Account of practice: Raising the quality of teaching

Transcription

1 Account of practice: Raising the quality of teaching Natalie Black, Leader of Learning, Haybrook College 1/10 This account of practice examines how a middle leader, with coaching and support from her headteacher, effected lasting changes to raise the quality of teaching and in turn the standards achieved by students. Background Natalie Black is now in her third year as Leader of Learning at Haybrook College, having previously taught for six years in a mainstream secondary school where she was also a head of house and year. Haybrook College operates on four sites, each with a centre offering a range of programmes relevant to the needs of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD). The sites are: Millside School, a secondary special school for pupils with SEBD Springboard, a Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 pupil referral unit (PRU) The Gateway, which serves post-16 students The Rotunda, which caters for Key Stage 3 pupils who have been permanently excluded or are at risk of exclusion An executive headteacher holds overall responsibility for the college, assisted by a head of centre for each of the sites and Natalie as leader of learning across the organisation as a whole. Initially Natalie had a teaching commitment of two and a half days a week, split between one day in a mainstream secondary school, and time in the PRU, the Year 11 vocational unit and the Key Stage 3 provision. Over the last year, she has been also responsible for managing The Rotunda covering the deputy headteacher s maternity leave. Natalie completed the Middle Leadership Development Programme at the National College while head of year in her previous school. Soon after coming to Haybrook, Natalie attended an Ofsted course in the use of criteria for evaluating the quality of teaching in special schools. Both these courses have been of immense value in her current role, providing her not only with the management and leadership skills needed as leader of learning, but also with the more specific skills associated with lesson observation and evaluation in a special school setting.

2 2/10 The leadership challenge Natalie s challenge as leader of learning was to improve the quality of teaching and learning across all the college sites and, by doing so, to raise standards of attainment and achievement. The need for change and improvement had been identified by the executive headteacher as the number one priority for the college and its leadership. This required a shift of emphasis, as Natalie explains: When I came here, the emphasis had been on managing behaviour, rather than on improving the quality of teaching and raising standards. We wanted to put more energy into ensuring that our students would not fall into the category of not in education, employment or training when they left. I ve been here for three years and we ve made good progress, but there is still more work to be done. She faced specific challenges, some of which were associated with the complexity of the college s various sites, while others were related to the challenging nature of the students and varying degrees of resistance to change from the staff: The sites cater for very different student needs, ranging from the PRU for Key Stage 4, vocational provision for Year 11, post-16 education and the secondary school for students with SEBD and the Key Stage 3 provision for those at risk of being permanently excluded. The students themselves have a very wide range of emotional and behavioural difficulties which affect their attainment and progress, putting great demands on the ability of the staff to meet their needs. The teachers have very different educational backgrounds. Not all have qualified teacher status. Although they are very skilled with young people and bring expertise in specific aspects of vocational and technical education, they had not been accustomed to writing lesson plans or schemes of work. The change to a culture in which the quality of teaching came under scrutiny and action was taken to improve it met with resistance from some members of staff. Ofsted s changes to the criteria for evaluating the quality of teaching caused some anxiety among the staff who had doubts about the application of the new criteria to special education. A decision was taken to switch some of the BTech programmes to GCSE courses, adding an additional level of challenge for some staff.

3 3/10 Tackling the challenges and achieving the goals: the audit Quality of teaching Natalie s first task was to carry out a thorough audit to evaluate the quality of teaching across the college as a whole. This involved observing all 22 members of staff in the classroom, spending at least one day in each of the centres. She used a lesson observation form which matched the Ofsted criteria and required grades to be allocated for the quality of teaching. The form had been drawn up by Natalie and agreed by the headteacher and heads of centre before being shared with the staff to explain its use. It was presented as work in progress that would be reviewed and modified after a period of use in the classroom. The form proved effective and is still in use today, although its introduction was not without challenges for Natalie: The biggest challenge for me was getting staff to understand what it is that Ofsted expects when the quality of teaching is being evaluated. Some members of staff thought it was mainly about students being well behaved, but I had to emphasise that it is much more about learning and the progress made in lessons. This involved some plain speaking and I had to be forceful at times. The outcome of this part of the audit was a written report by Natalie to the headteacher, detailing the strengths and weaknesses in teaching and indicating weaknesses that needed to be tackled. Performance data A range of data was analysed, including the latest RAISEonline report for Millside School, as well as internal assessment data containing more comprehensive and detailed information on students progress and attainment at Key Stage 3 and in their GCSE and BTech courses. This internal data enables the college to understand and explain why some students have made the progress they have and allows Natalie to uncover areas of underachievement and to intervene if necessary. Natalie also consulted the heads of centres about their students performance: I asked the heads of centres to tell me what they knew about students progress and how it could be improved. There was a real mix of knowledge and opinions. It was clear that work had to be done to improve the consistency of assessment and use of data across the centres and to convince people of the need for it. Some staff were keen to change things while others were hesitant.

