Good Teachers, Good Schools

How to Create a Successful School

David Hudson

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135226886
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

'Good schools think with people and not to people' argues David Hudson in this thought-provoking practical guide for those wanting to bridge the gap between middle and senior management roles, and make a difference in their schools. Accessibly and engagingly written and packed with real-life examples, this book will prove essential reading for ambitious teachers and deputy heads everywhere. Whilst many management books tend to overcomplicate David writes with refreshing clarity and simplicity of thought. He sets out to inspire his readers to improve their practice and offers tried and tested strategies and solutions.

Good teachers, good schools is a must have read for anyone interested in a senior school leadership role and for those leaders keen to improve their leadership style. The book covers every aspect of school leadership, from the decisions senior school leaders need to make such as running meetings, staffing and communication with staff and pupils to the difference between management and leadership and curriculum involvement including monitoring evaluation and self-evaluation. David Hudson encapsulates many principles that have made him a successful school leader.

David Hudson has been teaching in secondary schools since 1973 and he has had a wide range of leadership and management roles including that of Head Teacher in two 11 – 18 schools.

SCHOOL SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES

SECONDARY SCHOOL

All schools are different but secondary schools often have operating systems and structures that are similar or, to the non-professional eye, identical.

All have a senior leadership (sometimes called management) team that typically consists of the head teacher, one or two deputy head teachers and two to four assistant head teachers. One of the deputy heads is named first deputy head teacher so that there is clarity about who takes over if the head teacher is ill or indisposed for any length of time.

These senior leadership team (SLT) members will tend to lead on: curriculum, finance, staff development, student development (often called ‘pastoral’), data analysis (sometimes referred to as raising student attainment) and, in many schools, learning.

Working under the SLT will be the middle leaders or managers. In many of the larger secondary schools there are seven or so ‘senior’ middle leaders, often known as faculty leaders, and within each faculty there will be several departments each with its own head.

Some faculties are easily identified, and all schools that have faculties will have faculty leaders for mathematics, English and science. PE or Sport is also easy to separate. The departments of history, geography and religious studies are often grouped in the Humanities faculty and art, music and drama often become Expressive Arts.

Subjects such as design technology: resistant materials (wood, metal, plastic); food (used to be called home economics and, way back in time, domestic science); graphics (all about product design); possibly electronics; and ICT (information communication technology – computer study) – might be in a stand-alone Technology faculty but are sometimes attached to one of the other faculties. Dance might come under the PE/Sport umbrella or the Expressive Arts faculty. Modern Foreign Languages is usually a separate faculty but can sometimes be grouped with English to become the Communications faculty. Subjects such as personal social and health education (PSHE), citizenship, business studies and economics, sociology and psychology are usually grouped with Humanities; media studies with English; and child care and health and social care with Science.

The faculties at my school are: English, Mathematics, Science, Expressive Arts and Technology, Modern Foreign Languages, Humanities (includes ICT) and Sport.

Having no more than eight faculties enables senior leaders to meet and discuss with a small group of key subject-based professionals who, between them, cover the whole school. Larger groups tend to provide a platform for some to make speeches while others listen, so profitable debate in groups of more than 10 is rare.

The pastoral deputy head (or assistant head) will usually lead five heads of year, one assigned to each year group and often, particularly in big schools, there will also be a leader for each Key Stage. The KS3 (Years 7, 8 and 9, 11–14-year-olds) leader is sometimes called head of lower school; KS4 (Years 10 and 11, 14–16-year-olds) – head of upper school; and, in an 11–18 school, KS5 (Years 12 and 13, 17- and 18-year-olds) – head of sixth form. A big sixth form will also have a head of Year 12 and head of Year 13.

Each year group will contain a number of tutor groups or forms each with its own tutor or form teacher. These are mixed-ability groups that take into account both friendships to be encouraged, and also liaisons that parents recommend should be avoided at all costs. Schools try to limit the number of students in these tutor groups to 25, so 300 students in a year group becomes 12 tutor groups with 12 tutors, and the school is said to be 12 Form Entry or 12 FE.

The tutor will register the students twice daily – morning session and an afternoon session; this is a legal requirement. All children have to attend for a maximum of 190 school days in any one year – 380 possible attendance marks. The teachers will attend for 195 days and these five ‘extra’ days are used for teacher training or INSET (In Service Training) while the students are absent.

Registering students is very important, but the main job of a tutor is much more central to the business of the school. The head teacher is in loco parentis while the student is in school but, in practice, this duty falls to the teachers and, in particular, the tutor of that student. The tutor will thus be expected to know more than any other member of staff about each student in their tutor group and the student will often develop a very strong bond with their tutor. The tutor is the nearest thing to a school-based parent.

