A Principled view

The Election race is underway and Education is to be one of the key battle grounds. I’ve trawled the Beeb to capture some of the highlights:

“David Cameron has declared that permitting the building of new Free Schools is one of their big ideas, and we can look forward to a further 100 a year being built over the life time of the next Parliament.

Labour has accused the Conservatives of planning “extreme” post-election public spending cuts of £70bn.  Shadow chancellor Ed Balls made a speech unveiling Labour’s analysis of how Conservative plans would affect non-protected Whitehall departments.

BBC assistant political editor Norman Smith said Labour’s “dossier” was designed to give people “the political heebie jeebies” given the scale of cuts required, and an attempt to paint the Conservatives as ideological when it comes to reducing spending.

A pledge to raise education funding in England from £49bn to £55.3bn over the next Parliament is the price of the Lib Dems entering coalition after the election, Nick Clegg has said.  It is the first so-called “red line” that the Lib Dem leader has revealed. The Lib Dems have said they would spend £2.5bn more than Labour and £5bn more than the Conservatives between 2015 and 2020 on education, protecting funding all the way from early years to further education. Mr Clegg said what his party call the “cradle to college” pledge would be a “deal-breaker” in potential negotiations with other parties.”

In reality, for a school situated in the Thames Valley, I feel sure that the SNP, Greens, UKIP etc. have all got something to add into this mix, but the reality of the situation is that the next Parliament will include at least one of either the Conservatives or Labour parties, and that the most likely partnership they will create to form a government will include the Lib-Dems.  Now, it must be said Mr Clegg went back on the Lib-Dem promise not to raise University tuition fees, but as things turn out, the coalition choice to advance those to £9000 and make them more of a graduate tax rather hitherto seems to have been really quite an effective way of expanding UK Universities event in the face of a world recession.

Let’s make no bones about the general principal of needing great higher education – we do. As our own school’s University final year undergraduates are about to be launched into the world of work, they don’t need to report they have spent three years in a Library and seen a professor once in a blue moon. As the Facebook pages of our students show, the dissertations are now reaching publication, and the few weeks of swotting  before finals are upon them, heads are down to secure their degree.

And it is not just for the undergraduates we need great Universities. Many of the non-University jobs now include diploma course and the like validated by the Universities. Mature students often need access to shorter courses that lift standards of knowledge and expertise, and whilst some ‘colleges’ may not be household names yet, Higher Education also extends to the great Institutes and Societies of the Land. I am absolutely delighted that all three of the major political parties have put their support behind the plan to develop a Royal College of Teaching. I started supporting this enterprise at the outset, promoted by the current Conservative MP for Bristol North West, Charlotte Leslie, who was kind enough to attend a conference I ran in the Autumn of 2013, and encouraged me to push further the concept of a Royal College into the Independent Sector. Another strong supporter of the Royal College, who shared the platform with Charlotte and myself, Professor Pete Dudley (Leicester University) visited our school this January, to meet with our Subject Leaders and talk about how to develop our work through Lesson Study, a long-term collaborative approach to build deep subject and teaching expertise.

We need informed, educated voices at the heart of Education planning to ensure that back-of-the-fag packet stuff does not enter our schools on a minister’s whim. Sadly, that’s what we have had to face for a quarter of century, and an approach that escalated last parliament under Michael Gove. In the long term, probably his most dangerous change was to move so very much of the training of teachers from Universities to schools, under Teach First and other similar strands. I am delighted that we run our own teacher training programme in the school, in conjunction with Universities such as Reading, Bucks New, Winchester, Chester and Brighton, as well as in partnership with our GTP provider, eQualitas. As an Independent School, we have chosen to use the surplus from our Holiday Club programme to invest in new undergraduate and graduate talent, to ‘grow our own’ so to speak.

But a country cannot rely solely on ‘micro-breweries’ such as Claires Court to populate our nurseries and schools country-wide. Where are is our future talent to be found? Where are the specialist departments, in which we are growing our subject specialists, importantly for Maths and Sciences we know, but actually for ALL the other subject disciplines we need? Answer – the  Universities of this fair land of course.  I cannot over-emphasise the importance of stability in education, and with Universities able to reap from their own crop of undergrads, the right kind of students can be encouraged to give teaching a go. Either that, or for students to be able to travel home to study and work their ticket at their local Uni, whilst reducing accommodation costs and building a professional life with school work colleagues is certainly a sure fire way to succeed.

Sadly, we now have Job Agencies and bands of headteachers even trawling the Dominions for staff licensed to work in the UK, to fill the incredible shortage of primary and secondary staff we now face, whilst at the same time we have unprecedented numbers of new teachers leaving the profession shortly after qualifying, or choosing to join a growing exodus to other countries. Currently over 400 new English Curriculum schools open each year outside of the UK, and all need their core qualified staff to come from our Island Nation.

