Beyond Outstanding - The Challenge Partners Peer Review

This week we have hosted an Ofsted inspector and three senior leaders from other schools for our Challenge Partners peer-led Quality Assurance Review process. Their job was to come and look at the school in a supportive but challenging way and to provide us with a report, for our own consumption, to reflect their (and our) thoughts in light of the review.

I won't say too much about the Challenge Partners, as you can have a look at their website to find out more.

http://www.challengepartners.org/

What I will say is that it is a mutual organisation created to keep the work of the London Challenge (and Northwest and Black Country Challenges) going. The ethos that underpins the organisation is that schools can support each other to raise standards and achievement. The Quality Assurance Review is therefore the only part of the process that is mandatory. Every school in the partnership has to participate in one and every school has to give two of its staff a week off in order to conduct two reviews of other schools. It's a model Sir Michael Wilshaw seems determined to copy with his public pronouncements on Heads of outstanding schools being forced to become Ofsted Inspectors. What this model has in its favour is that it is based upon a willingness to help and to be helped: an invaluable quality in any school-to-school support process.

A month ago I was fortunate enough to visit two other schools as part of their review team and was struck by the collegial and supportive nature of the process. We reviewed two schools in Devon with very different histories and current situations. The discussions we had were powerful for all parties and I took away as much for my own school as I left for the schools ostensibly being evaluated. The experience left me both eager for our school's review and nervous about what it would tell us: there is definitely a rigour and robustness that undergirds the whole process (one for @learningspy @johntomsett & @missJLudd there).

The first challenge to overcome was to manage the potential threat of the process for Canons teachers, particularly in light of the current union action. I needn't have worried. Canons staff were more than happy to participate in a process that on the surface has a similar structure to Ofsted, but that in reality is far more empowering. They volunteered in huge numbers to be observed, to meet with the team members, co-observe their colleagues and to showcase our areas of outstanding practice (Science, English, Drama and Music if you'd like to know). It's a testament to their commitment and dedication to their own professional development that rather than having to twist arms to get people involved I had to console those who I had to leave out of the process.

The second challenge was to ensure that the team had all the information they needed. The process involves the team spending the Monday of the review week looking over the RAISEonline reports, SEFs and School Improvement Plans of both schools. We added more information about our latest exam results and other documents to help the team get a flavour of our distinctive ethos. I even took them over to their base in the other school so that the rapport-building process could begin. Peer review has empathy built into it in a way that Ofsted never could, and perhaps offers a way in which partnership working may one day supplant the current model of school accountability.

The third challenge was the review itself. The good thing about having other school leaders in to observe your school is that there is no shortage of inquisition involved. It may seem that there could be a problem with too little challenge and a cosiness borne out of a you-scratch-my-back over-collegiality. Alternatively it may seem that there could be a problem with too much challenge borne out of having too many successful school leaders all saying "in my school we do it like this". But actually the process managed to walk the line between those two potential perils. For teachers this manifested itself in lesson observations that generated a huge amount of developmental feedback from the external visitors and Canons co-observers, but which also resulted in Ofsted-style grading that sometimes thrilled and sometimes disappointed. For school leaders this meant sometimes sharing aspects of our work that we could see the reviewers wanted to take back to their school with them, whilst also having to answer tough questions about our assumptions and practices (or not actually get round to answering them as I was accused of on the day). All in all it was simultaneously tough and tender; an interesting combination.

The final challenge for us at Canons is responding to the feedback from the Challenge Partners peer review team. On the one hand we want to savour the fact that they felt that we were confidently outstanding in terms of pupil progress, school improvement strategies and (most crucially, as it represents progress since our last Ofsted), teaching and learning. The fact that they called CanonsOPP a "beautiful model of how teaching and learning should be done" and said both the teaching and the strategies to improve teaching were "amazing" is a testament to the work we have done, and continue to do, as a school. On the other hand we have to now meet the challenges that arise from our positive judgements, especially the agreed belief that we are well on the way to becoming a great school. In particular our English, Science, Drama and Music departments need to swiftly develop their capacity and capability to "strut their stuff on the national stage" (my favourite quote from the lead reviewer). The school also needs to shout increasingly loudly about our model for improving pedagogy, an area of outstanding practice they asked us to put forward for validation.

All of which leads me to one final challenge for any school leader who has made it all the way to the end of this blogpost. I challenge you to heave a close look at the Challenge Partners and take what you find to your next SLT meeting. If you're not a school leader then I also challenge you to send this blogpost you your SLT line manager and ask them if they think Challenge Partners would be right for your school. I make this challenge because I think that this model of schools working together to take responsible for both self-improvement and peer-improvement could be the start of something big; the end of a top-down, Ofsted-and-government-knows-better model of accountability and its replacement with a mature school-centred model of interdependent improvement.

A Coherent Architecture for Learning

On Thursday 4th October 2012 Canons High School welcomed Alistair Smith (or @alatalite to give him his correct twitter handle) to deliver the keynote speech at our second of five connected whole-staff INSET days. The purpose of this programme is to help the school gear up our Outstanding Pedagogy Project (@CanonsOPP) as we move - hopefully inexorably - towards an outstanding judgment for teaching and learning in the eyes of Ofsted that will validate the strengths we know the school, our staff and students possess. The theme of this particular session was the 'why' of outstanding pedagogy: the raison d'être of CanonsOPP and hopefully, the end of the start of the project.

As I sat listening to Alistair speak I allowed my mind to wander somewhat and I would argue that this is the best compliment I can give to him. When I have to listen hard to a keynote, it is usually because I have to tune in to find common cause with it's key precepts. On the other hand, when I feel that the speaker is completely on my wavelength I tend to hook in to a single concept that latches on to my core beliefs and then let it infuse me. I suppose it's a bit like listening to music that resonates; it transports you and there's usually very little that you can do to stop it. Judging from the conversations that I had with a number of colleagues later that day, I suspect that I wasn't the only one who was transported. And this week I have come across three colleagues who have taken an idea that came from his talk and made it happen in their classrooms (see above). In order to do this I imagine that they must have spent at least some of his speech making mental, or even physical, notes and to-do lists as he was communicating with them. I must remember this when my A-Level students drift away, and hope it is for similar reasons!!!

Anyway, I digress. I wanted to outline the nugget that set me off thinking and it was this. Alistair talked about a "coherent architecture for learning". I knew that this was coming, as he had been in the school a week before to talk with members of SLT and our Pedagogy Leaders about what we wanted from him in his talk. The one word that we thought was most important was the word 'coherent'; the sense that staff, students and their parents would see the links between learning across their different classrooms, subjects and teachers. But as I was listening to Alistair speak I realised that it was the rest of the phrase that struck me most: "an architecture for learning". I became fully aware that we have been engaged in a creative activity in its broadest sense, and that the end result of the process could be either a structure "built on sand" or one designed to last as a result of its solid foundations. We could be creating something to provide "shelter from the storm" for learners or a leaky and breezy shed of a structure. We have it within our collective powers to design a "hideous carbuncle" of a building or a thing of beauty to be admired by its inhabitants and neighbours in equal measure.

