The Education Continuum

Guest Post by Paul K. Ainsworth - The new appraisal regulations: A job hunter’s perspective

Last Friday, the Department for Education (DfE) published the new arrangements for the performance management of teachers. If you are currently applying for jobs you may wonder how this will affect you and what you need to know for any future interviews, particularly if you are applying for a middle leadership or senior leadership post.

If you are applying for a leadership post it is likely that you will have responsibility for setting targets and then reviewing them for a group of staff. At interview you could be asked specifically about your views on the new regulations. You may also wish to draw on your knowledge of the new regulations when discussing how you would raise standards in your area or how you would deal with underperforming staff.

The most obvious change is one of language. The press releases on the government website talk about 'teacher appraisal' rather than using the term 'performance management' which for teachers who are longer in tooth may remind them of the system before performance management was in vogue. If you are looking at senior leadership posts you may wish to read the model policy on DfE website which includes the section on capability which is consistent with the ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance procedures.

If you are asked about underperforming staff, you may wish to comment that the new appraisal structure has a much clearer link to capability procedures than before but it is important to remember that if a colleague begins capability procedures the appraisal process is suspended. The DfE suggest that the new appraisal process will allow poorly performing teachers to be removed in about a term. However this would require all the paperwork to be perfectly collated and time scales to be rigorously kept to. We also tend to know that in practice this can become much longer when colleagues are sick during the process.

For reviewers the new appraisal process states that teachers will have to be assessed every year against the new teacher standards. These are claimed to be simpler and sharper than before. You may wish to look at these standards which become live in September 2012.

It will be interesting to see if schools begin to develop their own tick lists of these teacher standards, perhaps even grading teachers on them against the OFSTED grades. As a reviewer you will have to ensure that objectives are set for each teacher which clearly show how they contribute to improving the education of the pupils. The best appraisers have always done this and some schools provide good training for their staff on how objectives should be best written. In the review you will have to give an assessment of the teacher’s performance and assess their current training development needs. There is an expectation that progression up the teacher pay spine will be subject to a satisfactory appraisal. This means that you may be responsible for making a recommendation on pay progression to your head teacher.

There is a greater flexibility in terms of the quantity of lesson observation that can be conducted. In recent years there has been confusion over the so-called three hour observation rule which suggested that teachers could only be observed for three hours for performance management reasons but for other reasons at a school’s discretion. The new appraisal arrangements will mean that schools have a greater flexibility on deciding what is appropriate.

It is worth noting that the government is still consulting as to whether performance management review documents can be requested by a future employer as part of the reference process. If this turns out to be the case, if you are looking for promotion you may be more interested in ensuring your review does happen and that it is completed in a clear and positive manner.

Paul K. Ainsworth is the Acting Principal of a Leicestershire secondary school. He has advised many teachers on how they can develop their job search skills. His new book, 'Get that Teaching job' is out at the end of January.

Melanie Wilson
Commissioning Editor (Professional Education)

BETT

Just off to BETT now. Authors of Teaching English using ICT are doing a seminar at 3.15 today - Powering Up English with ICT is in the Auditorium.

There are lots of new technologies and old faces to be found at London Olympia for the rest of today and tomorrow, so get down there!

Melanie Wilson
Commissioning Editor (Professional Education)

Involving parents in helping their child to learn mathematics (tangible information for sale)

I really welcome the recent report from the Expert Panel for the National Curriculum review. The report, published on 19th Dec 2011, identifies ten salient dimensions that contribute to 'high expectations for all'. The tenth of these is ‘Engagement of parents and carers in authentic learning’. They say, 'The point here is those in a position to support pupil learning should have direct access to tangible information on which to base their contribution.' They use the summary work of Martin Hughes as their source reference.

Martin was my supervisor at the University of Bristol for my PhD research on parents who help their children with mathematics. One of the major findings from my research is that parents are actually far more involved and interested in their children's mathematics education than had previously been acknowledged. They are also keen to find advice on how to help support their children's maths but, for various reasons, often don't take up the help offered by schools.

My books, Help Your Child with Numeracy: Age 3 - 7 (2007), and Age 7 - 11 (2009), use the insights gained from my PhD, as well as my current experiences as a practising senior school teacher of mathematics, to try to bridge that gap and give help and support to parents, and are a very good example of the sort of ‘tangible information’ that parents need to help support their children's mathematical learning.

As a result of the report, the implementation of the new National Curriculum has been put back to Sept 2014. Most of the content of my books is timeless – things that will be helpful whatever the curriculum is – but it’s nice to know that even where references to the National Curriculum are unavoidable, even those parts are still current for at least the next two and a half years!

In particular, my books are still the only ones on the market which look in depth at the key issue of the two main written methods of subtraction. This is something that I know bothers many parents, which is why I included it in both books. So you didn’t know that there is more than one way to do a subtraction on paper? Take the simple test on my website (www.maths4mumsanddads.co.uk – there’s a ‘TAKE THE TEST’ button on the home page). You’ll also find, after the test, a film clip of me explaining the two methods. Then you can amaze your friends and advise the parents of the children in your class.

Guest post by Dr Rosemary Russell, mathematics teacher at St. Peter’s School Voluntary Academy, Bournemouth, UK.

Melanie Wilson
Commissioning Editor (Professional Education)

Rethinking Teaching in Pursuit of a Better World - Guest post by Continuum author, Joanna Swann

"Schooling – whether state-funded or private, secular or religious – is much the same the world over. Learning takes place in groups, often quite large (25 students or more), overseen by a teacher or series of teachers. The task of the teacher is to help students to learn things that are deemed by the teacher and/or curriculum policy makers to be important and appropriate to the students’ age, social and economic standing and assumed or estimated level of ability. This is conventional schooling.

In Learning, Teaching and Education Research in the 21st Century: An Evolutionary Analysis of the Role of Teachers, drawing on theoretical and practical research as an educationist during a period of 37 years, I challenge the conventional practice of school teaching and propose a tried-and-tested alternative, developed in light of Karl Popper’s evolutionary analysis of learning. My conception of teaching encompasses not only the widely recognised and accepted idea that the task of the teacher is to help others to learn something that has been conceived by the teacher prior to and/or independent of her (or his) engagement with them, and something other than the general attributes associated with learning how to learn and the development of full learner autonomy, but also the broader intention to promote learning without privileging any particular set of ideas or capabilities other than those that relate to learning in general. The latter teaching intention, which is marginalised or ignored in conventional schooling, is more open-ended and carries with it the idea that what is learnt may surpass – indeed, ideally, it will surpass – the ideas and capabilities envisaged by the teacher and those to whom she is professionally responsible. This second teaching intention is laden with possibilities for the pursuit of a better world.

Although the book provides detailed practical guidelines, what I propose doesn’t, in the first instance, demand a complete overhaul of practice. Rather it requires of teachers a new understanding of learning, a new vision of their role and purpose, and – notwithstanding any political and ideological constraints under which they are operating – an invigorated sense of empowerment and responsibility for the outcomes of schooling. These shifts in perspective will fuel the intention incrementally to modify and, ultimately, radically to improve the experience of school students – which in turn will lead to significantly better learning in schools and result in positive changes in human society at all levels."

Alison Baker
Senior Commissioning Editor