 So inevitably, I’d have to ask friends and family who care about English National Education to vote Lib-Dem, because the only way to hold back yet more chaos from arriving in our state schools is to ensure there is a moderating influence at the heart of the new administration. Of course I understand the Conservative plea that without a profitable economy, we can’t have success in social enterprises. and I certainly understand the Labour approach that places key importance upon careers advice. The trouble with both parties is that they have ‘previous’ on their hands, both guilty of undermining the professional judgement of school professionals by implementing educational pedagogies that don’t work.

As Mark Twain’s quote makes clear, if you don’t know what you are doing, but nevertheless insist that the stats show you are successful, then frankly your doomed. Flagship policies such as Teach First (and then ‘do something better next’ goes the quip) may have a small part to play in furnishing our nation with teachers. But as with the Police Force, we need to grow our teachers from the indigenous communities where they were born and educated, where as professionals they feel comfortable and aligned to the wider community in which they will live and work. Both my wife and I fell in love with Leicester where we went to University, and both would have been really happy to work there in the multi-national city community we lived amongst. As things turned out, we married and returned to my home town of Maidenhead back in 1975, where there were jobs for us both, and where we have spent a collective 80 years in Education.

Funny how after all that time, Jen and I tend to agree on most things, despite her being a Historian and I a Scientist. And we do make it be known what we think as well. Sadly, we tend not to agree with almost anything the local political candidates have to say about the educational needs of this area, and they certainly seem to be deaf, dumb and blind to the lead we give. But hey – (Jenny’s favourite phrase) – what do we know anyway?

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Welcome back to the Summer Term at Claires Court, dear Reader. The Easter break for teaching staff is but 9 working days long at best, with professional development a very key aspect of our 3 INSET days spent as a professional body of 150+ educators and support staff working collaboratively and yet in different teams for age, stage and work focus. School leadership and management at this time of year feels very much like working the Peloton, that great ‘snake’ of  energy by which road cycling manages it affairs at race time. It’s fair to say that the academic staff on the 3 Claires Court sites are both my greatest responsibility and the source of my greatest pride.  They are a feisty bunch too, and not just committed to the one site; we have a number of staff who commute across sites, and plenty with cross-site responsibilities as well. As a member of staff, you can find yourself in a variety of teams too, each of which attract their own set of responsibilities and challenges. At any given time during our training days, staff will find themselves wearing different ‘jerseys’; some sessions attract all those working in specific departments to focus on their subject, others are ‘interest’ led, still further are whole site with specific issues to tackle. In short, we have small and large groups, dynamically jostling with each other, some breaking away to forge a new initiative, only to be subsumed into the pack at a later stage as the ‘peloton’ requires.

What might we be occupying ourselves with, given that school was ‘out’ for Easter? Any one with responsibilities for working with the Under 8s was most likely to be updating for 2 days their paediatric First Aid skills, a statutory requirement these days every 2 years (20+ adults). As we are introducing ‘De-fibrillators on all of our places of work, these and a very large number of other staff also took part in practical training in their use. The only effective treatment for a person who has suffered a sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is the combined administration of CPR and the use of a defibrillator. A defibrillator will deliver an electrical shock to stop the irregular rhythm and allow the heart’s natural pacemaker to restart the natural rhythm. The addition of ‘Defibs’ are very much part of the school’s policy to improve the medical welfare and provision for both pupils and staff. Separately the Nursing staff have been updating teaching and support staff on the use of Epipens and medicine management, not new but certainly something more closely highlighted as a regular need for us to check that staff know what to do.

On the Academic side, at both primary and secondary level, we have run workshops so staff learn how our overarching assessment processes and report writing are to knit together for more effective reporting on attainment and skill development for our parent body. I am not shy in stating that the hard ‘yards’ we have worked to create the Claires Court Essentials is not a job done but a work very much in progress.  Whilst we will continue to be innovative and forward thinking in our approach to a curriculum best suited for this decade, we need to ensure that our actions match my rhetoric – put simply, it’s not just the children who need to acquire new skills, but adults who need to adjust their working practice for a better ‘fit’.  Our partners in our latest digital offer, Discovery Education’s new Secondary service provided two major training sessions for teachers and support staff to ‘surf this new cloud’ and work out how best to deploy in lessons and for homework.

And of course we have the inevitable ‘staff meetings’ to pull dates and plans and activities for the new term into a coherent whole, to keep staff clued up with what’s expected of them, and of course to allow new ideas to surface and be shared. We have new courses to be designed for both new A levels and GCSEs, and some 600 pages updated in 20+ handbooks for each year group (and gendered too) for our curriculum statements for the next academic year. Some would like to think we could fit all this activity into the working term, but sadly, there are of course lessons to prepare and give, myriad sports, activities and events to train, execute, review, celebrate and indeed simply just enjoy in the Summer term that lies ahead. And anyway, whether it be Rowing camp or Ski trip, extra coaching or workshop activity, we’ve had plenty of things to offer for the children over the Easter break as well.