In other words that the Canons Pedagogy that we have been working on for three years now is about to leave the world of drafting board, design template and blueprint in order to become a real thing, and that Alistair was here to help us "turn the first sod" or, as the first day of the construction of a new edifice is commonly called, to help us achieve something "groundbreaking". Our aim, through our work as co-architects, has been to create something that is strong, is fit for purpose and is beautiful.

The most fundamental part of our "architecture for learning" is the main reason Alistair was with us in the first place, his Accelerated Learning Cycle which we (our CanonsOPP volunteer teacher group) have worked on for more than a year, have presented with (not to) staff and have built into our new lesson planning mechanism (although we know it is so much more than that). In short, it is the foundations of our pedagogic structure on which all else rests: the aspect of the architecture that provides us with strength. It is not intended to be a straitjacket and has been warmly received by teachers as something that they 'know' is the right thing to do, is strongly related to their practice at its best and puts learning at the heart of teacher planning.

The main thrust of the second half of the day was in getting groups of teachers together in cross-faculty groups to plan a learning cycle on a topic that could be related to subjects or delivered as a PSHCE lesson (I loved working on the 'Legacy of the Olympics' with a Chemistry and a French teacher that ended up being entirely about the political choices involved in spending more than £10 billion pounds). The emphasis was on the process of using the Accelerated Learning Cycle, not on the product of the lesson (or series of lessons) that emerged - although many colleagues liked theirs. The session finished with a peer evaluation of the process that was overwhelmingly positive. Much will remain to be done to keep these foundations strong in order for them to be built upon: the Canons Pedagogy is not a single architectural project after all. But the most positive thing to emerge from the day for me was that although staff were asking for more time and more support to be able to fully implement it, they were adamant that it was the right thing for the school to be doing.

The second part of our Canons Pedagogy, the part that ensures our collective learning is one that is fit for moral, cultural, social and even spiritual (in its broadest sense) purposes are outlined on the slide Alistair delivered shown here. These 'learning themes' are not drawn from the PLTS or BLP or any other pre-packaged learning to learn programme. Instead they are designed to reflect specific Canons contextual issues, linking closely with our school ethos as viewed by our teachers, students and parents. These have been the final piece of the jigsaw to be introduced to teachers and will form the basis of our new hybrid model of professional development that brings together the ideas of Dylan Wiliam's Teacher Learning Communities and David Hargreaves' Joint Practice Development. Teachers will choose their TLC focus and choose their JPD partners in a model that encourages autonomy (thanks Iesha) and interdependence between the incredibly able and focused professionals that populate our staffroom.

The final element of the "architecture for learning" that we call the Canons Pedagogy is the CHS8 of techniques that our Pedagogy Leaders presented on our June INSET day (I have blogged about this elsewhere), and that we will invest time and energy in over the coming years so that they become embedded in a number of classrooms, though not necessarily all as a core tenet of our work is that there is no correct way for teachers to teach. These techniques include some designed to aid areas as diverse as assessment (SOLO taxonomy), group work (Forum Theatre) and home learning (Flipped Classroom), but all are rooted in the principals shown above. Similarly all have been linked to an aspect of the Accelerated Learning Cycle, perhaps a touch arbitrarily but primarily done to ensure a sense of coherence. It is this coherence, ensuring that the fixtures and fittings of learning are in keeping with the structure without putting undue stress on the foundations, that we think ensures that our Canons Pedagogy will be a thing of beauty when it has been fully established.

I have no doubt that this has been one of the least obviously outward-facing blogposts on Canons Broadside, but as our "coherent architecture for learning" has finally fully left the drawing board I wonder whether or not it has a relevance beyond our own four walls. We have no belief that the Canons Pedagogy can act as a blueprint for other schools (unlike the DfE we appreciate that physical and metaphysical architecture needs to be context-specific), but our journey through the stages of the design and building process may well be of interest to others, for our failures as much as for our successes. The challenge I would make of any non-Canons teachers and school leaders reading this is "what does your coherent architecture for learning look like?" And if you can't answer that question maybe, just maybe, it is time for you to go back to the drawing board and begin the process of finding out.

 

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A Time for Renewed Optimism

It'll come as no surprise to any of you who have read any of my previous posts or caught up with me on twitter that I love the optimism of the start of a new academic year.

It's a time to welcome back colleagues somewhat freshened from their summer sojourns.

It's a time to welcome back students who have somehow managed to mutate into their new status (that strange, almost imperceptible difference in aspect and demeanour between late-Y8 and early-Y9).

It's a time to see the freshly scrubbed faces and starchily-crisped uniforms of the new Y7s (even the hand-me-down brigade wear theirs with a barrel-chested pride borne out of knowing that they are literally stepping into the shoes of their hopefully illustrious sibling).

It's also a time when blank pages in planners and exercise books offer us - teachers and students alike - the tantalising glimpse of a pristine future free from all the mistakes we made in the previous year (I've sometimes thought it would be good to issue fresh planners and exercise books termly rather than annually, but it just 'wouldn't be the same' would it?).

It's a time when the prospect of new groups of students coming into our classrooms is almost thrilling: which of them might we inspire; which of the 'known' students are going to turn over a new leaf; which of them are going to challenge us, and how are we going to meet that challenge head on.

It's a time when stunning results from Herculean efforts the previous year are fully absorbed in order that we may use them as mere springboards to ever greater achievements. Or alternatively otherwise stunning results from Quixotic efforts the previous year are wiped clean from our heavy hearts and burdened brains as we begin moving virtual mountains again with the forbearance of Sisyphus.

And I know that for the more cynically-minded of you out there it's also a time of optimism: The optimism that yet another year is going to pass during which you are going to make all manner of doomful predictions about how management are going to mess things up which are going to be proven right. Pessimism is just an extreme example of optimism in many ways, with most cynics I know caring that bit more about the lives and hopes of students than many of their more optimistic peers.

And finally, on a school-specific level, the start of the new academic year 2012-13 is also a time when the massively strong foundations of curriculum change, focused leadership at all levels and exam success can be built upon; when we can fashion a uniquely special edifice constructed from the bricks of wonderful teaching and the mortar of interdependent learning. It's a time for all of us to tweak our classroom practice in much the same way as an osteopath tweaks a nerve here and there, to help align the intentions of our classrooms and the actual outcomes.