4 4/10 Convincing her colleagues of the need for change was made easier by Natalie s analysis of the use being made of assessment data by teachers across the college. This analysis highlighted unacceptably wide variations in practice and demonstrated a strong case for improvement. Staff professional development Spending time in each of the centres observing and interacting with the staff gave Natalie insights into the culture of professional development in the college. It was clear that there was little collaboration or sharing of ideas between them: When I first came, there was not enough sharing of good practice between the centres. I started to build up a range of resources for use in the classroom, such as CDs and equipment for practical work that people could use and then share their ideas with others. This has helped to develop a very different culture in which we all work together and are happy to pass on our good practice to others. The vision for improvement Natalie s vision for improvement had four clear goals, all concerned with teaching and learning. These goals enabled Natalie and the leadership as a whole to set out a vision for the direction in which the college needed to go. All the goals were easily translated into specific actions and outcomes that could, in turn, help to define the contents of the action plan. For example, in relation to the goal for improving the quality of teaching, one of the objectives was to improve teachers use of questioning to assess students understanding and progress. The college s four goals for improvement were as follows: Improve the quality of teaching, moving satisfactory teaching to good and good teaching to outstanding. A target defined the expected percentage of lessons that would be judged good or outstanding by the end of the first year. Improve the ability of teaching staff to write effective lesson plans and schemes of work. Improve standards, as measured by the percentages of students achieving five or more grades A* C and five or more grades A* G at GCSE or equivalent, with and without English and mathematics. Ensure that students leave the college with achievements that enable them to move into education, employment or training post-16.

5 5/10 This is a formidable set of goals, but the task for Natalie was to define her objectives and the actions she needed to take so that everyone was clear about what had to be done, by whom and when. In the initial stages of translating the goals into objectives and a plan of action, Natalie worked closely with the headteacher: Achieving the goals became part of my performance management targets. The headteacher helped me to draw up a plan for achieving my targets and this gave me a clear sense of direction for my leadership. Organisational changes and improvements This stage of Natalie s leadership was concerned with the development and implementation of effective systems to ensure reliability and consistency in teaching and assessment across the college as a whole. Her personal targets were to: deliver a programme of in-service training (Inset) focused on teaching and assessment develop systems to ensure greater consistency in lesson planning and the use of assessment data monitor the quality and impact of teaching and feed back to staff regularly on their effectiveness in the classroom develop a more effective system for the use of performance data to evaluate success against benchmarks To achieve her targets and help the college reach its four goals, Natalie gave a high priority to developing systems and procedures that would support the staff with their teaching, beginning with lesson planning: I put together a new, standardised format for lesson plans that all the sites had to adopt. Up to then, they each had their own ways of planning lessons so there was no college-wide approach. I had to be quite forceful about it and made it clear that this was what they would have to use in future, although I did allow them some freedom to adapt the plans if they could justify it. Schemes of work also came under Natalie s scrutiny. To improve their quality and consistency, Natalie developed a standardised format, which provided staff with a writing framework. This not only improved the quality of the schemes of work, but also made it much easier for Natalie and other leaders to monitor and compare them. The development of a standardised lesson observation form was another important priority for Natalie. Although there was some resistance to the idea, use of the Ofsted criteria for judging the quality of teaching became a core feature of lesson observations across the college. Adopting these criteria was presented as non-negotiable by the senior leadership, making the case that these were national criteria that would be applied by Ofsted s inspectors when judging the quality of teaching across the college.