The role of tutor is undertaken by full-time teachers as an everyday requirement; it is not regarded as extra to a teacher’s substantive role. Some teachers will, however, apply for, and be awarded, a management or leadership role in addition to their teaching commitment and role as a tutor. This is additional to their main contract and there will be a payment attached to this extra responsibility. This payment is known as a teaching and learning responsibility or a TLR.

TLRs function via a hierarchical ladder where TLR 2 is ‘below’ TLR 1. The ‘ranking’ in order of increasing pay is therefore as follows:

Level 2

TLR 2a	over £2,000 per annum extra salary
TLR 2b	approx. £4,000 per annum extra salary
TLR 2c	approx. £6,000 per annum extra salary

Level 1

TLR 1b	over £8,000 per annum extra salary
TLR 1d	over £11,000 per annum extra salary

Clearly the greater the level of responsibility, the greater the requirement to lead on behalf of the school, the more money is paid.

The move from TLR 2 to TLR 1 is determined by the number of full-time staff (full-time equivalents or FTEs) that the TLR post holder manages or leads.

In addition to money, secondary school teachers with ‘extra’ responsibility get extra non-contact time (free periods) over and above the normal allocation for that school. A school with a six, 50-minute-period day (30-period week), would normally allocate five non-contact periods to a teacher with no additional responsibility. These five periods can be, but usually are not, called upon to cover a lesson where another teacher is absent – schools can require teachers to do this 38 times in an academic year. One of the weekly non-contact periods is a protected non-contact time so that the teacher can plan to use it with no expectation of being ‘on call’. A faculty leader would typically have seven non-contacts, head of department – six, head of year – seven, etc.

Increasingly schools are employing classroom supervisors to ‘cover’ for absent teachers. These are normally not qualified teachers and they are not normally expected to teach the class. Instead, they ‘manage’ the class and ensure that the work set by the absent teacher or by the head of department or faculty leader is completed properly.

In addition, secondary schools will have many teaching assistants (TAs) – sometimes called non-teaching assistants (NTAs). These adults are also not qualified teachers but the TAs are deployed in classes to work alongside the teacher – often, but not exclusively, the class will contain students that have a special educational need (SEN), and the TA will work class-wide or exclusively with a particular student. Some students might have an official ‘Statement’ of specific need and this might involve a certain number of hours of ‘one-to-one’ help for that student.

Schools will also have learning mentors who will review work done and progress made with individual students. Learning mentors, TAs and classroom supervisors are all ‘unqualified’ and are referred to as ‘support staff’ but they play an increasingly vital and central role in schools.

Qualified teachers start their careers on the main scale of payments (M1 to M6), and each year they move to the next point on the scale – this is payment for experience, and while it can be ‘blocked’ by head teachers, it rarely is. In their first year these teachers are referred to as NQTs and they have to successfully complete this probationary one-year period. Should the head teacher refuse to authorise and document their successful completion of this first year in the profession, the teacher cannot continue and cannot, from that point on, become a qualified teacher in any school – again, this is very rare.

Unless they are recipients of a TLR, teachers will reach the top of main scale after six years and then they can apply for ‘threshold’. This is the performance related route from main scale to the upper pay spine of payment, and it is at the discretion of the head teacher. Threshold pay is approximately £2,000 per year, and once they have successfully negotiated threshold, teachers can apply every two or so years, to move to the next point on the upper pay spine. There are three points on the upper pay spine.

The two years minimum period before an application is made is because the head teacher is required to ‘judge’ their performance against the work of, at least, their last two years. Should the teacher have moved schools during that two-year period, their present head teacher should contact their previous head teacher before making a decision.

Main scale, threshold and the upper pay spine are all awarded for being a good or very good classroom teacher, not for responsibility and work outside of the classroom. The key performance indicator is the academic progress of the students that that teacher has taught. The head teacher will monitor this closely before sanctioning a performance-related pay rise.

Those teachers that also aspire to management and leadership outside of the classroom will move via the TLR 2s and TLR 1s ladders to what is known as the leadership spine of payment. Senior leaders such as head teachers, deputy head teachers and assistant head teachers are paid on this. The particular grade or level a senior leader occupies on this scale of payment depends on the size of the school in which the senior leader works.

PRIMARY SCHOOL

The systems and structures that typically exist in primary schools are much more similar to those that exist in secondary schools than one would imagine.

