A Principled view

With each passing release of both government data with commentary from the wider expert community, there seems to be depressing evidence that ‘last year’s innovation’ implementations have become this year’s policy ‘disasters’.  No more so is this true than in Education, and very much across the western, English speaking world, not just the local estate managed by the current Conservative administration.

Across Australia and the United States, in Scotland as well as England, in vocational as well as academic education, national centralised control systems have been implemented, particularly in terms of curriculum coverage and methods of testing, and the outcomes for learners it seems have declined, not improved.

Justin Spanswick, my colleague at Claires Court, is writing in more detail about the recent pronouncement by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools, Children’s services and Skills, Amanda Spielman (otherwise known as the Head of Ofsted) who wrote yesterday (12 October) that “Schools in England are focusing on tests and exams, rather than giving pupils a good grounding in a wide range of subjects”.  She also says a rounded education – or the lack of one – has consequences for social mobility, with less academic children being particularly hard-hit if schools drop subjects such as art to focus on core ones – BBC/news/education.

In Scotland, even worse criticism has developed about their curriculum and the outcomes for pupils.  Known as the Curriculum for Excellence, CfE, it has been seeking (for 15 years since its initial design) to develop the 4 capacities it hopes to deliver for its children: “successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens and effective contributors”. The trouble is these outcome measures on their own are almost impossible to measure and unaligned with actually the process of learning in school. As one secondary school teacher has written a damning open letter to Nicola Sturgeon, warning that Scotland’s curriculum is “utterly failing the children in our care”.

One of the main criticisms of both England and Scotland’s systems is that they have been in constant turmoil since the last but one major curriculum change in 2000. Every year, ‘stuff’ is moved.  These changes include the public exams system itself, linear to modular, terminal exams to coursework, then to controlled assessments, now back to linear.  It has been school ownership and government structures, the arrival of ‘free’ schools and academies, the switching of responsibility for oversight between a heinz variety of masters, including Local Authorities, Multi-academy trusts, stand-alone colleges and looser federations.  Here in England, Ofsted might have inspection rights over the success or otherwise of the school in meeting its educational purposes, but until recently no-one has had oversight of the financial and business management capabilities of the ‘owners’, so a new branch of government oversight, the offices of the ‘Regional Commissioners’ have had to be introduced to ensure there is someone actually ‘watching’ on behalf of the tax payer.

Each turn of the ‘change-wheel’ gives rise to further internal exhaustion of the key workers who actual provide the pedal power for education, leading to the inevitable problem of teacher recruitment not matching the numbers needed to meet population increase and teacher departures via retirement or resignation. The latest developments in Apprenticeships in the UK, the new financial levy on employers and the political priority it has become have been met with a colossal 60+% reduction in apprenticeship take-up because…’the salary offered is just so low!’

In undergraduate education, the recent introduction of the £9000 grant for students in England has already had to be adjusted, because the total cost of a 3 year degree for the most disadvantaged students is predicted to be over an eye watering £50,000.  With the graduate population soon to crest over 50% of the population, the sense that there will be a graduate premium for earnings after in employment is vanishing like the polar icecap. In turn this means that the cost to the tax payer, (after the latest increase in threshold to £25,000 before the student loan starts to be paid back) is going to be greater than if we had retained the original system of tuition fees and student grants, deemed to be so much fairer to those at the bottom of the ‘pile’.

What’s remarkable about the successful western systems of education that are doing really well, such as in Finland and Canada, is the almost wholly absent nature of central, federal control. And that’s why they are successful, because when things change, they changes in a socially cohesive way for all schools, not in a dog v cat street fight of who can win ‘outstanding’ at the expense of ‘requires improvement’.  The framework that both countries have adopted is built around attracting and supporting their teachers as leaders of their profession and of pedagogy.  That lack of central control means no politician such as a Baker, Gove or Greening can dive in and ‘change’ the system for the better.

As the headline suggests, I am fortunate as an Independent School Education leader, I don’t have to follow the latest diktat of government.  Stability and coherence are absolutely essential to the development of deep and rich curriculum-based provision. World research highlights that specialist teaching needs is more effective from the age of 7, so you need schemes of work to remain stable so serious domain knowledge about what works with 8 year olds, for example in geography, history, language and science education develops. It’s a truism that all independent schools are unique, and by that definition must be very different to each other. The reality in a global sense is that we believe in very similar core principles, the teacher being the expert in the classroom, children receiving a variety of stimuli from a variety of teachers from an early age, the extended day to broaden and deepen the opportunities for children and an expectation that the learning journey for each child is going to provide both a worthwhile daily experience, and opportunities to take risks and fail without being named and shamed for so-doing.