At the close of Parliament on 31 March, new safeguarding and welfare measures become law, with Keeping Children Safe in Education and Working Together to Safeguard children both requiring face to face training for staff to ensure we comply with parliament’s wishes. Frankly, with so much legislative and curriculum change throughout the year in Education, the state sectors’ 5 reserved days simply would not work for Claires Court and our needs – we have 12 protected days for CPD and this year we will use them all in very full measure! Without this time, we could neither plan nor build our next steps. And that’s where my leadership perhaps plays out best, to make and break teams sufficiently to ensure all the preparations have taken place – after all, we have a vision to provide outrageous opportunities beyond a child’s expectations or even dreams.

The actual Tour de France sets off this year on the 4th July from Utrecht in Holland, and ending with the ceremonial run into Paris on the 26th July. I like the fact that the race is decided by this final race, that there are indeed champions and stage-victors, with a multitude of different jerseys being worn, such as the king of the mountains (polka dot) and the sprinters (green) being almost as obvious as the overall winner (yellow). In like manner, the nature of our school is to celebrate together our end of year in July, focussing on retirements and departures new of course, but also on those staff who have gained new qualifications through the year. We’ll have spent quite some time interviewing and recruiting new staff to join the faculty, no mean feat at a time when dramatic teacher shortages now reach all disciplines! Pleasingly, the growing reputation of the school with this strong commitment to professional development makes us not just an attractive place to come to work, but a serious institution to build a career, indeed a lifetime around.

So the Summer Term commences, with some 1065 children on roll, ready to tackle learning and skills, face challenges and opportunities, stand up to be counted and collaborate for best effect. Now’s not the time for the Peloton to stay in its tight column and ride its own way, but break up into a hundred different parts and then some so that the business of school can happen. Suddenly it is no longer about the adults, but the children, their welfare and provision. The sun has certainly been shining and we seem well set for the weeks of hard work ahead. Of course, there’s an election in the offing, the results of which will be incredibly important for shaping the school’s next steps for our new campus. But those choices are for a nation to make, and once the verdict is in and we know who are to form the next national and local administrations, then we’ll reform some part of the Peloton so we can carry our plans forward with all appropriate speed and urgency.

I’ll close my allegory on the Peloton with a Sir Bradley Wiggens quote “It’s the stuff of dreams. As a child, being a fan of the sport, I never imagined that one day I’d be in this position. Kids from Kilburn don’t become favourite for the Tour de France. You’re supposed to become a postman or a milkman or work in Ladbrokes.”

My sons live up in London, and as is the custom amongst families, we went to Sunday lunch with one the other week. Maidenhead to North London has its many traffic moments to enjoy, and what with Bristol City playing Walsall at Wembley, we chose to take the rail and tube (Beaconsfield to Highbury and Islington) and walk up through Highbury Fields to their home. Spring was up, the trains ran well, and time was on our side. Along side some of the Tennis courts there (all bustling with weekend testosterone, grunts and competitive edge appropriate to the location). I spied the Park refreshment kisok. “Coffee?” I enquired.

Waiting in the queue, a small group of 40+ mums came alongside, deep in conversation. Teachers of all ages become really adept at listening to abuse of their profession; this could perhaps be used as a new form of military software by the way, but I digress. “The trouble I got into” said Brown hair, loosely brushed “is that by the time I had chosen to put some behaviour expectations around my daughter, she was up out and away.  Hopeless!” Harmony Blond retorted “What is about teachers that makes them so good at setting boundaries?  What I don’t get is why we don’t listen to them when we are younger – it is as if we are inoculated at school (by bitter experience) to ignore what teachers say, so once we are adults becoming parents, the last thing we will do is follow their advice.” Brown hair retorted “They make it look so easy, and it so is not”.

My concentration was broken for the demand of £3 (good value for an americano and white coffee), so I picked up my crockery and moved away back into the real world. Their conversation wafted in and out of the breeze, and drifted away from the feckless nature of their children as gently as indeed we did from the kiosk once our coffee had been imbibed. Just a gentle soundbyte lost in the wind. Yet I captured it and have thought over it some more over the last 4 days. Perhaps as teachers we could do a little better? As the experts in child development, is it not a little too late to interact with us when children actually commence in our schools?

Not so fast, Wilding. Teachers are not ‘experts’ in child development and they are certainly not experts in individual children before they meet them. As the Bard would have it “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy” (Hamlet). What’s worse, we have so many examples over the last 20 years where educational ‘expertise’ has been deployed for no good purpose, not least the industrialising of assessment at 7,11 and 14 in English, Maths and Science. It’s not just the research from across the world that fits my narrative – and caused the DfE to withdraw its national curriculum levels last year, but so much else besides. Witness the ‘noise’ from any of the politicians currently on the stomp about the lack of Mathematicians, Scientists, Engineers and Computer programmers. Maths and the Sciences are compulsory in schools to the age of 16 for all children ever since when, so it’s not that we have not planned teaching and learning ‘space’ in the curriculum. The current decision to make Maths harder and tougher, and similar muscularity about the revision ‘upwards’ of standards in the Sciences might imply English Education standards will move nearer those of 16 year olds in the Asian Tiger economies, but I predict that the government of the day will be disappointed that its newly deployed strategies won’t work as expected some time down the track.

