The Holy Grail
Since beginning my teaching career in 2002 there have been so many government based initiatives that I have started to lose track. I caught the tail end of the National Strategies, became a ‘child of the Primary Framework’, spent a lot of money on ‘ICT’, there was APP and of course there have been countless Ofsted recommendations. There are many more examples.
The problem with all of these is they have added to teacher workload without significantly impacting on learning.
Teachers spending hours being trained on interactive whiteboards, giving it a go before the whiteboards stop working well and they resort to horrific PowerPoint presentations.
Teachers spending hours and hours to gather evidence using APP and then being told what they already knew (that the assessment system of levels has no educational merit whatsoever).
And the classic. Here’s an hour of Literacy/Numeracy and here is what it should look like.
Now don’t get me wrong, I know the good intentions behind all these things and they are not without some impact. Just not enough.
In my roles as class teacher, ICT leader, AST and Assistant Head I’ve never put up a fight against these changes (and have introduced a fair few myself). Indeed, I would say I’m very positive about change in general, as without it things will never get any better for us or the children we teach. However, change without the potential for significant impact on learning is pretty much a waste of time.
I’m lucky enough to now be in the role of Deputy Head and I’m already finding I am even more accutely aware of the potentially damaging effects of asking staff to give up precious time on things that don’t have the potential to significantly impact on learning. In my experience the vast majority of teachers are already working at what they see as 100%. I say ‘what they see as 100%’ as each teacher has their own threshold for how much of their time they are prepared to spend on a job that has the potential to infinately affect their worklife balance.
Which brings me to the point of this post (which is really just a pre-cursor for the next post). For me, the Holy Grail of what you can do as a leader and what you should be looking for as a Class Teacher (which I still am) is not to potentially impact on learning with ‘just a little more work on the part of teachers’. The Holy Grail is to potentially impact on learning whilst reducing teacher workload.
I see it as a fundamental part of my role to not just pick staff up on why they aren’t doing something. I must pick staff up on why they are doing something. Something unnecessary. As if it doesn’t make much of an impact for the time they are using on it, then why are they doing it?!
That goes for existing policies as well as new initiatives.
To simplify this, The Holy Grail can be seen as the following formula:
time + effort < impact
It’s important to note that this is all relative, but it sets out a clear ideology. Sometimes it will be impossible to meet it, but by applying that formula across school, at the very least we will be working smarter, spending less time on things that make less impact whilst spending more time on things that do.
I have already seen the benefits of this in our approach to Mathematics and I am sure many others have as well as they introduce a Mastery Textbook approach to Mathematics. Yes it might be ‘front loaded’ in terms of teacher training and in the short term workload might go up — that’s inevitable in almost all aspects of change — however, the medium to long term will match the formula outlined above. Less planning. Less marking. Raised standards in Mathematics.
As mentioned above, this post is really a pre-cursor to the next post. A post that I hope will add to the growing movement amongst individuals and schools who are willing to stand up and be heard, to question the status-quo and push for change not just where the potential impact will be greater, but for where time and effort are reduced, whilst potential impact is increased. The Holy Grail.