This month heralded the important announcement that there are now more ISC independent school children in schools abroad then there are foreigners attending ISC boarding schools in the UK. The growth of ISC independent school  curriculum provision in countries across the globe can almost be described as an ‘explosion’, with Haileybury for example exporting its model into Kazakhstan.  It also no surprise to see such schools making use of the IGCSE, a world version of England’s GCSE system, which has stayed remarkably stable for 30 years unlike its parent, which is changing once again over the current period of 3 years.

The trouble when tests change, is that, initially at least, the teachers and learners both have to focus on the test because that’s the way the output measure of the new subject curriculum is measured.  Once the new model beds in, then trial, experience and professional judgement come to the fore once again, once the assessment tools have been checked and ratified as working. Learning scientists like to look at change of periods of 10 years or more, so they can assess whether real change over time has happened, or is it just a statistical effect brought about by population variation. Since the current government has initiated a whole scale change to England’s state exam system over a period of 5 years, we won’t get the first indicators of that the change is worthwhile until 2025 at the earliest.  As I write, every assessment system from 5 to 18 is changing; that is simple madness.

Claires Court left the National Curriculum in 2006 and so for the past 11 years has been developing a careful implementation of a broad and deep curriculum now for 11 years.  We have aligned many of our more recent developments with work of leading professional bodies across the globe, and currently we are working alongside the excellent work emerging from The Learning Scientists*, a group of cognitive scientists whose mission is to make the science of learning more accessible to us all, children, students, teachers, parents and other educators.  In so doing they aim to:

• Motivate students to study
• Increase the use of effective study and teaching strategies that are backed by research
• Decrease negative views of testing

At the end of any educative process, we need to have effective measures of the success of the ‘Output’. If the only thing we know about are the ‘Output’ requirements, then we have no choice but to teach to the test.  What research-led education developments permit us to do is concentrate on more on the performance during the learning journey, to focus on the micro-steps that will lead to exceptional performance in the long term, but actually aren’t visible per se as output measures. This could be about engagement and striving, about writing skills and keyboard dexterity, knowledge about software, hardware or thoughtware.

I’ll close with the words of our new Chief Inspector of schools, Amanda Spielman, writing in the preface of a new Ofsted report looking at the state school curriculum.  Ms Spielman says schools have a duty to develop each individual child and give them a broad education. “However, good examination results in and of themselves don’t always mean that the pupil received rich and full knowledge from the curriculum. In the worst cases, teaching to the test, rather than teaching the full curriculum, leaves a pupil with a hollowed-out and flimsy understanding. A rounded education – or the lack of one – has consequences for social mobility, with less academic children being particularly hard-hit if schools drop subjects such as art to focus on core ones. Restricted subject choice for low-attaining pupils disproportionately affects pupils from low-income backgrounds.

In short, everyone deserves a rich and diverse set of opportunities in schools, and if we want  to raise the performance of all of our pupils, this government should focus its priorities still on ensuring that all schools are funded to provide such a curriculum, with high quality specialist teachers employed for the long term. Causing such austerity cutbacks across the public estate is going to cause the worst damage in communities that have the least to support their own outside of the classroom. Whether in Canada, Finland, Singapore, Japan or Shanghai, this is what the authorities understand – deep, quality provision for all reaps the best results.

*The latest blog from the Learning Scientists highlights the reasons why students need to be separated from their mobile phones – Cellphone presence and cognitive capacity.  Please have a look and read, and you’ll see why I rate them as an advisory group for our school!

Just a short post this week, in part because it’s been manic here in the ‘engine room’ at Claires Court. Those that have studied the art/science of Leadership in Education* will know that the most successful approaches long term don’t start or end with a clear desk.  I’ve been ‘architecting’ lots of things this month, a new induction day for Year 7 in partnership with the National Trust with a little help from some new friends at the Sea Cadets for example.   Whilst I am delighted to have some existing excellent staff in new roles, and some promising new colleagues with diverse experiences to bring to the mix, there lots of support for them going on, less ‘fun’ induction at Cliveden, more ‘Baptisms of Fire’ joining the team here at Claires Court.

Yesterday, at the Senior Schools Speech Day, Tod Muil and Camilla Slais (head boy and girl) gave a truly remarkable movie presentation, with live voice overs, celebrating the last 12 months of activity here. Their film will appear here ->  FILM  <– though not actually with me at the time of writing. Perhaps even more impressively, Todd Lindley (also Year 13 and a school councillor) welcomed Lord James O’Shaughnessy to the event with a speech of good humour and impressive delivery, recalling for this former pupil of the school a number of weaknesses seen here back in the late ’80s, including perhaps blaming me for losing his Biology book rather than himself.