Experts in Child and Adolescent development are recognised by Professorships, and in this field none are better thought of than Sarah-Jane Blakemore, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. Until recently, it was thought that human brain development was all over by early childhood but research in the last decade has shown that the adolescent brain is still changing into early adulthood. Sarah-Jayne  has led much of the research which shows that our brains continue to develop throughout the teenage years, and is as easy to understand as any – here’s a recent radio broadcast of hers from ‘A life Scientific’ on Radio 4 –  “She discusses why teenagers take risks and are so susceptible to influence from their peers as well as her childhood growing up with the constant threat of attacks from animal rights groups”.

Coming from an entirely separate direction is the relatively new discipline known as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, more colloquially known as Mindfulness. Wikipedia covers the ground quite well here. Developed since the 1980s, it is now being rolled out across the western world as an alternative to other more traditional behaviour therapies such as ‘stick and carrot’, with the latest (2015) research suggesting it has much to offer. We have a significant course programme for teaching and admin staff ourselves rolling out after hours in the Summer term.

If you bring both neuro and behaviour sciences together, it is genuinely easy to understand why we don’t have floods of geeky-teenagers breaking through the doors of universities and employers. During the transitional teenage years the neuroplasticity of the pre-frontal cortex (there, I can use long words) arises because up to 35% of the neural connections dissolve and are repurposed. Whilst this is happening, the brain’s reward system skips ahead of the ‘conscience’ and promotes the kind of activities that bring pleasure and a sense of well-being. By example, how many teenagers do you see trying to solve the cryptic crossword. Move up a couple of decades and a goodly number are seen on the train, skip a generation and you are the odd wo/man out if you don’t have a go at least once a week. What motivates and inspires adolescents are activities that offer more immediate reward, often when working with others, and often when the outcomes are less predictable. It is amazing how much fun children have in the school minecraft club, completing activities that could be described using code and formulae, which they would simply not do that way.

How do you bring enjoyable practical problem solving down to the teenage years, such that Maths, the Sciences and technologies become sought-after disciplines? Most adults know the answer – make the activity relevant, purposeful and meeting a need and you’ll be home and dry. The Western hemisphere has an obsession with including written wordy problems as the harder-to-solve larger mark questions on Maths Exam papers. Such problems do not explore the child’s mathematics and practical abilities, but test rather too fully their understanding of vocabulary and syntax, grammar and semantics. They look at such problems, recognise that someone knows how to do them and thus decide they do not need to! What our old polytechnics understood so well is that less committed students needed more practical teaching time. What old style employers understood is that baby accountants needed time to learn their trade before plying it. Drill the skill, don’t test it too early nor make it count too much. The whole point of double entry book keeping was designed around the fallibility of the human operator to get things right first time.

I’ve been lucky enough to see some amazing shows and plays this week in school, from boys and girls, young and old. Why they have gone really well is that in every case, the children have had a degree of autonomy about their selection of activity. Not only have they chosen their starting point, they have spent hours (beyond any I can count) rehearsing and practising their talent before seen by the crowd until they have Mastery. Their purpose has been pretty selfish really, to prove to themselves they can do something really well and beyond any reasonable expectation of others. And I think that’s one of the big lessons we teachers pass over to children; we might say ‘you can only do your best’ when it’s something we have encountered for the first time. Longer term, that’s not what we intend, much more like “failure is not an option” or even ‘to the victor the spoils” . The Human purpose  is to be mindful of life’s possibilities, and to set out without fear or favour. As another Professor, Stephen Hawking says ” “I have lived with the prospect of an early death for the last 49 years. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.”

Back to the Park then, to an imaginary follow-up to the conversation I overheard. What would I say back to Brown and Blond? I’d ask about the child’s schooling, the who, what, where stuff. I’d ask whether the parents took the children to all those things that builds an education that’s not what happens in school. I’d talk about the listening to the young child reading out loud, for more than 20 minutes each day to an adult with whom they felt secure. I’d wonder out loud whether digital devices are switched off gone 8pm, whether the life blood of family time together was allowed to flow, impeded or otherwise by the idiot’s lantern flickering in the corner of the room or palm of the hand. I’d talk about conversation, laughter, jokes and communication, again within the context of children working with adults with whom they shared close things, perhaps even secrets. You see, the only way to ensure we build resilient children is to ensure that the prefrontal cortex is securely attached to the limbic system, so that what we see and understand consciously together with the people we trust is intimately connected with our feelings about ourselves and them. If actions, emotions and decisions are as hard-wired in as we can make them, when we put them under pressure, they are unlikely to fail, and if they do, we won’t mind. It’s called Learning.

I try to make sure I share the same intimacy with the Americano, hand, eye and mouth. As my wife or sons will attest, in those terms, I am still learning. Where’s my bib?

One of the better independent commentators on Education matters I follow is the Teaching Times, an on-line journal for our industry, published by the Imaginative Minds Group, led by publisher Howard Sharron.