So a Happy New Year to all of you. I wish you all the best with your New Year's resolutions. Let's see once more whether we can do much more, educationally speaking, than go to the gym a few times in January.

On Being Chefs not Food Critics

Here's my final post of the academic year, and I guess I have to revert to type and use one of my (now infamous?) extended metaphors. The difference is that this one is not new to me. This is one I've already developed and one I believe in more than anything else. I've used it freely with many members of staff and I even have it in a nutshell version which goes something like this.

Ofsted are food critics whilst we are chefs. We need to stop thinking like the food critics and think a lot more like chefs.

I come to this conclusion because essentially I see teaching as a creative process, not a reductive one. McDonaldisation is not something you can do to education and teaching because teachers, students and parents are not homogeniseable. There are too many variables that schools can't control and so to try to do so is a futile effort. You could set up the most restrictive academy chain, make all your students start in your nursery and run through to post-16, make all their families attend parenting classes and set up your own in-house ITT provision to train all your teachers and you still wouldn't get near to uniformity.

So why are so many schools trying to follow a recipe for success written by the non-teachers at the DfE and Ofsted (I know SMW is a former Head, but you know what I mean)? Every time Ofsted changes its focus and publishes a new inspection schedule we set off at a gallop to attend courses by consultancy firms, to gather to listen to horror stories from the guinea pigs from the trials and - most alarmingly - change many of the things we do to ensure we still meet the new 'outstanding' criteria or pull clear of the new 'requires improvement' criteria. This mania to ensure compliance runs from the local authority and unions to school leaders and to teachers. Sometimes it even finds its way into the consciousness of students and their parents ("we must get our happy parents onto ParentView").

Compare this to the much-coveted Michelin Guide stars awarded to restaurants. The first is awarded because its a place the critics feel is worth stopping to eat for. The second is awarded because its a place the critics feel is worth taking a detour for. The third is awarded because its a place the critics feel is worth making a special journey for. And that's it. No evaluation schedule. No tick boxes. No guidance notes. Nothing.

The net result of this is that if you're a chef with aspirations of being exceptional there is nothing that you can do to make it happen other than be exceptional for your customers, to make the experience uniquely wonderful for everyone who sits down at one of your tables. You can't second guess when a critic will come in (and even if you could, two more will follow at a later date to validate their judgement so its best not to even try to), but instead cook what you want to cook, how you want to cook it and do so brilliantly every time. And this is what I mean when I say teachers need to think more like chefs than food critics.

Of course it isn't easy in education. Ofsted aren't going anywhere anytime soon, and in the interests of openness they are required to publish their evaluation schedules and guidance to inspectors. Added to that recently we have even seen a return to the (in my eyes) bad old days of advance notice of when we can expect an inspection, a keep-you-on-your-toes mechanism if ever there was one! I can't imagine that the teaching profession would accept Michelin-style secrecy around the judging process (and nor should they) especially given the recent furore over zero-notice inspections.

What that all means is that it is up to leaders at all levels in schools to set the tone and to encourage and foster everyday excellence in teaching and learning. Michelin don't look any further than the food and, if the hype is to be believed, Ofsted won't be looking much further than the quality of teaching when making their judgements.

Since taking over as Chief Inspector Michael Wilshaw has repeatedly asserted that there is no single Ofsted way to teach that inspectors are looking for, and he has even urged school leaders to be a little odd and experimental in their approach. So let's take him at his word (we could always quote him to any disapproving inspectors) and then do our best to put him to the back of our minds. Instead we need to co-construct with all our partners in learning the way in which we want to be a place worth planning a special trip to go and see, and then we need to make it happen day in and day out for every teacher, student and parent we serve. And that's not easy, and it doesn't involve taking shortcuts or tolerating mediocrity or excluding people from the process no more than a Michelin star seeking restaurant can allow standards to slip in any way. But the standards we need to hold each other to need to be our standards, not Ofsted's or the DfE's. More than this, they need to be standards rooted in the shared experiences of our schools and their people.

iTeachFreely - SOLO Taxonomy 2: usage examples

Despite setting myself the target of writing one post per week, due to a hectic month I have fallen behind. Time to get back on track! This is a very wordy blog post but I hope you find it useful.

Recently, I delivered a small section of an INSET day at our school. The INSET was planned and led by the school's 'Pedagogy Leaders', a team of teachers whose task it is to share good practice and promote great pedagogy across the school. I've been very keen to work with the group to improve my own practice and share my ideas.

The day was laid out around the school's newly proposed Accelerated Learning Cycle. My section was contained within the 'Consolidation' phase and was specifically about the use of SOLO taxonomy. To make the taxonomy (which could fit within any section of the ACL) relevant to the consolidation phase, I had a slight focus on peer and self-evaluation.

I felt the day was a great success, with lots of positive feedback received from our colleagues. The two most common questions I have been presented with since the INSET have been how could we use SOLO in our assessments, and what sorts of classroom activities can you do with SOLO. The latter is going to be dealt with in this post.

I think it's important to point out that SOLO can be used in plenty of activities that you may already be doing. SOLO should be supplementary to what the pupils are doing and not the focus of it. I want my pupils to be able to engage with interesting activities, and through their familiarity with SOLO be able to comment on their progression, as well as see what they could do to improve. For me, SOLO is there to inform the teacher that learning and progression is taking place, and to inform the pupil of how deep their level of thinking is, and where it needs to head.

To help "SOLO virgins" get started, I'm going to write about a few ways in which I have used SOLO in the classroom. Some of these methods may already be documented about in my earlier posts, but the format here will be more of a scaffold than a reflection on what I've done.

SOLO Stations

in a nutshell - SOLO Stations is a fantastic way of incorporating SOLO into the existing Carousel technique we use all the time! Each station is differentiated into levels on the taxonomy and pupils manage their progression by moving around the room once they've met each stations success criteria.

how to set up the lesson - You will need 5 stations, one for Prestructural, Unistructural, Multistructural, Relational and Extended Abstract. When I move labs next year I intend to have these hanging from the ceiling, providing the students continuity and routine. At each station you should have a task which reflects its level on the taxonomy. Prestructural should usually provide reference material for students to use when they are unsure of something (part of 3B4Me). I like to position the prestructural station in the middle of the room and allow students to access it at any time, outside of the linear progression of the other stations. Each station should have a clear set of success criteria so the pupils know when they have completed the task and can move on.