In their words, indeed in the actions of so many other of the leading school pupils in serving so well at the event, they make clear that Claires Court is about permitting their pupils to have a voice and to exercise that voice as effectively as they can.

Today, at Senior girls, I spotted some ‘speed dating’ going on, a process by which Year 7 were able to meet with and interview Year 11 on a 1:1 basis, asking who they were and what they did, getting to know them better. By the time I entered the hall, the event was well underway, and both sets of girls were completely engrossed.  Year 11 had obviously regressed a bit, finding perhaps some memories they had on starting at Senior Girls; essentially, and really quite quickly, the girls were getting to know each other in a kind, supportive and friendly way.

Lord O’Shaughnessy summarised yesterday the approach to Character education schools ought to adopt, remembering quite well just how close our community was here back in his day, which was it must be said ‘BG’ (Before Girls).  His words were simply – “The Americans summarise it as Be Kind, though I perhaps prefer the concept of Do Good“. Little did his Lordship know that he was shortly to be immersed in the work of the Sixth Form leadership, Andy Giles and Steph Rogers (Head and Deputy Head teachers). As Mr Giles made completely clear the Sixth Form motto takes this move to Character Education to a perfect conclusion: “Aim High, Be Yourself, Make a Difference”.

Amen to that.

*Harvard Business Review specifically looking at Leadership in Education, published Autumn 2016 – https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-one-type-of-leader-who-can-turn-around-a-failing-school

Really quite a lot of people have told me just how pleased they are that their children are going back to school, partly of course because the children need to, but also because parental resources have by now been worn pretty thin.  I thought I would document what we have been doing at school this summer, particularly since A level results were published 3 weeks ago, to inform and clarify just how busy schools can be, even though apparently we have no children on site (it has been alleged – just ask Holiday Activities just how many attended each day – usually always over  100, sometimes 150!!!).

First things first. The Academic Principal takes 6 weeks of leave a year, plus bank holidays. As we are a 51 week of the year business, and every week has serious activity of one kind or another therein, I have long learned I can’t afford to be away from work and expect all things to go smoothly. Academic staff of course have closer to the number of weeks the children have on leave, but even they work for almost 3 more weeks than the children on site, because of the requirement we have to train, upskill, collaborate and frankly clear up the old stuff and renew so we can start the new year afresh.  This summer, my leave dates were Fri 28 July to Friday 11 August inclusive, with 2 other days elsewhere.  Hold on to that set of facts.

First and foremost, because of the sheer business of Claires Court, the school offices, Finance, HR, Maintenance and ground staff, Marketing and Registrar stay open throughout the Summer. Arrivals and departures slow it must be said, but we never have less than 80 staff on any one day or so at work during the summer break, and my colleagues have needs and plenty of questions that require  supporting if not answering.  Hats off to them all, our amazing all year round team that keep the business so buoyant.  Jenny and I find it no sweat at all to stay-cation, not because of the above, but finding the time to enjoy our garden, appreciate the food from my allotment is so very restful.  If this sounds like living the life of a semi-recluse, that’s correct. After 185 days of full-on work with children and adults, finding some me-time becomes  pressing for us both.

Because of the Staff work days in the Summer, we have 27 weekdays in which to complete the chosen investment in ‘fabric’ repair work. Senior Boys has undergone a complete front of building face-lift, involving some pretty serious ‘acros’ under the main first floor gable over the front door. In College avenue, a huge volume of refurbishment activity within has taken place; Miss Barlow has a new office on Junior corridor for example, and a new conference room developed from Mr Bevis’ old office, but lots more besides – despite the fact that over 400 children have spent their summer within the Holiday activities we have run alongside.  Holiday Activity staff, most notably Lynne Constantine and Anne Halpin, have developed a quite savage yet hollow laugh when colleagues ask them how their holiday’s been, because of course they haven’t had one.

The most remarkable build this year was reserved by Principals’ assistant turned project manager Claire Samber for Junior boys. 

 As building regulations change, so we must invest, and so we had planned the installation of a new fire escape come balcony for the Mezzanine on the Sports Hall, alongside a new brick replacement for the conservatory at the side of the Year 6 block. We lost 2 whole weeks to the hideous weather of later July, but today both were just about finished and almost available for use.  Many other parts of JB have had a refresh as well, and all in all, Mrs Samber deserves great praise and cheer for pulling off one of the most remarkable transformations the school has enjoyed.