In “Ofsted Is In Denial; Special Needs Do Exist” – Suzanne O’Connell, Editor of their Every Child Update service reminds us that Ofsted is in such trouble over its spectacular failures over the past 18 months that credibility in its work is at an all time low. The article is a splendid short essay highlighting that passionate rhetoric and the setting of high bars for all is a simple denial of the human condition of the whole of childhood around us. SEN and Disability exist, as do considerable issues of Mental health. Suzanne concludes her article “It might be unduly pessimistic and I might be an enemy of promise, but the new consultation provides no guarantee that SEND will hold the attention of inspectors in the way that it should. Neither will it provide those schools who battle daily to support their SEN pupils with the platform they need to celebrate their achievements.”

I quote from her article, specifically focusing on the way children learn, Ofsted has this to say ‘all children and learners progress well from their different starting points and achieve or exceed the expected age-related standards, and/or attain relevant qualifications so that they can progress to the next stage of their education into courses that lead to higher-level qualifications and into jobs that meet local and national needs.’ 

Who can write such complete tosh about all of our children? You can’t have everyone achieving or exceeding age-related standards between say Years 2 and 3 without displaying a worrying ignorance of  child development, unless you set the bar very low indeed. International comparisons highlight that in much higher achieving countries such as Finland, school doesn’t start until Year 2. Child development does not assure anyone that at this stage, the cognitive development of all 7 year olds is sufficiently advanced to set baselines for all children. It’s agenda-driven inspection of ‘stuff’ like this that has led Ofsted to miss so much of the big picture problems reported  in the article.

Considering the same view at upper secondary level, is it really possible in our sceptered isle for everyone, whatever their starting point to leave education through higher level qualifications into jobs that meet local and national needs? This is such a depressing, reductionist view of the purpose of education, and in many senses is of course uninspectable. Education is simply not there just to fill our factories and production lines, or provide workers for the NHS and Military, City and Country alike. Education is so much more than this, multi-faceted and diverse, occurring not just in schools, but at home together and apart from family and in the weft and weave of life itself.

I don’t work for OfSTED, but am a Reporting Inspector for the Independent Schools Inspectorate, where I am tasked with managing whole inspection teams to judge schools against their aims and national standards. Separately, I design and develop national training courses for schools in England to design and build their curricular challenges and for future headteachers so they develop the skills to lead and manage, and know the difference between those 2 challenges. Working with the former Head of our Girls School, Lizbeth Green, I have learned from her just how different the expressed purpose of education is in the Scottish system. Here’s the declared purposes (4 of them, called capacities) north of the border:

“The four capacities. The purpose of the curriculum is encapsulated in the four capacities – to enable each child or young person to be a successful learner, a confident individual, a responsible citizen and an effective contributor. The curriculum aims to ensure that all children and young people in Scotland develop the knowledge, skills and attributes they will need if they are to flourish in life, learning and work, now and in the future.” This makes rather good reading – employment will follow because those capacities are built, as will perhaps a more fulfilled individual and a better society beyond.

In the Claires Court Essentials, we try even harder, and our curriculum continues to develop such that it is well mapped against those values, characteristics and ways of working. I am not saying success is assured, but I am that our children stand a much better chance of developing the multiple skills and interests, emotional intelligence and thick skin because we have thought of all those needs, and tested them sufficiently during development in school so they’ll stand the test of time beyond.

My work over 40 years in education has helped me understand how important it is that we work authoritatively and with a great evidence base of research to build upon. Here’s an example of that in action. Head of Sixth Form Andy Giles and his colleague, Stephanie Rogers, Assistant Head with responsibility for Careers and Enterprise education, are leading at a national conference for Sixth Forms in London this Friday. Take the opportunity to flick through their presentation on the co-curricular work we have developed for our Year 11 through Sixth Form to undergraduate population beyond. You don’t need to hear their talk to appreciate the quality and depth of their work, highlighting as it does how students can make choices and commit to gain significant vocational skills and experiences along the way that can only enhance the quality of experience they gain in their Sixth Form years, additional to gaining the academic grades…’so that they can progress to the next stage of their education.’

One of the points of their presentation is that all Sixth Form centres can aspire to produce the extra financial resources to make this happen – and in so doing build deeper and more complex opportunities for more in their community to succeed in the future. Working alongside Andy and Steph, I am demonstrating the cloud-based solution we have developed over the last 5 years that now encompasses all of our provision, which enables specifically schools to improve yet further the 4 most important value-adds for teaching and learning. Google Classroom, Apps and environment specifically assist in building opportunities for collaborative learning, enable teachers to give feedback whilst work is building rather than just corrections and marking at the end, massively improve opportunities for peer learning and innovation, and through making choices and thinking about how to reimagine work, significantly improve metacognition and self-regulation.  Google Apps are of course not something that brings in new revenue, but since they are free for schools,  you might wonder why so many institutions are not yet involved?