how the lesson runs - Students are instantly engaged on entering with the presentation of a question related to the LOs. The question should be difficult enough for them to realise they do not have a grasp of the topic. Some pupils may be able to handle the question better than others, and this is what facilitates the spreading of students around the stations. Once pupils have thought about the question, they should express where on the taxonomy they believe their understanding is. This then needs to be justified in order to stop little friendship groups from forming and pupils starting above their station. The two methods I have used for justification so far have been either "turn to your neighbour and tell them which station you are starting at and why" or "write you starting position and why on a mini whiteboard and hold it up". Both work but the second one incorporates a bit of AFL. Once you have ascertained the pupil's starting stations, they begin their tasks. Instruct the pupils to move on once they have met the success criteria. If a pupil is struggling to meet the criteria, they should be advised to move down a station and come back to it later. If they have already completed the prior station they should look to the Prestructural Station. I like to tailor my tasks so that the lower level stations build up to the higher level stations. This means pupils transfer skills between stations to help them progress. The movement of students around the room shows their progression but I like to signpost the progression by chosing a child to explain what they have done at a station, why they are moving on and to where they are moving to the whole class. At the end of the session I start a discussion with the class about what they've learnt, let them demonstrate something and then consolidate.

pros - Clear progression is made as pupils move around the class. Pupils can talk about their learning at each station and where their learning is going to go next. Differentiation is achieved and all students can be stretched easily by moving on from the levels they're comfortable at.

cons - Requires a room that can easily be moved around. Behaviour for learning is key to keep students on task. You need to be more safety conscious whilst students are moving about the room (practical/equipment).

HOT maps

in a nutshell - HOT SOLO maps are basically mind maps that guide students through different parts of the taxonomy. There are different maps for the different verbs associated with each level of the taxonomy. The HOT maps are extensively described in SOLO Taxonomy: A Guide for Schools Book 1. I may in the future write a more at length guide on each of the HOT maps along with advice on how the pupils could assess themselves.

how to set up the lesson - Depending on the task set, you should choose the HOT map aligned to the most relevant verb. For example in science, if I wanted my pupils to hypothesise what was going to happen if we changed a variable in an experiment, I'd want them to use the "predict" map. Here is an overview of the HOT SOLO maps paired with their learning verbs.



how the lesson runs - the maps could be used on their own, or as part of a larger project in order to clarify the nature of the learning task.

pros - An advantage of using SOLO in this context is that the task and success criteria can be at different levels. The learning objective could be at a relational level, but using the maps the outcome could be at a unistructural, multistructural, relational or extended abstract level. An example by Hook and Mills (2011) goes as follows:

• A task set to Compare and Contrast is at a relational level, but students comparison statements in the map could be coded against SOLO - the task could involve the student:
  
  
  • listing similarities and differences (multistructural)
  • listing and explaining (relational)
  • listing, explaining and generalising or evaluating the extent of the similarity or differences

cons - There are a large number of maps that can seem overwhelming at first, introducing them slowly is recommended. I would suggest being comfortable with the way they work before setting them for your students.

Interacting with GCSE markschemes

in a nutshell- I recently visited the classroom of @7tbj to see how he was using SOLO taxonomy to help his pupils get better acquainted with the new style AQA science ISA. The difference in this new style of ISA to the old is the length of answers the pupils are expected to write. By using SOLO taxonomy whilst writing their answers, pupils could structure and connect their ideas better and we found it drew more information out of them.

how to set up the lesson- @7tbj had prepared a mock ISA, a mark scheme and a SOLO prompt sheet. He had arranged his classroom into groups and had a stash of numbered bits of paper for grouping. He also had post it notes to use as exit passes.

how the lesson runs- when I joined the lesson, pupils were grouped and were working on answering a different question depending on what table they were sat on. They first created their own answer before conferring with the group. Once they had all voiced their answer they were then given time to create a model answer and given the SOLO prompt sheet to help them.

pros - pupils made clear progress in the lesson and the length of their answers increased once given the SOLO scaffold. The new, slightly ambiguous mark schemes fit in nicely with the SOLO progression to reach higher marks.cons - only tested on Science ISAs.

Success criteria

in a nutshell - success criteria can be set by the pupils using SOLO taxonomy as the framework. Allowing pupils to set their own success criteria gives them ownership and gives you insight.

how to set up the lesson - when I have run this lesson, I have created an exemplar piece of work and opened it up to critique by the pupils. Instead of an example, you could just have clear learning objectives and ask the pupils how they can show they have met them. When I run this activity I like to have a SOLO display (more on this later) and laminated success criteria rubrics:



how the lesson runs - once pupils have evaluated the exemplar piece of work, I get them to write down success criteria they think is appropriate if they were to create something similar. Once the time is up, The pupils post it note these onto our SOLO display. From there, the class pick the "best" ones and we put them up on the whiteboard. We then have differentiated success criteria that the pupils have set and agreed on themselves.

pros - pupils take ownership of their learning and set their own, differentiated success criteria. All pupils should be able to meet at least some of the differentiated criteria.

cons - can be time-consuming if struggling to get through course content.

Peer and self-evaluation

in a nutshell - pupils are able to give useful feedback to each other using the taxonomy. They are able to identify clearly what they need to do to improve their work and/or level of thinking. I have grouped peer and self-evaluation together for the sake of this blogpost because I feel the methods in which it is executed do not vary much. The main difference is that a pupil will be saying I need to do this next in order to progress rather than pupil x needs to do this etc. Peer evaluation has been highlighted as a very effective tool in assessment for learning.

how to set up the lesson - in order to peer or self evaluate, pupils need to have done some work! I'll let your minds run mad with the possibilities here. As stressed by @CanonsScienceT at our recent INSET, it is important that pupils are given some form of training in order to peer evaluate. @totallywired77 recently blogged about Public Critique, definitely worth a read here.

how the lesson runs - once at an appropriate time in the task/lesson, an effort should be made to create space for some evaluation. Pupils can either look at their own work or feedback on another's. This could either be done by swapping books, or putting one pupils work up for everyone's to look at. I think it is very important that evaluation sessions should end with the critique of one piece of work by the whole class. It is important that pupils are trained to critique properly, and give feedback based on how to improve, rather than just commenting on how great or terrible it is. You could go down the route of two stars and a wish. The important thing to implement is the taxonomy. Pupils can use the taxonomy to clearly highlight levels of thinking in the work. For example:

• in a presentation, Pupil X is describing the different ways you can hit a ball in tennis. She describes how to play both topspin and backspin. She then describes why you would want to use both types of shot. All of her explanations have been described using the forehand.


• Class Y are "in-depth" evaluating Pupil X. One member of the class says that pupil X has shown a multistructural level of thinking as she has described 2 different types of shot. Another says pupil X has shown relational levels of thinking by relating them to the bigger picture, why would you use either shot? A third member then feedsforward, suggesting that in order to improve and reach an extended abstract level, pupil X should look at the shots in a new way, perhaps hypothesising how you would play these shots on the backhand. The class is able to contribute as a whole and the teacher can model good feedback along the way.