6 6/10 The provision of a range of BTech courses was always an important feature of the curriculum in the college, but Natalie had seen the need for greater sharing and collaboration between the various BTech teams. A BTech curriculum team was set up with a brief to hold half-termly meetings to share good practice, discuss changes to BTech courses and consider ideas for new ones. This has resulted in much greater sharing of good practice, expertise and resources between staff in the four centres, particularly where the same subject was being taught in different centres by different teachers. It was this team that proposed a move away from BTech towards GCSE courses for some subjects, resulting in changes that benefited the students: People now work together across the centres in curriculum teams, which are really effective. There is more movement of staff between the centres as well and this has resulted in more sharing of ideas and good practice between them. Developing others A series of Inset sessions was planned and delivered by Natalie over the course of the autumn and spring terms, including twilight meetings and weekly toolkit sessions. The twilight sessions were always attended by all staff, including the heads of centres. They were carefully planned to tackle the areas for improvement in teaching that Natalie had identified in her lesson observations: how to write learning objectives that show how students are expected to make progress in lessons how to use questioning and peer assessment to assess what students know and understand and how well the teacher has achieved his or her objectives how to use the strategies of assessment for learning (AfL) to assess whether students have achieved their learning objectives The hallmark of Natalie s support for staff was providing them with tools that were of practical value in their planning or their teaching in the classroom. In this way, she was able to match her higher expectations in terms of the quality of teaching and assessment with the support that teachers needed to achieve them: I did three twilight Inset sessions in my first year with the whole staff on assessment for learning, peer- and self-assessment and questioning techniques. In the first one, I just focused on objectives for learning and talked to the staff about the difference between writing an objective and writing an outcome. I gave them a table of verbs that they could use in their planning to make learning outcomes more clear: instead of just saying understand the meaning of a piece of text, they could say instead explain how they have understood the meaning of a piece of text. These tables are still used three years later, and there is now much more emphasis in teachers plans on expected learning outcomes rather than just objectives.

7 7/10 Alongside these twilight meetings, Natalie also provided coaching and mentoring sessions for key members of staff. These focused on areas for development that had been identified either through lesson observations or through requests from members of staff themselves and heads of centre. One example was a session with heads of centre on lesson observation and feedback skills, in which some had limited experience and for others it provided a refresher for the new criteria. This had the effect of enabling middle leaders to take more responsibility for monitoring and evaluating the quality of teaching and contributing to the professional development of staff. Other members of staff have become confident about contributing to staff development, taking the lead in twilight training sessions and putting themselves forward for workshops on a variety of subjects, such as a recent workshop which took the development of thinking skills as its topic. A further benefit of the coaching for heads of centres was the positive impact it had on their performance management skills. Natalie had already taken steps to ensure that targets for staff development were more tightly defined and focused on key areas for improvement such as literacy and numeracy. The combination of more effective performance management and more precisely defined staff objectives has, in Natalie s view, played an important part in the process of raising standards across the college. Taken as a whole, the combined effect of Natalie s staff development initiatives has led to a culture of sharing and team working across the centres that were not there before. Natalie s own development has not been neglected either. Throughout her time at Haybrook, Natalie has worked closely with the executive headteacher through weekly meetings, informal contacts and daily communication by . In the first term, the headteacher coached Natalie on giving effective feedback to staff following lesson observations and focusing her observations on key elements of the teaching such as the use of language and questioning. This coaching was very beneficial to Natalie s development as a leader. Natalie has also taken advantage of opportunities for professional development that came her way: At the end of my first year here we had an Ofsted inspection at Millside School. I was able to do a lesson observation with an Ofsted inspector which I found really useful. I also spent some time working for the local authority to support teachers in mainstream schools with the management of difficult behaviour. This experience gave me lots of insights into pupils behaviour problems and how to deal with them, as well as increasing the capacity of mainstream schools to hang onto their difficult young people instead of placing them in special education.