Two diverse solutions from one institution, both seem to ensure that children of diverse needs can be catered for and inspired, not just for now, but for the longer term. The multiple skills needed, for both the real and virtual worlds will be acquired most successfully because the learning approach we use embraces the ways that make the most impact, and we consistently apply these ways over the child’s career with us. If I may rewrite O’Connell’s words “Either choice, through consistent, insistent, persistent use, though better both, will provide those schools who battle daily to support their  pupils, whether SEN, AG&T or just plain enthusiastic, with the platforms they need to celebrate their achievements.”

I first came across Terry Pratchett’s writing in the mid 1980s, children’s books such as the Colour of Magic and the Carpet People. It was quite clear then that Terry (one of the few authors about whom I feel very personally) showed a fabulous mix of humour and invention, mischief and plain silliness. I have probably read every one of his Discworld sagas, and have preferences for those tales based in the improbable Ankh Morpork, a city state at the centre of that fantasy world, riding on a disc on the back of 4 elephants, themselves standing upon a turtle swimming through the Universe.

Yes you have got it, not a single shred of connection between that world and this, and yet, through carefully drawn characters, embedded jokes that resurface when you least expect them and stories that are rippingly close to those current in the serious press, and elegantly told as any of the best of Chaucer’s morality plays,  Terry made you look at your own self and motivations, from which only good could come. Try this, perhaps my favourite quotes of his that fits my own thinking

“Inside every lump of coal there’s a diamond waiting to get out.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man.

The modern world, as driven by politicians and the agents of government, is beset by the failures of its own machinery. It’s so obvious that targets corrupt behaviour, however well intentioned, as research after research proves. But put someone in charge, and they’ll quickly adopt a target setting approach, because of course, they will build a reward system around that from which they personally will benefit, if permitted. In the Disc world series of books, Prachett spotlights pretty much every industry, from the Police (who are central to so many Discworld novels, known as the City Watch), Film, Education, the Press and Tourism industries.

My leading quote from Terry is well aligned to world book week, because it is through reading only that one can enter his Discworld, explore the multiple adventures of wizards and adventurers, male and female – DEATH’s adopted daughter Ysabell is a fantastic modern role model for feisty intelligent teenage girls for example. Without imagination, nothing can be achieved, except targets. Now goals of course are different, and we can have plenty of those big, hairy audacious things in our lives, such as building a new campus or a vaulting ambition to achieve excellence in unusual ways, and I can but thank Sir Terry Pratchett for nourishing my life and nurturing my soul. When all is unfathomable and little seems to have purpose, a quick flight on the back of a large turtle and the world he supports helps give me both a new perspective and a resolve to do something for the children in my care or the staff with whom I work.

Henri Matisse’s Cut-Outs were among the big attractions at Tate Modern in 2014 – BBC News

There has been a recent ‘epidemic’ of concern being expressed across our country that the nation as a whole is falling out of love with Art.  Visitor numbers are falling at the National Gallery and the Tate, and  and more importantly, where we have seen some modest growth nationally, the increase has been as a result of the success of tourism from abroad rather than attracting the interest from our domestic economy. Read more about that here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31533110.

Last month, the Warwick Commission published their findings from a year of detailed research into all aspects of the creative arts sector – the report is entitled Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth.

The Warwick University research examines from film, theatre and dance to video games, pop music and fashion. It estimates the sector represents 5% of the British economy valued at £76.9bn. As with the previous report from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, we are reminded that the creative Arts are integral part of the UK economy, and of course in the Eastern Thames Valley and towards London, probably upwards of 30% of all permanent high quality jobs are in this sector. Politicians of a variety of hues have of course added the research outcomes to their growing list of manifesto commitments – here’s Labour suggesting that using Ofsted Inspections will improve the provision in our schools!

Here’s Vikki Heywood, the chair of the commission as reported in the Guardian “Two of the most eye-opening aspects of the inquiry are to do with cultural education and the lack of diversity in arts audiences. The cultural and creative economies are one ecosystem and policymakers need to realise that if you fiddle around with the education system at one end then something at the other end goes wonky”.

The Guardian article continues “Some of the most striking statistics are around education. Between 2003 and 2013 there was a 50% drop in the GCSE numbers for design and technology, 23% for drama and 25% for other craft-related subjects. In 2012-13, only 8.4% of students combined arts and science at AS level. The number of arts teachers in schools has fallen by 11% since 2010 and in schools where a subject has been withdrawn, drama and performance has dropped by 23%, art by 17% and design technology by 14%.”

To be honest, all those who lead Education in schools have witnessed a dramatic change in Arts Education over the past 30 years. Primary schools often now speak of not having sufficient time or skill to teach painting and drawing skills – which is rather at odds with the stated objectives of the newest National Curriculum for Art and Design from DfE which says that:

“Key stage 2 Pupils should be taught to develop their techniques, including their control and their use of materials, with creativity, experimentation and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art, craft and design. Pupils should be taught:  to create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas  to improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials [for example, pencil, charcoal, paint, clay]  about great artists, architects and designers in history.”