I often use peer and self-evaluation on the fly in alignment with my questioning to get more out of pupils verbally. I often will receive an answer from one student, and another student to mark where on the taxonomy the answer lies, then get that same student to add to the answer to move it up a level.Focusing on the self aspect, I find this extremely useful for approaching a child, asking them what level they are working at and what they need to do to reach the next level. They can tell me clearly and effectively what they plan to do to next, using the taxonomy. Since introducing this to my classes, I have noticed a marked decrease in the number of pupils with hands up asking "what do I do next sir?".

pros - differentiated feedback supplied by the pupils. Pupils are able to independently recognise what they need to do to improve. Cuts down on marking. Supplies an effective scaffold for feeding back and forward.

cons - pupils need to be trained in order to supply feedback, SOLO does make this much more straightforward though.

Planning

in a nutshell - I first saw this done by @tommegit in a first attempt at using solo. I hadn't thought of structuring lessons around the taxonomy in such an explicit way but I really like the way the lesson flows. The lesson takes the form of the taxonomy, beginning with a presumption of prestructural understanding and ending at an extended abstract level. I highly recommend this to practitioners just getting started in order to better acquaint themselves with the stages.

how to set up the lesson - take the progression of SOLO and plan an activity for each level. The class moves as a whole through the activities, building on prior knowledge and reaching an extended abstract level.

how the lesson runs - original lesson plan taken from @tommegit:

 

Prestructural: The verb "COMPRAR" (to buy) is written on the board when students enter the classroom. Students may wonder why? What is that word? Why is it on its own? Do I even know or remember what that word means?

Unistructural: Starter - In pairs, come up with at least one thing that you can tell me about this word.

Multistructural: Feedback by students from the starter activity. Feedback is written up on the board around the word "COMPRAR" to form a sort of mind-map. How do these ideas/observations/concepts link up with one another?

Relational: 3 sentences in Spanish written up on the board and on worksheet (students are already familiar with most of this vocabulary) -

• Normalmente, compro pan en una panadería (Normally, I buy bread at a baker's)


• Ayer, compré un CD de Michael Jackson (Yesterday, I bought a Michael Jackson CD)


• Mañana, voy a comprar un nuevo móvil (Tomorrow, I'm going to buy a new mobile)

Questions for discussion - What has happened to the word "COMPRAR" in these 3 sentences? Why has this happened? (Also remind students in this discussion that using 3 time frames in their written and spoken Spanish demonstrates understanding at an NC Level 6)

Extended abstract: What if I wasn't doing the buying? What if my sister was doing the buying instead? How would the verb change in each of the 3 sentences? What resources and support materials could you use to help you make the appropriate changes to the verbs? Try changing them now.

Extension activity - Try writing 3 of your own sentences in Spanish using a DIFFERENT VERB from "COMPRAR". Each sentence should be in a different time frame (present, past & future). Can you write sentences which are NOT in the 1st person?

Discussion and plenary.

pros - a great way for you as the teacher to become acquainted with the levels of the taxonomy. Lesson has flow and shows progression of pupils.cons - whilst great in a lesson/subject where a prestructual knowledge can be guaranteed, in a lesson where some prior knowledge could be entering the room, you could be left with a few activities that are completed very quickly.

Written feedback

in a nutshell - oh marking, time-consuming, but so effective. Feedback has time and time again been show to be one of the most effective methods in teaching, and whilst it doesn't always have to be written, it certainly is an effective method of delivery.

As a PGCE student, effective marking was drilled into me from the get go. "Very neat", "use a ruler", "underline" are all comments I'm sure we have used. It's easy enough to say these comments are worthless, but what can you write that does have worth? I used to struggle to come up with good feedback but now that I am armed with SOLO and my pupils understand it, it is easy to write feedback and targets using the SOLO language. Just as our pupils can peer assess using it, you can mark work with it.

• Well done, this piece of work shows you have a secure multistructural knowledge of the techniques you can employ as a SOLO teacher. I particularly liked the part where you talked about tennis. In order to progress, think about how these techniques could link together and how you could apply them to SEN students.

So that's it for now, when I try anything new I'll be sure to include it in a future update. Hope you found this useful.Joe

 

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Practitioner-Led INSET

As part of our drive to build capacity towards Teaching School status Canons hired 6 Pedagogy Leaders from across the staff to put rocket boosters onto our existing Outstanding Pedagogy Project (OPP as in our twitter handle). The project, as I have blogged about previously is to capture the art, craft and science of effective teaching as it best suits the context of our school community, students and teachers in order to gather the strands into a Canons Pedagogy or house style of teaching and learning.

The four-term role of the Ped Leaders, as we have come to call them, was to bring two years of work to a conclusion and identify the core ethos, structures and techniques of the Canons Pedagogy, to share these with staff and students and to create a sustained (and sustainable) programme for a full implementation through collaborative pedagogic development practices. Most of all, their job has been - and continues to be - to engage and enthuse staff in this process, to retain a bottom-up focus and to find the surplus of excellent practice rather than start from an assumption that teachers' classroom practice is a broken thing in need of a quick fix.

We are now at the end of the first full term of their work and the results have been magnificent. The team of Ped Leaders is made up of two Heads of Department, an AST, a TLR holder and two NQTs covering five different subject areas and they have attacked their brief with relish, skill and sensitivity. I'll leave @renniesherrie to share with you how they have developed over the term, but this post is focused on their first major public challenge; to plan and deliver an INSET day to introduce the core principles underpinning their Canons Pedagogy.

Their first significant task in the process was to relegate the Deputy Head (me) and Assistant Head (@renniesherrie) to the role of 'guides on the side' and to ignore our guidance on how they should do the day completely. I say 'relegate' but the truth is we were delighted at their chutzpah and sense of adventure (or risk as @alatalite might have it). They trashed everything about the way in which INSET days are normally done (not in the Hall, no Head or SLT introduction, a welcome breakfast, a full programme, Subway lunch, etc, etc) and they invited their SLT leads to get involved purely to assign to us admin tasks to support their vision of the day (our watchword became "what the Ped Leaders want, the Ped Leaders get").

And their product? The Lazy Teacher's INSET day (we have apologised in person to @lazyteacher and now hope that the copyrighting laws aren't too tough). The aim was to introduce the overarching structure of the Canons Pedagogy - essentially the Accelerated Learning Cycle - and to showcase a range of techniques to exemplify each phase of the cycle through pedagogy with our teachers as learners. Their determination to avoid a powerpointed lecture approach and to model the techniques and structure we were advocating throughout the day was a testament to their concern that the actual classroom be the focus of the INSET.