On 2 Thursdays in August, this year 17 and 24, A level and GCSE students, often with parents, come into school to collect their exam results. How those results turn from big data in the cloud into individual candidate summaries for every one is a dark art of course, but includes our Data Manager (DM) logging on at 12 midnight Tuesday to the central JCQ data hub, smashing the stuff for between 2-3 hours, using specialist software that will have been updated at least twice over the previous 2 days, and probably needs a further update from the MIS provider on the Wednesday morning to sort out the final wrinkles.

Obviously, I ‘swan-in’ to work on the Wednesday morning without a care in the world, and review the respective candidate sheets – circa 150 for A level and 100+ for GCSE. Thousands of marks are combined into hundreds of grades, and after a cursory glance (hem hem) spot that the sheets make no sense to me at all. Lots of gaps, holes and otherwise lumpy bits; I point out to DM that there seems to be some mistake.  He politely suggests I might turn the sheet around, and look at the sheet with my glasses on. There is now too much data on the sheet, and what’s more, reporting examinations that ceased to exist 12 months ago. Genuine cursing and steam arises from behind the screen of the DM, and for A levels at least, a further hour of work is required ‘under the bonnet’ so to speak.

I kid you not about the alchemy required to turn data into paper info for candidates. Please bear in mind, we are now dealing with old courses and new courses 50+ in total, letters and numbers for some, little numbers and big numbers for others.  It gets worse. All the numbers and letters that mean something to the students come down on the Tuesday night, but the factually accurate stuff about individual marks for questions and papers are not visible to the teaching staff until the Thursday.  All the staff can’t know before Thursday, otherwise they might break confidence and tell the children what they got and break secrecy, yet all the subject leaders need to check though on both Wednesday and Thursday with a fine tooth comb, because stuff can and does go wrong. On both on days, wherever the Heads of Department are in the world, they log in on line to the specific exam boards for the subject concerned, check the results they can see, read the moderators’ report on their own marking where appropriate, read the Chief examiner’s report where there might be controversy, and throughout all this time keep their fingers crossed. And write to me to summarise what they can see and whether there are ‘issues’ of which to make me aware. As I live with the Head of History (we are married by the way), I have seen this year after year, and the load and demands on them just get more and more burdensome, because of course, the stakes seem to get higher and higher.

Thursday and Friday after both publication days are filled with cheers and tears alike. This year as in most years, the overall results are strong and for some, blooming amazing, for most candidates there is a feeling of the odd subject grade that got away, and for a few the odd is more like quite a few.  Andy Giles, Steph Rogers and Kim Hall in the Sixth Form are superb, and their results handout (17 August) started just before 8 am for the Y13 on whose results University places depend.  I am not very good at the mawkish hanging around, clapping hands and supporting jovially, because the sight of an old man looking excited rarely calms nerves in the young.

What seems to work for me and those students (and parents) that need a bit more help, is to be mobilised by the Head of Sixth Form when the problem arising looks one for the hard bucket. And though we get some rock hard ones, I am usually able to crack most of them I am given.  Now if that sounds grandiose, it’s not meant to; with candidates being able to trade up as well as down, Andy Giles does have some really quite curious issues to solve, and sometimes we just need more eyes on the ‘prize’ so to speak then his.

GCSE results day is much less of a terminal celebration, more of a taking stock and checking whether GCSE grades match A level subject choices, whether A levels are in the correct combination, and whether a switch to alternative BTEC courses might make more sense. Obviously some students  move on to other Sixth Forms, but we enjoy inward migration as well, providing a sense of renewal and refreshment for all. For the Sixth Form team, the work doesn’t end, and it’s quite noticeable just what a big burden they have – holiday has to be taken prior to A level results day, because it’s full on til today, everyday being a work day.

Those secondary staff lower down the responsibility ladder might escape much of the work, but most will still take an interest, turn up to see how their classes have performed, and celebrate/commiserate as appropriate. And of course of these, quite a few are beginning to prepare for the pre-season sports training to commence, Rugby and Sailing both being involved. For primary staff, as Richmal Crompton of Just William might write, they are permitted to be ‘gloriously idle’ throughout this period, because of course they have no results coming down their wires so to speak.

For primary school staff then, we reserve a very special kind of hell. Known as deep cleaning and renovation, every single scrap of their classroom has to be taken down, boxed up and put as far away as possible. This permits the cleaners (the same good people we employ in term time) to go around in a microscopic manner, wiping over with sterilising fluid so that all known germs known to man are killed. The builders and painters usually work counterintuitively to our programme, opening up classrooms sealed with ‘Deep cleaned’ signs and wreaking their own kind of havoc with white boards, fire sensors and such like. Our Domestic Bursar (DB) has his own very special kind of language to use on Discovery days such as these; he has developed a unique way of apologising to his troupe, recovering their torn-up clocking on cards, and as appropriate, even smiling at them.

