How does this school ensure consistently
high-quality teaching and learning? How does this compare with the practice in
your school?
Similarities
Large 11-19 school rated
as Outstanding
Strong middle leaders
Highly effective
professional and supportive environment
Shared sense of purpose
High expectations
Monitoring of teacher
performance (although this is something I perhaps need to do more of in my
department)
Emphasis on developing
good classroom practice
Use of assessment data
Book scrutiny
Use of baseline targets
Formal classroom
observation
Use of department
meeting time to share best practice (need to revive this and base the agenda on
evidence from the last four points)
Focus on regular
marking, progress in every lesson, high expectations of behaviour and uniform
Differences
Teamwork and sharing
good classroom practice can sometimes be limited by the day to day pressures of
school and by the 'campus' style of our school where all the blocks are
separate. A colleague and I recently observed each other after realising that
we had worked just two floors apart for over three years without having any
idea how the other taught! I now want to try and do this informal style of
observation with other colleagues and set up something similar for colleagues
in my department.
Remembering to celebrate
success in department meetings both in terms of performance data and more
qualitative aspects of teaching and learning.
We have incredible data
managers at our school who provided me with an in depth analysis of student
data following each interim. I now want to make use of this assessment data to
identify variation across teachers and do this performance data collection
throughout the year instead of just in the annual performance management
review. This could perhaps involve teachers completing a self-evaluation using
quantitative performance data but also qualitative evidence of teaching and
learning throughout the year and the subsequent provision of tailored CPD. I
feel that we do a lot of necessary CPD as whole school, and now wonder if it is
possible to make better use of our department time. I love the idea of breakfast
CPD (with breakfast provided!) but I worry that it would be difficult to fit in
with an 8.35am start.
We tend to only do joint
moderation of work for coursework, could this perhaps be extended to other
work? We do monitoring and evaluating schemes of work but this tends to be in
the Summer term and would be more beneficial to be done throughout the year and
it would be interesting to include analysis of feedback from students on
schemes of work. I know a lot of people are wary of being told 'how to teach'
by students, but if we can find the things that work for our students within
the schemes of work and do more of this then this would surely engage students
more.
Embedding thinking
skills and higher order questioning has started at our school as a whole school
initiative and it will be interesting to see how this develops our students as
thinkers over the next few years.
The account of practice highlights three leadership
practices that the middle leader uses to ensure consistency in the quality of
teaching and learning: setting direction, developing people and developing
systems. If you were asked to rank these leadership competences in order of
priority, what would that be, and why?
This account of practice stresses the importance of good
systems combined with developing people through:
Setting direction
- action plan based on data to drive improvement and ensure greater consistency
of teaching and learning
Developing people
- collaboratively
Developing systems
- consistent policies and practices for teaching and learning, classroom
management and the use of data
Personally I would consider 'developing people' to be the
most important competency, however, this may be because this is the aspect that
I feel I have perhaps neglected in my department. We have very good systems in
place and I think we have quite a clear direction but in order to move forward
we now need to work together to improve the consistency of teaching and learning.
That isn't to say that I don't believe that 'setting direction' and 'developing
systems' are not important - if you have an excellent team of teachers that do
not have a clear vision (or 'goal harmony' as described by Dave Brailsford...)
or systems in place to support their teaching then little progress will be
made.
ACTION POINTS:
1.
Establishing informal observations for myself
and members of my department
2.
Use of data to identify variation in teaching
and learning and to inform self-evaluation and tailored CPD
3.
Collection and analysis of student feedback on
schemes of work/activities
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