Let’s Get Real

This blog entry is a brief attempt to summarise a few key ‘silver bullets’ to transform our education system. I underline the point that this would not require increasing the Government Education ‘purse’ but would require a change of spending priorities.

I have come to these views after being a principal for 24 years and in education for over 40 years. These years have not been merely at the ‘chalk face’ but also engaged in my own extensive reading and writing about education.

In addition to this, I have talked to a wide range of other experienced principals who share the same or very similar views.

Silver Bullet # 1  Learning and Behaviour Support

I have put this as Number 1 because this is very urgent and would make an enormous difference to schools’ morale and performance. There are many, many angry principals out there who see this as a ‘no brainer’.

Appoint teacher assistants (para-professionals) in every class or at least 1 to every two classes. This is a crude allocation but essentially we need to up teacher support so the teachers can focus more intently on teaching and learning. Currently we have teachers drawn away from this focus by very unfair situations such as severe learning and behaviour/safety needs.

The sooner all schools get dedicated SENCOs related to roll numbers the better. These specialist teachers would coordinate the teaching and learning of the more challenging students and coordinate T.A. (para-professional) support and teacher interaction.

Silver Bullet # 2 Teacher Training

Teacher training model needs to be reviewed and it is! The cautionary notes I would make here are:

1. Prioritise what it is to be a teacher and don’t squeeze the experience into one year.

2. Don’t over intellectualise the courses. There is too much emphasis on qualification v understanding of what it is to be a teacher and the holistic and developmental nature of learning.

If we get this right the sector would see a significant and sustained boost in life-long learning and achievement.

Promote teachers as inquirers. Give them time to think, watch, absorb and do their magic but be rigorous and have high expectations. To be fair, this concept of teacher inquiry is being promoted but for a while undermined by over the top expectations from 'the powers that be' for teachers to justify  their existence by detailed record keeping as part of an appraisal process.

Silver Bullet # 3 Quality Assurance

The currently accountability model of assurance checks on schools should be tweaked to a rigorous guidance model. Accountability is a must but the focus must be on implementing best practice with minimum bureaucracy and death by paperwork. Enough ‘talking the talk’, schools should only need to ‘walk the talk’. We need a High Trust model supported by advisors. Then if a school loses this trust early intervention will be needed.

Focus on teaching and learning with ‘hard fun’ at the centre. We must have high expectations for our students appropriate to age and particularly stage. Confidence is everything and learning is developmental! We don’t all get concepts in a linear order nor at the same time. Many young people do not achieve a sense of themselves as an independent learner until their mid-twenties. In our current model, too many of these young people feel a sense of failure as they transition out of school because they haven’t yet jumped the education hurdles implicitly and explicitly expected of them by the system. If we truly believe in life-long learning, then our model must change.

We all learn differently and as Bruce Springsteen wisely said, “One problem with the way our education system is set up is that it only recognises a certain type of intelligence, and it’s incredibly restrictive. There’s so many types of intelligence, and people who would be at their best outside of that structure get lost.”