Of course what happens in state schools is audited by…Ofsted, and measurable curriculum outcomes exist for Literacy and Maths, but not for the other foundation and supporting subjects. Therein lies the major problems for Art and Design, as it does for other key subjects, such as the Humanities, Sciences, Languages and other physical and creative subjects. A decade ago, Roger Cole, celebrated researcher, advisor and author for both government and national teaching community found that in their efforts to raise standards of Literacy and Numeracy in the Gloucester Action zone, primary schools had reduced their curriculum to little more than these core subjects. Despite the very clear focus, achievement against government benchmarks remained resolutely fixed at below 50% achieving level 4 in either discipline.

After Roger’s engagement with 4 schools in question, the writing of new cross-curricular and creative schemes of work, not only had standards risen in the core, but across the breadth of school provision. You can read the TES 2008 article on this here – and a sample comment from an impressed Ofsted “This approach enables all pupils to achieve well in all subjects, involving pupils more holistically in learning”. Roger Cole has visited Claires Court, worked with our teaching and support staff, and no doubt will enjoy making a return to assess quite how our Essentials curriculum has taken the embedding of creativity and innovation into a higher level, supported as it is with universally available software that works on all devices.

Successive governments have panicked endlessly about our nation’s performance in Maths and English, citing the steady fall down the PISA league table that compares country performance across the globe. In recent years, computer ‘coding’ and  the ‘STEM’ agenda have both assisted in wiping good old Art and Design off the central mission schools should have. Whatever the merits of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths for the nation’s economy (and there are of course many), if  Art and Design skills are ignored, we’ll be able to pass Part 1 of the challenge (do we know stuff?) but we will fail abysmally Part 2 (what we can do with this stuff in the context of what people need?). Look at any of the leading scientific and engineering brands in the world, and great creativity and design sit at the heart of their success. Most notable are companies such as Apple, BMW, Disney, Google, HP, Intel… all renowned for great innovation, design and engineering – inseparable in terms of identifying why they work so well.

At the time of writing, I have just returned from a day at the Discovery channel with our Google gang, boys (Y8-11) who meet to programme and mentor others in the dark arts of cloud computing. We have been working with Discovery Education to understand more about their new Secondary service for schools, to train our own pupils to mentor teachers as well as their peers, and to prepare specifically for BBC School Report 2015, one of the great creative media events of the year. We have been engaged with SR since 2009, and you can review our archive here. As the map shows, we are the only secondary school in Maidenhead to be involved this year, and that is illustrative of the national concern we have – schools will always focus on the Part 1 problem, but find it much more difficult to exercise that extra ‘holistic’ muscle to ensure their students can blend diverse input to tell a coherent and compelling story. And of course that is what a great Art education gives – and what great Art pieces show in their exhibition.

So dear Reader, for me it is quite simple.  If as Matisse suggests, “Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent & independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play” then the obvious way forward is to design and implement (with an iron will it must be said) a curriculum that commands of its students to be curious, flexible, persistent & independent, to provide opportunities for children to sense what a spirit of adventure means, and conjoin that with diverse opportunities to explore play. As is demonstrably the case within our walls, we have these elements in place in full measure, and it therefore will not surprise you that we seem to have developed an almost endless production line of deeply talented young artists, actors, designers and performers. And what is better still is that their talents on display are not uniform – there might be great organisation, but the sheer breadth of innovation and individuality helps highlight that the principle of ‘look after the performance and the results look after themselves’ is working really well within Claires Court, true testament to both Henri and Roger!

Thursday 26 February (this week) saw ISA’s annual Junior schools’ conference visit the Institute of Marketing’s fine premises at Moor Hall, nearby in Cookham. The whole day was given over to looking at what assessing children’s achievement looks like in schools after the abandonment by DfE of National Curriculum levels.

Claires Court left NC leveling in 2006/7, when it had become very evident to us that their presence was badly damaging teaching and learning within English at both Key stage 2 and Key stage 3. Most obviously affected was creative writing in years 3 to 6, though at secondary level, the work in years 7, 8 and 9 leading towards successful KS3 examination seemed to be contradictory to the skills needed for GCSE writing in Year 10. Whilst we have no regrets about leaving the National Curriculum and writing our own, we have had to stretch ourselves somewhat to match our assessment mechanisms to the Claires Court essentials that form the weft and weave of our schemes of work across the years from Year 1 to the end of Year 9.

My colleagues, Leanne Barlow (Head of Junior Girls) and Lindsay King (Head of lower Juniors and curriculum leader) presented how we moved from NC levels to the current state of play for junior boys and girls within Claires Court to the ISA Junior Heads, and as an observer at the occasion, it was really rewarding to witness the very genuine approval our national colleagues gave to the presentation and of course the thinking and pedagogy Leanne and Lindsay showed.  I am extremely fortunate to have colleagues of such quality, not just willing and able to design anew but able to stand up to a national audience and provide persuasive commentary on our work.

You can see Barlow and King’s presentation here – http://goo.gl/KSWBVn, our examplar St Custard’s report* making use of our assessment approach here, and the unique Lesson and Work Scrutiny form we use here.