8 8/10 What has been the impact of Natalie s leadership? Recognising the importance of reliable and accurate assessment data, the college has adopted a management information system for monitoring students progress and attainment. The system provides the data needed to set targets and track the progress of individual students, as well as giving senior leaders and the governing body a regular analysis of the college s progress towards its own targets during the year: We are now using a lot more performance data across all of the sites. The governors are able to keep a closer eye on things this way, and I provide them and the headteacher with regular updates on what the data is telling us. I also write reports on what the lesson observations are showing about teaching and learning in the classrooms. The impact on the quality of teaching has been very encouraging. Based on the Ofsted criteria, the quality of teaching has improved from 50 per cent judged good to 75 per cent. Areas for improvement and staff support have been identified, and addressing these challenges is expected to take that figure still higher this year. There has also been a positive impact on attainment. The percentage of students achieving 5 or more A* C grades at level 2 which includes GCSE and BTech equivalents has improved from 24 per cent to 36 per cent and, when English and mathematics are included, has improved from 0 per cent to 9 per cent. At the A* G grade threshold, the result has improved from 50 per cent to 66 per cent, and from 16 per cent to 29 per cent when English and mathematics are included. Natalie s leadership has had a strong impact on the professional culture of the college. The various centres are less isolated professionally and their staff are much more willing to share ideas and good practice for the benefit of everyone. Some of the responsibility for in-service training is also shared now, with staff offering to lead twilight meetings on subject areas or particular themes. The value of lesson observation and the importance of learning from feedback are now widely accepted across the college and have made a major contribution to improving the quality of teaching and the college s ability to meet its targets for improvement.

9 9/10 What has Natalie learned? Natalie s twin goals of improving the quality of teaching and raising standards required action in two key areas of leadership practice: developing people by building their capacity to work together to establish consistent practices and procedures developing effective systems and the use of data to evaluate success against targets for improvement in teaching and student outcomes It has been a challenging journey for Natalie and she has learned a great deal along the way: The first and most important lesson I learned was how to give constructive feedback to teachers about how to improve their teaching. I found it really hard at first, but I was coached through the tricky conversations by the headteacher and that was invaluable. I learned to go away after observing a lesson, discuss what I had seen with the head or show her my written evaluation, especially where the hard ones were concerned, and then have a planned meeting with the teacher. I would say that most of the things I have learned about doing this job have come from the headteacher. In terms of her leadership practice, Natalie has learned how to manage teams in a wide range of circumstances, from the whole staff to individual teachers. She has had to learn how to manage complex budgets and staff/student ratios and how to liaise with external agencies. Line management was a new learning experience too: In my previous post I managed a group of tutors but I wasn t their line manager. Here, I am the line manager for 12 staff, including the exams officer and the staff in The Rotunda. What would Natalie do next time in the light of this experience? While the role of leader of learning has been and remains a challenging one, there have been no major obstacles or pitfalls which might have thrown her off course. Looking back on her first three years at Haybrook, however, there is one thing that she would do a little differently now: If I did this again, I would set up a working group of staff to develop new ways of planning lessons and writing schemes of work. I would hope that this would get the staff a bit more on side with the changes I wanted to see, although there might have been resistance to this approach because the culture we ve got now, where people share their ideas and work together, wasn t there at the beginning.

10 10/10 Conclusion Natalie s challenge as a leader of learning was to improve the quality of teaching and learning and play a major part in the drive to raise standards. Challenges for school leaders do not come much bigger than this, but Natalie, with expert training and support from the headteacher and an increasingly positive response from the staff, has succeeded on both counts. We can put this down to a small number of key factors: The vision was clearly articulated through the four goals for improvement and used to set direction for the college and its leaders. A firm commitment was made to the gathering and use of direct evidence to identify weaknesses in the quality of teaching and learning and these, in turn, helped to determine the priorities for in-service training and staff support. Building the capacity of the staff to deliver consistently good lessons and work together to establish common methods and procedures was an overarching goal at all times. Changes were made to improve the effectiveness of college systems, from the monitoring of teaching to the use of data to evaluate progress and success against targets. In all, this is a story of well-planned and executed change in the two core functions of a school: improving the quality of teaching and raising standards. It was admirably managed and led by a skilled and determined middle leader.