The only problem with this approach was that it made the Ped Leaders the teachers of their peers, and as the day approached some of them began to express concern that it might all fall flat and that colleagues might not participate as learners, particularly in the highly active sessions. This was where @renniesherrie and I were able to feel a real sense of participation in the organisation of the day. But, of course, their concerns were unfounded and once the day was upon us they came to realise that engaging and enthusing learners is pretty much a constant whether they are 13 or 31 or twice that age. They were helped by the fact that the cafeteria staff had played a blinder with their full English breakfast that got the staff buzzing from the first moment; a reminder that the little things often make all the difference to large groups of people.

On the other hand though food alone won't mask the faults of a poor INSET day and the real quality was in the sessions themselves. The Ped Leaders, @biomadhatter and myself (I was allowed off the leash as a teacher on the proviso I didn't let them down!!) delivered sessions that really did demonstrate how to get the students working. A typical comment between us was how little we were doing beyond the initial planning and our in-session facilitating (apologies but I had to use the F word) and how hard our 'students' were working - a fact that was not lost on the teachers we exhausted that day. At least three members of staff reported that this was the first INSET day where they had not looked at a clock or watch for the entire day.

At the end of the INSET day the six Ped Leaders, @renniesherrie and I got into taxis to Kings Cross to head up to the Cramlington Learning Village festival. The first task was to read the evaluations (written on cups in free form style as requested by the Ped Leaders) as we crushed a cup in the wait for the train. Watching the faces of our colleagues as comments like "the best INSET ever", and "can we get started now", and "so inspired", and variations on that theme emerged was truly one of the most pleasurable parts of my career, but it was the way that they immediately began buzzing about "what next?" that really flabbergasted me. And beyond that still, the way that they absorbed the phenomenal school that is Cramlington by being inspired by it but not overwhelmed by it was a joy to behold.

But of course INSET days have no meaning if they have no impact beyond the feelgood vibe of the day, however welcome that is. It's too soon to fully evaluate at the moment, but it is clear from discussions with key departments and individual teachers that the Accelerated Learning Cycle is liked and understood, that Flipped Learning has enthused many, and today I have worked with the RE department to apply SOLO to their lesson planning processes. In the meantime the only people in the school who are less than content with the measures of impact of the INSET day are the Ped Leaders themselves, and they have once again sidelined their SLT 'guides' to prepare the next phase of staff engagement in pedagogy. I'd wish them good luck in this, but they don't need it. What they need is for me and my SLT colleagues to stand back, let them loose, support them when needed and watch them as they change the nature of teaching and learning at Canons in a way which exceeds outstanding because it is practitioner-led to its core.

 

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Seeking Authenticity in Theory and Practice

Last night @informed_edu posted a tweet that said "Grrr. Every time someone in an education discussion uses the word 'authentic' a small part of me dies.... There's very little left now". This made me genuinely curious as I have full respect for his views expressed on Twitter but I am also one of those regular users of the word 'authentic' and I don't really want to be responsible for his slow death. I sought some clarification of why he so hates the word and got the response "I feel that 'authentic' is jargony, vague and inexplicable... Unless you're talking about an old painting". Fair dos I thought. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and the joy of social interaction, including through twitter, is the differences between us not the similarities.

And I could have left it there. And I would have left it there. And maybe by the end of this post you'll think that I should have left it there, but since using a phenomenological methodology for my Masters dissertation I have become fascinated in unpicking jargonistic concepts through exploration of the etymology of the words used to express them. There is an amazing amount of power generated by this process of revealing the original and varied meanings of words we take for granted and it was clear to me that I too had been taking the word 'authentic' for granted when I thought about @informed_edu's tweets (I gave the rather weak answer of 'authentic' being an expression of the inexpressible that must have made him die just that little bit more). So this morning I have had a dig into the rich soil of the word and been once again enthralled by the fossils I have found down there.

The first thing of note is that the modern notion of 'authentic' as meaning genuine or the 'real deal' has no etymological link, so let's dismiss that immediately as the thing that @informed_edu was being killed by. Instead the next most recent etymological incarnation of the word (from 13th century French) is to express a feeling of the 'canonical'; of something being 'original' or 'principal'. Now let me be honest with you here: I do love it when something I value as an ideology can be traced back to the word canon because it offers me as a Senior Leader of a school called Canons the opportunity to express our values ever more powerfully. We do strive at the school to be 'original' and to be a 'principal' (as well as principled) body within the community we serve and so are, in this derivation of the word 'authentic'. Similarly we ask our teachers and our students to be original in their thoughts and deeds: to absorb the many different ways in which people do learning and produce something that is authentic to us as a learning organisation, a Canons Pedagogy rooted in our very specific context.

In the next, ancient Greek, layer of the linguistic heritage of the word 'authentic' there is an etymological meaning of "one acting on one's own authority". In other words for a school to be authentic it must make decisions by itself and for itself, weighing up the strengths and limitations of an external accountability agenda, but not being weighted down by it. With rapid expansion of academies across the secondary sector in particular, and the opening up of those freedoms promised under it - not to mention the mothballing of the National Strategies as a what-to-teach-and-how-to-teach juggernaut - this vision of authenticity as "acting on one's own authority" has never been more relevant and more necessary. Even Ofsted are saying that there is no single type of lesson they want to see. We appear to be being given permission by all the key players to be authentic in our pedagogy, so let's take them at their word as teachers and school leaders. At Canons we are demonstrating this by investing heavily in time, resources and enthusiasm to develop a shared understanding of core structures and techniques that can underpin our Canons Pedagogy. We are striving to empower our teachers - both experienced and inexperienced, progressive and traditional - to lead in the identification, explanation and verification of these core structures and techniques so that our Canons Pedagogy is authentic at a personal as well as a contextual level.

The final and original etymological meaning of the word 'authentic' is listed as being "to accomplish" and "to achieve". Schools, their leaders, teachers and students need to have an end product to their activities if they are going to lay claim to being authentic, whether this is measured by the dominant performance measures of examination success and Ofsted recognition or by the so-called soft achievement outcomes of learner roundedness, exemplary citizenship and communal interdependence. At Canons we have had significant recent success and progress against the 'hard', DfE-recognised accomplishments and achievements, but the dominant ethos of the school has always overwhelmingly been built upon the 'soft', community-valued accomplishments and achievements. Marrying these two together in a Canons Pedagogy that values the former very highly but never forgets its fundamental duty to enable the latter is what the Canons Outstanding Pedagogy Project (OPP) has been all about.

In using the phenomenological process the word 'authentic', which some find so troubling and which I have used rather lazily in the past, has this weekend become much clearer and more tangible to me.