Once DB declares that the school may now be considered open for teacher’, the primary staff then recommence the Herculean task of decorating their classrooms for Day 1 – that was today. Most staff at least scoped their challenge last week, many could return and start being creative, but pretty much all were still hard at the decorating lark well after 18:00 on Wednesday 6 September. That night, at 18:30, there were leadership, teaching and admin staff all still hard at the grind-stone. ID badges for students, bus passes and back at school letters, lockers and landings still being checked, cleared and made ready.

If you have continued reading this far, well done.  You are beginning to understand why the full-time office and admin teams look forward to start of the new school year – they are able to welcome the teachers back from their break, and cause them to share the load of answering calls, emails letters and such like, all with unique demands and suggestions.  After all, most of the parent queries in recent days are not about nuts and bolts, but academic and pastoral concerns to which only their teachers can make effective response.

This author reserves 3 very special privileges for his own attention.

I take a particular interest in inducting new staff, and 28 of the 30 starters were in for the 1 September for the day. This year’s newbies include experienced hands, teachers, nurses, programmers and support, converts from the City and paralympians switching careers. Teaching and working in schools changes most people for the better, a job/career in which every one can really make a difference, and I take great pleasure in facilitating that change.

Welcoming in the new Head Boy and Girl, Todd Muil and Camilla Slais and their team of School leaders, getting them set for their first big challenge, to prepare the picture show for Speech Day may take them out of their comfort zone, but putting the young in charge of such an operation really does mean we show respect for and value Pupil Voice. School councillor Todd Lindley has the unique pleasure of returning the favour showed to him by Lord James O’Shaughnessy, when he welcomed Todd to the House of Lords in February and congratulated him on winning the Whitbread prize.  James is an old boy of Claires Court, I had the pleasure of teaching him and pointing him in the direction of Wellington College for boarding senior school. James is presenting our prizes at Speech Day, and Todd gets to read out the Lord’s school report from way back when.

Researching and preparing the ‘Welcome back to work’ presentation to the Faculty on their return to school is my third great pleasure. Setting the tone for the incoming Academic year is essential, causing a regathering of common solidarity around the very essence of what makes our school such an outstanding institution for children, teachers and parents alike. This year, I chose to have the event filmed on Tuesday, in the Courtyard Theatre at Norden Farm, in part because it’s quite clear that attending this event for all of us is motivational, and thus in part, being able to share that set of messages to a wider audience seems a good thing.

And finally, and thanks for reading this far, where does the reward for getting ready for school come from. I started my day today with 250+ boys at CCJB, in part to lend moral support to a site that has been through the ‘Samber/Spanswick’ challenge this summer, and in part to see a lot of very ‘new’ boys start.  Looking at the gathering, from their backs so to speak, I know that those boys are incredibly fortunate that their parents have found the funds to bring them to us. When so many commentators of education worry about the growing immorality and perverse logic of school leaders, when the Professor who leads Education thinking at Cambridge talks about schools adopting strategies this year that simply ‘make her weep’, Claires Court remains a beacon of how to be responsible as a seat of learning, how to respect all individuals, whatever their ability, how to stay loyal to those same children, even when it seems everyone else is giving up, and above all how to ensure the children rise above it all, to become remarkable, secure and well balanced adults able to contribute effectively in a society that badly needs integrity to triumph.  And you read that here. And I stand by every word. As I did on Tuesday morning at Norden Farm in front of the faculty, and challenged them too, to live and breathe every bit of ‘them’, the Claires Court essentials.

The ability to read is central to a child’s ability to do well academically at school. Claires Court is a broad ability secondary independent school in Maidenhead Berks. We aim to recruit some 100 boys and girls per year group level from Year 7 and above, and on entry we assess each child’s reading age, as well as carry out a more general audit on their learning skills via CEM centre’s MidYIS assessment.  As parents choosing to find their child’s education with us, it’s quite clear their parents have taken a keen interest in their development through their primary years, but many talk of their child’s reluctance to read and of their concerns that there might be some underlying learning difficulty holding them back.  In short, we have our work cut out to ensure that the vast majority of our pupils have reached a reading age of 14 by the start of their GCSE courses in Year 10, when they are 14+ years of age!