Three- to four-year-olds are ‘pre-school’ and four- to five-year-olds are ‘primary/infant’ and are described as ‘reception’. Three- to five-year-olds are at the early years/foundation stage. Five- to seven-year-olds are Key Stage 1 (primary/infant) with five- to six-year-olds being Year 1 and six- to seven-year-olds Year 2. There is a Key Stage 1 (SATs) test in maths and English based mainly on teacher assessment. Key Stage 2 is seven- to eleven-year-olds (primary/junior) with Key Stage 2 (SATs) tests in maths, English and science.

The school is almost always much smaller than the typical secondary school and eight teaching staff are going to generate far fewer TLRs than, for example, 80 staff. There is always a head, usually a deputy and then one or two TLRs to lead on a section of the school or a pedagogic area.

Lessons are usually taught around extended projects and each 50 minutes or so may not have a discrete learning objective in the way that it would have in a secondary school. The literacy and maths hours still operate but less rigidly – though government prescription is still present and, I think it is fair to say, is resisted by primary school teachers far more than their secondary counterparts. Testing in the quantified/snapshot-in-time way is anathema to most primary school teachers.

Each class in primary school will be mixed ability and it will consist of students of similar age; it will be taught and registered by one teacher. There may be a few teaching assistants and possibly one learning mentor, but it is unlikely that there will be cover supervisors to step in when a teacher is away. The head teacher is often ‘non-teaching’.

Clearly, primary schools begin the formal learning process for all children and they would not expect all entrants to be ‘the finished article’. However, it is crucial that the primary school is not starting from absolute zero when a child first presents, and certain skills are essential. Such skills are being able to:

• dress and undress themselves;
• use a pen and pencil and a pair of scissors;
• use a knife and fork;
• say and write their name;
• use the toilet independently;
• count to 10;
• play with other children and share;
• respond to simple instructions.

It is, perhaps, surprising how many children at four or five years old cannot do this and some attend school still unable to talk properly and some even in nappies.

Secondary and many primary school teachers may well not realise the significance of this. However, I am absolutely certain that the five-year-old that arrives in school without these basic skills, inevitably becomes the eight-year-old that is learning far less than they should and is already lagging behind their peers. This student is usually already all too aware of their deficiencies and well on the way to becoming the 14-year-old disruptive who has long since lost her/his stakeholder characteristics and who cannot wait to leave full-time education.

The tanker begins its journey at three; to focus on the need to set it off correctly is so much more sensible than trying to stop it and turn it around once it has reached full speed.

GOVERNORS, GOVERNANCE AND OFSTED

Governor

One who governs; one invested with supreme authority; chief administrator of an institution; member of a committee responsible for an organisation or institution.

Collins English Dictionary

Governing bodies were invented over 130 years ago, and few of us would claim that today’s schools are even remotely reminiscent of those Bob Cratchet institutions of the 1870s, where the head teacher had to seek permission from ‘The School Board’ to put an extra lump of coal on the classroom fire.

LEAs, now often called LAs – for some obscure reason the word ‘education’ is deemed no longer necessary – also have a governance role, in that they have ‘responsibility’ for the group of schools geographically grouped under the umbrella of the council they serve. LEAs have responsibility, but the ‘power’ lies in the schools, with the governing body and, in particular, with the head teacher.

As it has always been, today’s schools and school leaders need an LEA, and particularly a governing body, that is a:

• trusted and well informed critical friend;
• mechanism and system for accountability that is regular and on-going, and which informs and improves practice as well as measuring it;
• forum for ‘strategic’ discussion and thinking.

The overwhelming majority of governing bodies and LEAs are trusted by senior leaders, and by the teachers and support staff in our schools. However, in practice it is difficult for either to become truly involved in the day-to-day running, or the strategic thinking and planning of our schools.

Governors tend to be lay people (not professionally involved in education – usually parents), and LEAs tend to be professionals, who have often never taught in schools, or who taught briefly many years ago. So a great deal of school time and effort is spent ensuring that both governors and LEAs are well informed.

All head teachers produce three to six written reports per academic year to service the three to six full governing body (around 19 governors for a large secondary school) meetings. They also provide information, and attend governors’ subcommittee meetings on: curriculum, finance and staffing and premises – probably another six meetings per academic year. These meetings are, on average, two or three hours in duration. The focus of the reports occasionally overlaps, but is seldom identical. School governors and LEA personnel try to get into school duri...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 School systems and structures
• 2 Governors, governance and Ofsted
• 3 Leadership
• 4 What good schools look like
• 5 The decisions school senior leaders need to take and why
• 6 Learning
• 7 Making things better: monitoring, evaluating and reviewing
• 8 Summary
• Appendices
• References