From now on when I use the word authentic about an institution I will be talking about it as being so original in its thinking and acting that it plays a principal role in the system it serves. It will be an institution that uses these thoughts and actions to be self-authorising and self-validating, respectful of external agencies and their evaluation but never slavish to them. And it will be an institution that enables all of its people to accomplish whatever they set their minds to and achieve success in all of the ways that it can be measured.

Now that would be something worth living for.

 

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The Real Wizardry of Effective CPD

At the Cramlington Learning Festival yesterday @kbrechin put up a slide showing the cast of The Wizard of Oz not dissimilar to the one below.

When he then started off by saying that some teachers approached continuous professional development (CPD) were a bit like the Cowardly Lion, scared of change, I have to confess to feeling worried for him. My brain was screaming at me "Please don't say that some are brainless" and "Heaven help him if he says some have no heart", but thankfully Ken trod safer paths. He pointed out that the scarecrowlike teachers in our schools are the ones that have forgotten their sense of engagement in professional learning, whilst the tinmanesque teachers are those that have grown rusty and somewhat frozen in terms of their teaching skills over time. My concerned inner voice relaxed and let out an almost-audible "phew".

And then my mind suddenly made connections (relational learning for the SOLOphiles among you) to @alatalite's keynote presentation in which he showed a photo of a school that had written its School Improvement Plan as an interactive collage in which the steps to improvement were the paving slabs of the yellow brick road. In the same image Sir Michael Wilshaw was represented as the Wicked Witch of the West (well he certainly can't be accused of watering down the intensity of Ofsted, I suppose). Maybe the theme for Cramlington's 12th Festival ought to be 'Over the Rainbow' if they are going to synchronise their metaphors so carefully!! I can just imagine @mlovatt1 as Glinda the Good (maybe I shouldn't be admitting to that but at least it's Extended Abstract).

Anyway, the use of these three archetypes of CPD-resistant or CPD-phobic got me thinking about what our core purpose in staff development is. In what ways do we go beyond the pigeon-holing of teachers as scared, forgetful or rusted learners? I didn't have to wait too long to hear a familiar refrain from some members of the audience about how we need to ease out those who are not committed to the school direction of travel, by fair means (ie those that invoke national legislation) or foul (ie those that involve a kind of alienation to encourage departure). Don't get me wrong, this wasn't an evil conspiracy between rampant technocratic SMTs - Cramlington isn't really the kind of place for that sort of thing - just more a lazy, unchecked creeping managerialism that has somehow found its way into the profession and to the modern world generally.

The impulsive, reactionary part of me was internally screaming out again "Is this how we would treat the children in our schools? Is this how we think human beings should be treated? Is this how we think learning works?" but I didn't. Instead I rather more calmly-than-I-felt suggested that maybe we need to think more about how we make the fearful feel safe, how we make the forgetful feel re-inspired and how we make the rusty and frozen feel reanimated and lubricated by the CPD we offer them. This intervention went down far better than I had expected and some very nice things were said that flattered my ego and gave me that warm glow.

But now I have a niggling feeling that my intervention was too trite, too soundbitey and too fuzzy. After all we don't give out hearts, brains or courage like trinkets as the Wizard of Oz does in the film. It isn't that easy. I'm not even sure that it is desirable that it be that easy. And it assumes that CPD leaders in schools are Wizards and, as the film showed, that was all just a case of smoke and mirrors.

But, and it is a big but, what the film also showed is that the trinkets given were merely symbols of the qualities that the Lion, Scarecrow and Tinman wanted to have and that the giving of them stimulated the courage, cleverness and feelingness of the recipients THAT HAD ALWAYS BEEN THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I've argued, in my very first and most personally important post on this blog, that we need to move from a deficit model of schooling to a surplus one and nowhere ought this be more relevant than in terms of staff development given the much-repeated assertion that quality of teachers and teaching are the most important prerequisites of student and school success. We can't keep looking out at the teachers who attend INSET sessions expecting them all to be Dorothies with no major shortcomings and in need simply of being pointed in the right direction home to some mythical Kansas of the perfect classroom. God help us all if we have schools full of simpering, perfection-seeking, professionals who think that tapping their heels together (in the form of adopting uncritically techniques like SOLO) three times will make everything in their classrooms perfect. I'm not even convinced that there isn't a bit of all four archetypes within us all to a greater or lesser degree, and while I might feel Dorothy-like at the moment, I can feel my Lion-ish worries lurking somewhere near to the surface.

We need the Lions on (and within) our staff to teach the Dorothies to beware of the dangers of the oversimplification of teaching techniques. We need the Scarecrows on (and within) our staff to teach the Dorothies that however cutting edge they feel today it probably won't last and that at some point in their careers they too will feel left behind. And we need the Tinmen and Tinwomen on (and within) our staff to teach the Dorothies that many times familiarity doesn't breed contempt and that good teaching can be very traditional and very effective at the same time. But all of that doesn't mean the Dorothies have nothing to teach the others. Just because they can be eager to the point of being naïve, and forward-looking to the point of being unthinking does not mean that they have nothing to add to the professional learning of others.

Instead we should accept that almost every person that enters teaching does so for the right reasons: to see children learn, understand, grow and succeed in school and beyond school. Really effective CPD in schools needs to be about blending the strengths of each person within an overarching school ethos, not pitting the strengths of some against the limitations of others. Dorothy would, after all, have never got to Oz without the Lion, Scarecrow and Tinman.

And this is the challenge for the Pedagogy Leaders at Canons High School in the coming year: How to build on your amazing INSET day (and it was clearly amazing for almost all staff) in a way that is inclusive and respectful of the talents of each of your colleagues. Cramlington has shown you one way of doing so. Learn from it but don't be a slave to it. Canons can be as good one day.

 

SOLO from the assessment cradle to the assessment grave

On Monday this week the results of my Dissertation (and therefore final Masters level) were released by Middlesex University. When I finally was able to logon to the unihub portal - the first time I had tried in my three years on the school-based programme - they only gave me my mark and didn't say what level of award it was equivalent to. I had a hazy recollection that it was in a handbook I had been given and so I looked it up and there, to my utter surprise, was SOLO taxonomy staring back at me!!!

To say I was stunned is an understatement. Although SOLO wasn't a part of my dissertation's conclusions about what good assessment should look like, I found my way to it immediately after thanks to @biomadhatter, and the way SOLO dovetailed with the conclusions of my research was serendipitous in the extreme: it was as if my findings were preparing me for the revelatory nature of SOLO in action. But what shocked me was the fact that the same levels of understanding I had been teaching Y7 English and Y12 Sociology students to apply to their work were being used at Masters level to distinguish between a distinction (extended abstract), a merit (relational) and a pass (multistructural).