To this end, we have developed a range of strategies to assist children (and parents) develop age appropriate reading skills. To start with in Year 7, every child has a library lesson a week as part of their English curriculum, and the libraries are well stocked with contemporary novels and modern factual reference books. This work is supported by author visits and book vents through the year. In addition, every child has a digital reading account providing them with a very wide range of digital books provide courtesy of Renaissance Accelerated Reader, which gives teachers the information they need to monitor their pupils’ reading practice and make appropriate decisions and choice to guide future reading and reinforcement. This internet based software gives each child regular feedback on their progress, supported by the librarians and teachers eager to give praise where due. However and he is a really big caution, silent reading on its own won’t improve the reading age of a reluctant reader.  They specifically need to read out loud to an ‘interested’ reader – we call this RADIO READING.

How might a parent listen to an older child at top primary/lower secondary child read?

Specific focus is given to listening to your child read without seeing the text.  The text can be from fiction, from a school book, from a catalogue or magazine or from that daily paper no house should be without.  Make sure your child has their reading to hand and then…

…sit back and imagine you are listening to the radio

Listen to the unfolding story and if words cannot be read, then leave it for your ‘radio’ reader to work out what word might do instead.  This might require them to read on a bit, but do be patient.

From fiction, capture unfamiliar words and discuss their meaning and usage – not too many, but enough to keep you concentrating on your job as listener.

Magazines tend to use technical language dependent upon the article – perhaps not necessarily useful in the wider context – but words, themes and issues will emerge which are worth an ‘any questions’ on afterwards – this helps check comprehension as well as keeping you involved.

The textbooks have a reading age at least age appropriate if not two years or more ahead.  They contain a technical vocabulary your child may need to become familiar with, so as they read jot down any words which seem technical and unfamiliar to them and you.  At natural points, for a break or to clarify, raise these words and discuss them.  

Papers raise issues of personal, social, cultural and moral development leading anywhere you might wish – often you don’t may feel you don’t need to hear the ‘reading’, but just discuss the emerging issues.  The lovely thing about newsprint is that this is where new words, usage and grammar first come into written use.  Spot the new words and see if they have value for your child.

Many of our families with boys in year 7 to 9 report the value of this personal time they find together.  In a world full of things to do and not enough time, with wall to wall TV and PC, internet and games machine, finding some quiet time to follow this work builds bigger and wider bridges than all might think at first hand.

The departments at Claires Court all produce secondary lists of technical vocabulary for their subject and in each year of key stage 3 (ages 11 to 14).  These are issued at the start of the year, are often reissued with revision guides and can be worked through at home to ensure each child is literate in their reading and their meaning.  It is amazing just how few words exist in the technical lexicon of each subject, so a bit of diligent attention here provides really useful support for the child, whatever their wider reading ability.

And finally – some 8 years ago I remember listening to Gary Chevin, former prison inmate turned Dyslexia researcher, working with Professors Rod Nicolson, and Prof Angela Fawcett. They had just completed his book (2009 – AuthorHouse), Dyslexia: Visually Deaf? Auditory Blind? In short, Gary’s unusual story is that he has no ‘inner voice’, and so unless he reads out loud, he can’t hear the story! This reinforced in my mind that whatever the many root causes of word blindness, even the most challenged adults could discover a love of reading and that there remains significant importance that all to be heard to read out loud and often!  LAMDA exams for this purpose provide significant extended opportunities for boys and girls at secondary level to raise their standards of public speaking up to Grade 8.

This blog was commissioned by the Independent Schools Council to inform and advise. 

On Finals day, shortly after 11.48 am, the Windsor Boys School defeated Claires Court by 1/2 length. Here’s the announcement of the result:

If you can see the small cross on the finish time, this tells you that the winners broke the course record, by 4 seconds, and so this means the Claires Court crew in coming second also broke the course record, by 3 seconds.

If you have not already watched the race on the YouTube channel, please do. It’s one of the most heroic bits of rowing by both quads you’ll ever see.  Windsor just beat Leander by 2 feet on Saturday afternoon, and Claires Court’s defeat of Maidenhead was not much easier. It is remarkable to have developed 4 quads this good, all on a tiny stretch on the River Thames between Henley and Windsor, and continues the epic traditions of these schools and clubs, to whom we ought to add the names of Marlow and Sir William Borlase too.

To the 4 rowers in the Claires Court boat, Bow Oliver Costley, Jack Jesseman, Calum Perera and Henry Osborne, all at Claires Court take our hats off to you.  We know you have worked at this event right through from the Autumn, and to have defended the title so magnificently, to have broken the course record even when bested by Windsor Boys is an incredible achievement. As your headmaster, John Rayer texted me on the day “…could not have asked for more!”

After a fabulous quarter final win on Friday against Globe Rowing Club, Tom Jost had this to say:

“Hi All, As i’m sure a lot of you already will know, the boys raced fantastically well yesterday to come away with a v classy win over Globe RC. Today we have a local derby on our hands when the boys take on Maidenhead RC in the semi final, at 3:10pm.