The day included some excellent other presentations, from Andy Mellor on Assessment mastery, from yours truly on the broader perspectives schools are required to keep in mind when designing assessment, quality assurance and monitoring arrangements, and from 2 of the country’s leading experts in the use of digital technologies, Mark Burrowes from 2Simple/Purple Mash, and C-learning’s Paul Farrell, for teaching and tracking. Claires Court already uses the tools both experts recommend, again useful to align these pioneering methods now being recommended for schools across the country with our own 2 or more years experience of using them!

Carey Dickinson, Membership Officer, ISA

ISA’s Membership officer, Carey Dickinson, joined the conference for the day, stayed overnight and then visited all three Claires Court geographical sites on Friday morning. Carey has more letters after her name than most, graduating from Somerville College for her first degree in History, before gaining her PGCE in primary education at Homerton College, Cambridge and then rather later in life acquiring her Masters in Education, before pursuing her interest in Drama  as she moved in to the prep. school world  to lead the Performing Arts department at Dame Bradburys School, in Saffron Walden.  As one of the leading sector professionals in the country, Carey showed really genuine appreciation of Miss Barlow and Mrs King’s remarkable work. The praise was well deserved, as it is this day when the papers and broadcasters carry the news that a national teacher-led commission is being set up to help primary schools in England find new ways of assessing their pupils’ progress.  This further highlights the dilemma the country is facing in measuring children’s progress when the curriculum is being changed at the same time as the tools used to assess its effectiveness have been removed – honestly, very many schools are seriously worried about the limbo in which they find themselves.  Inevitably, this also highlights just how well we have done as a school to be fearless, innovative and demanding of ourselves to establish  a new curriculum approach with assessment, reporting and quality assurance mechanisms in place in good time – as the ISI inspectors found in March 2014 – by their judgement ‘excellent’ indeed.

*The report tables don’t quite print for exemplar work such as this from our MIS database – works fine for genuine reports!

I have had a good half-term, dear Reader. During the business of academic life, it’s almost impossible to reserve the time to go to see the latest films. And there have been some stunningly good films out there passing me by, not least Selma, The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game. You’ve guessed it, James has been to the movies! In their own ways, the films were remarkable triumphs for Cinema, highlighting in each the role of a central male character to the cascade of events happening around them, over which they have only a modicum of control. In Selma, we see 3 weeks in the life of Martin Luther King, as portrayed by British actor David Oyelewo,  in his campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. In The Theory of Everything, we witness the  the story of Stephen (for which Eddie Redmayne has just won the Oscar for best Actor) and his wife Jane’s life, from first meeting in Cambridge in 1964, with Stephen’s subsequent academic successes and his increasing disability. In the Imitation Game, we see three different periods of Alan Turing’s life, as portrayed by Alex Lawther (when at Sherborne) and Benedict Cumberbatch (in adult life), from introvert but brilliant schoolboy to dismissive, difficult, brilliant and plain odd scientist placed at Bletchley Park to crack the German’s Enigma code, interwoven throughout by Turing’s interrogation about a break-in after the war and his homoselual realtionships with others.

It’s fair to say that women play central roles in all three films, so it was not just a festival of celebrating manhood. But what stuck me about all three films were their very obvious relevance to 2015, not least Hollywood’s decision to leave Selma out completely from any of the Oscar nominations. Now is clearly not a good time across the pond to seek to celebrate Good black men – as the opening speech last night by Neil Patrick Harris made clear at the Oscar’s ceremony “Tonight we celebrate Hollywood’s best and whitest, sorry… brightest”. Celebrating Stephen Hawking’s life was indeed a triumph not just by Redmayne, but by the film itself, leaving us clearly in awe of both Hawking and his wife Jane, played by Felicity Jones, an almost never-ending testament of love and challenge as these two grow up together, producing three children and (almost) a unifying Theory for everything. Having seen previous films on Hawking, including Benedict Cumberbatch playing the lead role for a BBC production, I feel I sort of know the story but somehow Redmayne’s portrayal of the Professor, including some very good humour brought it all very much up to date.

Whilst all three of these films highlight the lives of some of the most famous men of the last 60 years, they also remind us of the incredible struggle and conflict they had to face in pursuing hunches and realising dreams. None of the three had an ideal life, and perhaps of Stephen Hawking still with us, a life that none of us could begin to comprehend the difficulties therein. Certainly all three knew how to be very difficult men to live with, and for Turing certainly a very clear understanding that he found it very difficult to communicate effectively with others, whether in agreement or not.

I leave the best line though to the film about Turing’s life, spoken by a number of characters through the film, from boyhood friend Christopher and fellow code breaker, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightly) and by Turing himself – “Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine” . If ever there was a mantra that we need to embed in the psyche of schools it is this one.

As evidence of that – https://jameswilding.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/normalising-the-extraordinary/ and of course, so many more past pupils of both genders who have gone on to make their way into adult life, professional and personal, and become remarkable people in their own right.