Just the previous week I had launched SOLO with my Y12s in a lesson where I got them to highlight their A2 mark scheme for AQA Sociology according to SOLO taxonomy (see my post 'Keeping up with the Soloists'). The results were crystal clear; that extended abstract was the top band, relational the top half of the middle band, multistructural the bottom half of the middle band and so on. This was a powerful lever for me in getting students to appreciate the value of SOLO.

And so, being a fan of serendipity, I decided to use the Middlesex university mark scheme for Masters level dissertations to mark my AS Sociologists' essays, rather than the A-Level mark scheme to see if it would work as well. The results were amazing.

The first of the essays I marked was a real mixed bag, which using a traditional mark scheme would have been really difficult to evaluate. Because I would have been looking at a number of the different mark bands I would have had to cobble together a best fit statement that would have offered little to the student. Instead I am able to point out where she is prestructural, but also where she is multistructural and, at her best, relational. My concluding comments are therefore far more effective at giving her feedback, feed up and feed forward: a proper evaluative response for her to draw strength from and use to identify improvements.

In this second student's response there was far less variability of understanding, and so I was able to focus my feed forward on moving up from multistructural in certain places, to secure a fully relational response as a springboard to aiming at completely extended abstract thinking (I'm hopeful of her achieving an A grade next year, and so this mark scheme fits very well with her targets for the coming year).

This final example is a close-up on the feedback, feed up and feed forward I provided for a third student who has the potential to achieve a grade A or even A* next year. Although I can see things that I might do differently (it was my last lesson with them and I had to mark these essays as they worked interdependently) the thing I am most pleased about with these evaluations is that I found writing the positives and negatives equally easy. When using the A-Level mark scheme I always find that I operate on a deficit model with students, pointing out all the faults whilst finding it hard to look back and see the achievements.

The difference that I have noted from this first foray into using SOLO taxonomy for written evaluation (notice I am not using the word assessment as it seems too shallow for the feedback, feed up and feed forward I have given) is that I am able to evaluate each paragraph and even sentence independently of the whole. This precision of evaluation has allowed me to really accurately pinpoint which concepts they have not grasped, or where they have not applied theory to sociological contexts, or where they have failed to evaluate sociological theories effectively. In doing so, it has helped me to promote the importance of consistency across the essay to them and they were quick to identify sections where they needed to go away and revise concepts or rewrite essays. If I had had more time with them I would have asked them to rewrite the section they felt most able to improve, perhaps after having spent time getting ideas from their peers based upon my evaluation.

I told the students afterwards that I had marked their essays using a Masters level mark scheme. What amazed them most was that SOLO taxonomy could be used to evaluate their work as well as mine, as well as GCSE coursework and as well as KS3 portfolios. It was clear that they realised that thinking about levels of understanding (as exemplified by the SOLO concepts of Extended Abstract, Relational, etc) was something that could connect them to their studies beyond A-Levels, and the fact that they were realising this in our last lesson before their UCAS preparation week was not lost on them, or me.

And what surprised me most? The fact that not one of them asked what grade they had received. And the fact that none of them asked what grade I had received. SOLO was enough for them. And that's enough for me.

 

Removing the rose-tinted educational spectacles

I have recently bought some prescription sunglasses (oh the perils of ageing) that give everything I look at a rosy hue. This is lovely and the world does look so much better filtered through a reddish lens. I've even taken to wearing them on the overcast days of the Great British Summer (TM) to help brighten up my world. But I am aware that I am succumbing to an optical illusion, a mood enhancing prism, a fanciful reimagining of what I know reality to be. After all, the Great British Summer is still somewhat grey, wet and chilly.

Speaking of ageing, next year will mark my 18th as a teacher (meaning every child I teach was born after I started teaching - oh the misery) and the 30th since I myself started secondary school in the far north of England. These are sobering facts lined up against my pretensions of youth, and may have to be mitigated by instead adopting pretensions of wisdom through experience (I suspect I'm already guilty of that through this blog).

But thinking about how the world has changed since I started secondary school and starting teaching is a powerfully positive thing. In 1983 I distinctly remembering waiting for my friend's Vic20 computer to load a simple game via the faxlike screeching of a cassette tape. More often than not, after 15 minutes of attempting this, the programme would crash and we'd be back to square one. By 1995 computers had improved massively but the school I started in had a 1:30 ration of students to computers, and these were essentially e-typewriters used principally for word processing. Now I sit at a Pret waiting for a meeting, blogging merrily away to the world. Via my mobile!!!

And the changes go beyond technology. I remember in 1983 the family chip pan, a lard receptacle through which many of our meals were delivered. By 1995 things had improved immeasurably, but there were no alternatives to full fat milk or sugar or high sodium salt. By 2012 we have seen life expectancy rise to the point that most children born today are expected to live to 100.

I could go on. Watching a Boris Bike go by I can imagine what the streets of London were like 18 and 30 years ago in terms of traffic, pollution, bike-friendliness and safety. As I watch the businesswoman in her Nikes I can only imagine how much better ergonomics within engineering have got and the impact that has on us. As I look at the ethnic mix around me I can vaguely remember the post-Brixton, post-Toxteth racism of our country and marvel at how far we have come (and how far we have still to go).

And yet when it comes to the world of education, and student performance in exams in particular, there seems to be a developing consensus that things have only got worse, that exams have only got easier, that school leavers have only got stupider. How is that? How have we come to a position where all objective measures show an improving school system and yet the common view is that we have dumbed down? I remember the education world of 1983, with teachers newly removed of the power to physically punish, but retaining the aggression and spite that accompanied it (thrown board rubbers, pulled hair at the nape of the neck, standing on toes to intimidate). I remember having to write down word-for-word what teachers wrote on the board day-in-day-out and I remember that getting more frequent at A-Level. I remember the failure rate of so many of my peers, how it messed up their lives and deadened their aspirations, and how so much of it was down to poor teaching and poor pastoral care.

And I look out now over a teaching profession that is professional, caring and outcomes-focused in a way that I could only have dreamed of in 1995, let alone 1983. It is still not perfect by any stretch of the imagination (so much done, so much to do is these days a common narrative for most teachers) but it is immeasurably better and so are the students we produce. They may be smarter in different ways to the success stories of the 1980s (less compliant, less constrained, less biddable) but they are definitely smarter.

Unfortunately the voices of doom have decided that they know best and they have donned their rose-tinted spectacles and decided to reform education in the model of the 1980s, or 1950s to some people's minds. They have pulled the wool over the eyes of the media and, through these, the country at large. As a result we are sleepwalking into a world of the haves and have nots again. We need to be confident about our successes and stop this from happening. We need to look forward to new opportunities not backwards to a golden age that only existed for the minority. And to do that we need to engage with proposed changes, challenge the thinking that underpins them and confidently assert our professional knowledge and understanding of what is right for our wonderfully smart 21st century students.