It’s Friday 30 June, and yesterday close to 7pm, the Claires Court coxless quad beat Tideway scullers to commence their defence of the Fawley cup won last year for the first time by Claires Court.

This year’s quad consist of Oliver Costley, Jack Jesseman, Henry Osborne and Callum Perera and they looked really good after their excellent win (very easily in HRR parlance yesterday.

I was due to write this week about our considered reaction as a school to the various terrorist atrocities over the last few weeks.  It is certainly not our wish to cause our families to fret about choices we make.  For example, this coming week’s trip to the Globe theatre on the South bank for our Year 6 girls has been cancelled;  the excursion involved some bankside walking near Borough Market, traffic is not yet free flowing in the area, and it seemed more appropriate to swap this Macbeth day in London for a Macbeth day in Maidenhead instead.  It is important of course that we still handle difficult conversations about terror and man’s inhumanity to man, and not duck such issues; sufficient to say that there is enough within the Bard’s own writing of murder, mayhem and sorcery to cause our pupils to reflect upon such barbarous matters.  Each activity we undertake goes through our Health & Safety prism, and all additional activities, particularly those that involve different and unfamiliar situations, including residential components are given the most detailed scrutiny. Our work here is independently inspected at least 3 times a year by a Health & Safety specialist, he sits on our H&S committee meetings and engages closely with events throughout the year, including our PTA activities up to and including fireworks, and produces written reports for the attention of the Principals, to which we are required to take action and make response.  If not, he will indeed ‘blow the whistle’ on us and report us to the appropriate authorities.

The appalling images from the Grenfell Tower inferno are still fresh in all of our minds, and we are learning more hour by hour of the extraordinary bravery of the emergency services during the conflagration.  It’s one thing to be trained as a first responder, quite another to learn how to use police shields to keep fire and ambulance crews protected from the showering, flaming debris from the building. Speculation on fault and blame is rife; given the area has had been covered by such mixed political masters over the past 15 or so years, it’s unwise to point a finger.  Suffice it to say, other public servants are going to be in the spotlight in months, perhaps years, for actions that are polar opposites to those decisive and life-saving behaviours we have seen this last week.

If I see a common theme between all these ghastly incidents, and my more normal daily correspondence with normal life here in Maidenhead, it is that we have, bit by bit, seen the winnowing away of specialist support services previously reliably provided by locally accountable public servants and their services. We welcomed PC Graham Slater

PC Graham Slater at our front door at Senior Boys

into the Senior Boys school earlier this week, for many years the specialist schools Liaison officer for RBWM, and a real expert in supporting more difficult matters cor which schools quite regularly need support.  Whenever we have had any boy-on-boy physical violence in recent years, PC SLater has been informed, and as appropriate visited the school, met with those involved, including parents as appropriate. And it’s not just the boys, but girls and on occasion adults themselves needing some support and guidance across the Claires Court community, and PC Slater has been outstanding.  Police Liaison services have been restructured, the body count too low now to justify dedicated support, and so the service now falls to the local beat officer where the schools are to be found. The picture shows headmaster John Rayer, and school Receptionist Sharon Adams (formerly a WPC herself) together presenting PC Slater with a token of our esteem. We will miss his wise words and counsel, and so will all of our many schools; is such continued replacement of specialists by generalists really the way forward in our normal walks of life?

Children’s services are no longer under the direct control of our borough; outsourced to a triumvirate including Kingston and Richmond. Adult services have already gone this way, as have legal services, to be found in Wokingham borough.  The Town Hall’s extensive additional premises have slowly been emptied, all part of a carefully considered plan to keep costs low by reducing headcount and outsourcing where possible.  I do wonder now when even our military forces are utterly reliant on part-time volunteers how this will all end?  Will our 2 new aircraft carriers ever actually find the personnel to sail them when the time comes?  In part this last election carried this dilemma to the public: if you want better public services, “in some way or other they’ll need to be paid for, whether that be by 1p a £1 on income tax, or a new ‘dementia’ tax to be applied to those with property services”.

In a lot of my writing in education, be that about teaching, learning, management or even parenting, I talk about ‘good noticing’. It’s really important now we go about our duties, not just as professionals in service but as citizens of our country with our ‘eyes wide open’ , and remembers whilst we do, to ask difficult questions. The best questions to ask are those that carry with them ‘No Blame’ , as shown in the picture here.

