. So we resort to what we know. Exams. The tail wagging the dog, once again.

We’re told things must change though.

The First of September was a quiet Friday, it seemed. Like many teachers, I’d been back a couple of weeks and just getting used to a new timetable and new classes. I might never have noticed it had I not been sent a link on Twitter, but there it was. Another major report released quietly on a Friday afternoon, lost in the maelstrom of the school day. The Teachers Workforce Planning for Scotland’s Schools document has much to discuss, much to debate.

The report suggests that – and as an English teacher I raised an eyebrow at this – new teachers, unless they wanted to teach English, wouldn’t require Higher English on entry to Teacher Education but at the point of exit. I wonder how this will go down with those who see TeachFirst as a way to attract ‘high quality’ graduates? Shouldn’t we expect high levels of Literacy to be in place when a student leaves school?

There were interesting comments on a return of the much-maligned Chartered Teacher Programme. Recognition that promoted posts were scarce and teachers were leaving, or planning to leave the profession, due to lack of opportunity, is important. However, there are many whose progress throughout the Chartered Teacher Scheme was curtailed last time round.

But that’s not really my concern for the moment. If you’re like me, you’ll sit through meetings about this and smile. ‘Of course, we’ll read that document. Of course, we’ll reflect and discuss the main points.’ Of course, we won’t, probably. I’ll add it to the workload document I didn’t have time to read, and the follow up report. That one is underneath the National Improvement Framework and Improvement Plan.

Oh, there are the new Literacy Outcomes that came out in June; the Education Governance Report that came out in June; the Delivering Excellence and Equity in Scottish Education Delivery Plan which also came out this year.

Excuse me while I slam my coffee cup down on the desk again.

You’d never guess from the media coverage, but we teachers are utterly fantastic at what we do. We teach kids to be better than they ever thought they could be, work harder than they ever thought they would. And we do it every day. Enough with the documents though. I’m like that drawer in your kitchen, full of carrier bags. You know it’s so crammed full that you can hardly open it but you keep cramming another one in now and again.

I want to get back to loving this again. There must be a better way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Talking up teaching will help solve recruitment woes⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

(The original text of my article in TES Scotland 11th August 2017)

Recent suggestions that Scotland could soon have a “Teach First” system of teacher training should not come as a surprise. If you haven’t heard of Teach First, it is a charity set up to tackle educational disadvantage in England and Wales. Participants bypass traditional teaching routes to work directly with disadvantaged schools. Graham Donaldson first suggested something similar in his 2011 report, Teaching Scotland’s Future. But he clarified that “routes of this nature could complement” more traditional routes into teaching – and therein, perhaps, lies the rub.

If “traditional” teacher-education routes were still financed and supported as they always were in t…

However, despite this “proud tradition”, we are struggling to recruit enough teachers. We have to look at all options now, surely? Well, no. We are struggling for numbers because successive Scottish governments have defunded education to such an extent that it is hardly the attractive profession it once was. And there’s a familiar ploy: defund something until it is barely able to function – then privatise. That’s what it will be: a firm step towards the privatisation of our education system.

So here’s a thought: perhaps making teaching an attractive prospect, not one used as political ping-pong by politicians, will attract graduates. Perhaps highlighting the work of teachers who do amazing things day in, day out, instead of focusing on the negatives, will attract graduates. Perhaps allowing us to showcase the skills we have and our love for the jobs we do will attract graduates. Perhaps paying us properly will attract graduates.

And another thing: please stop saying that Teach First-type routes attract “high-quality graduates”. That’s an insult to every teacher I know – all of them already high-quality graduates.

I don’t understand our willingness to accept the degradation of our teachers in society. We chose this profession because we wanted to change the world for the children we teach. We turn up every day, despite seemingly constant criticism from all sides. There are clearly recruitment issues, but there are simple ways to solve that. Open up and fund ITE programmes properly, don’t erode them until they disappear. Because that’s what will happen – believe me.


Time – our most valuable resource.⤴

from @ Just Trying to be Better Than Yesterday

(The original text of my article in TES Scotland 23rd June 2017)

It is difficult to talk to fellow teachers about real change in Scottish Education without coming across the thorny topic of Time. There is no shortage of commitment, no lacking in interest in new ideas, new strategies. But that’s not enough, is it? We can provide as many as ideas as we like, create as many resources as we possibly can; without the time to properly implement those ideas we will more than likely wander around the edges, more anxious than ever about what we may be missing. Teaching is a series of habits, of learned behaviours, and to change what we do takes real commitment and time from all involved for implementation.

It is this dichotomy which frustrates teachers most, I think. We see the wonderful work by organisations like SCEL (Scottish College of Educational Leadership) and their efforts to get into as many schools as possible, leading the way in new, radical approaches to continuing professional development, but often return to our classrooms overrun with tasks to complete and classes to prepare. And, when faced with those pressures, we return to the habits which successfully get us through our day. It’s not that we don’t want to be leaders; we merely find that the space to implement real change is filled with other things we must do.

I have always been wary of acronyms in Scottish Education. Once we use them, they can become meaningless words, easy to dismiss. However, more and more I’m beginning to see SCEL as our most important. Whatever your definition of leadership, it would be difficult to argue that taking responsibility for our own development is not part of that.

Money is certainly there. Investment in SCEL, in the Pupil Equity Fund, in the Attainment Challenge, in the First Minister’s Reading Challenge. Professional Development opportunities have changed completely over the last ten years. However, our opportunities to benefit from them have not.

Imagine what we could achieve if, instead of a cupboard full of resources provided for our National courses, we were provided with the more valuable recourse of Time. Time to collaborate properly; time to innovate properly; time to embed new habits and transform our classrooms: instead of struggling to cope with what we have already and finding ourselves vilified in the press for our reluctance to change.

There is no greater resource than our teachers. To improve their skills, to improve their ability to teach our young people, then we need to give them what they need. Having SCEL is a ground-breaking achievement but without the time to adapt we may be missing a massive opportunity. Let’s not do that. Please?