As a language, we are indebted to Rudyard Kipling for much good literature and poetry. Kipling’s Jungle book is perhaps the most influential piece of his work that all children know.  I particularly like though his short stanza – 6 honest serving- men:

“I Keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who”

As we continue to ask questions and wonder ‘Why and How?’, let’s keep all those that serve us in focus, and keep good watch on what they say and do.  We may not be in positions of elected responsibility, but those who are need to bear their responsibilities honestly and honourably.  Oh, and on those matters of finding excuse,  it was Kipling who also introduced us to a central message about taking responsibility

“We have forty million reasons for failure, but not a single excuse.”

One of the most important features visible in successful educational institutions is ‘good noticing’.  I was taught this in two ways, one by virtue of bitter experience when I had let something slip (often an issue in a busy life) and had to spend much time afterwards ‘mopping up’.  It’s so much better to focus on noticing things well the first time around, this playing to the old proverb ‘a stitch in time saves nine’.  Obviously, good noticing is needed almost everywhere, but its connotations can often be negative, even if the purpose is supposed to be ‘good’. Big brother CCTV cameras have come into their own in every walk of life; they have permitted us to track those involved in the recent terrorist outrages, find out where they have been prior to the events, and even perhaps arrest others associates supporters. Being spied upon often has negative connotations, and has certainly brought into a range of public workplaces such as the NHS a fear of being found out for making a mistake and thus being labelled unprofessional or worse. Here’s the Nursing times writing about that 3 years ago – https://goo.gl/D4AzCB.

The second way I learned this was through the excellent research work of Chris Watkins of the Institute of Education London, now sadly retired. Chris’ teaching definition is as follows: Noticing. This is the first step: to stimulate and credit learners with the fact that they direct their attention and that this is a key building block. It can develop further into a focus on one’s own activity: that key element of noticing what you are doing while you are doing it.

Here’s Chris writing* a bit more about ‘noticing’ in 2014:

We might underestimate young people’s noticing: a teacher in a West London school put a sign up at the front of her classroom for 5/6 year olds, saying “What have you noticed
today?”. She reported back to the project group “I soon took that down!”. “Why?”
“Because they noticed so much and it took ages for them to tell me it all”. 

Helping children learn how to notice things is a real art, and building in them the capacity to notice something about their own actions and ways of thinking is an incredibly important way of rapidly improving their own learning. We call such activities, thinking-about-thinking, or to use a grown -up word, ‘metacognition’. It is not that metacognition assists us to learn from our mistakes, actually far from it. What good noticing in this context permits us to do is to learn more quickly what it is that we do that leads to successful learning.  Obviously teachers notice things in they their pupils’ work all the time, but given the number of things they will notice in a whole host of children, the process of telling each child what they have noticed is both laborious and time consuming, and far less productive then enabling the child to think for themselves and rewarding them for so doing when true metacognitive activity takes place.

The trouble is for all of us is that our attention is so easily grabbed by that which is arresting, alarming or plain horrific, and we have had plenty of that in recent weeks. I’m writing this on the day after the General Election, and I can’t help but noticing that whilst Theresa May has gone to see the Queen to ask her permission to form a new government, she seems not to have won the electoral mandate she set out to achieve 7 weeks ago. It’s not that Jeremy Corbyn has won, because actually the polls show the Conservatives have won the majority vote and the most seats of all the parties who stood. What Corbyn has  brought to everyone’s attention is a whole raft of issues with regards to our current provision in public service where chronic mismatched funding and bad policy decisions are pointing to the near collapse of vital services.  T

he fact that the Labour manifesto captured every single populist cri de coeur going inevitably was going to attract the young and idealistic to their campaign.  Knowing they were never likely to get elected meant they could be as full of largesse as any, and in costing the budget for them to make the numbers look good is not the same as actually making the budget work.  Good luck to Mr Corbyn and his fellow travellers, because their good noticing of the range of deficit issues was not matched by the government of the day, who in my view so crassly underestimated the intelligence of the electorate.

Whatever the merits of the parties at the election, we can’t help but have noticed the incredible public support that has risen to wash over the police, emergency and health care workers that have had to deal with such horrific events during this period. Bravery and duty are on show every day in our public services, yet all too often unseen and because of that unreported. The ‘thin blue line’ must not be permitted to get any thinner, and if there is one policy from the Liberal party I am prepared to support, it’s the increase in income tax to fund world class public services.

Anyway, it’s back to school and good noticing within for me. As a school leader, I can’t do much about that outside my remit, but if there’s a call to action all need to notice and heed it is to return to work and strive to improve.  Let’s stand up and ‘notice’ that well – to be the best we can be. 

*Chris Watkins (2015) Metalearning in Classrooms