There are times when we simply need to confront our own failings. Today was one of those times.
Sara came to see me - she wanted to take me through the results of the recent English assessments she did on three kids in Ian's class (Year 3/4) - Eyal, Benjy & Eli. All were appalling. Ian had asked her to do the assessments, and she agreed. I think he'd done so partly because all three are on the SEN register and he felt we need some diagnostic tests, and partly because the QCA tests we've just done with the juniors, although they're not marked yet, were going to be dire.
First she told me - and she's right - that we (i.e. she and I) have failed miserably to manage things properly, as Gareth Williams, our link adviser, has said all along. The buck stops here, i.e. with me. Of course there are reasons - we have been struggling against awful situations, under ridiculous pressure. But still. We had put in place at the start of the year a potentially really good system in concept (or at least, the start of such a system - not exactly state of the art or all-encompassing), but we'd not enforced it, and it had slipped. The pink individual tracking sheets are there in individual ring binders, but they show Y2 baselines for these children that are frankly wildly optimistic and don't reflect their true performance levels. Probably Helen was consistently distorting the results upwards through too much leading and direction of the children in taking the KS1 tests.
Then there was the termly levelling and the whole-class profiling sheets - or rather, there wasn't. The system was good, but it broke down because people weren't doing it, and that was because they weren't being chased by us.
Jane had submitted levelled writing work for Y1/2 in the autumn term, and had administered NfER Nelson Progress in English - though not at the correct year level because it was obvious the kids were below standard - but hadn't had the results transcribed onto the class profile sheets. She had submitted a maths profile. That was it. We had nothing from Helen for the spring term. In the other classes it was worse. All teachers had done the maths profile sheets, but nothing else - no Literacy levelled work, no assessments, no profiling. Trouble was, Rob may be a good teacher but he's a lousy manager and therefore couldn't/wouldn't chase and organise everyone to get the things in (he was also struggling under collosal personal pressures this year); we were all intimidated by John, who can be downright bloody-minded and stubborn about not doing things he doesn't like, and we were scared of pushing him to the point where he'd simply walk out (and he also had a lousy year personally); much the same for Helen, who is even more stubborn and bloody-minded; Ian is just Ian; R' de Lange had Ian's class for the spring term and never submitted anything because he claimed (wrongly) that he's never been asked to and because he's a whingeing plonker about absolutely everything all the time anyway; etc.
Part of the trouble, of course, is that Sara and I have been learning on the job, from our repeated awful mistakes. On top of that, we simply do not have the experience to be able to quality assure and monitor what the teachers have been doing, or to anticipate what we need to do to ensure that things get done properly. Neither do we have the moral authority that stems from having done the job effectively in the classroom ourselves - so the teachers know that we don't really understand what needs to be done, and that we can't really do their own jobs as well as or better than them. So we're a couple of new brooms coming in and chucking weight around, without the credibility of being solid practitioners ourselves.
And it shows, in every instance. Like today, when we had a meeting about managing playtime, and (again) I had to do the stern stuff to the staff, but simply couldn't come up with the positive, creative, sensible stuff: that had to come from Sara and John. It makes me look like the fraud that I am.
Of course, the QCA tests are being marked externally this year, so the teachers won't have the "ownership" over them that comes from doing the marking themselves. But like everything else, there's a reason: so much else going on this term. But the point is, all these reasons don't alter the fact that we've failed these kids miserably. All three that we looked at, and they'd done PiE 6 & 7, and come out with levels 2c-2b in Year 4 and virtually no progress in 2 years, are at a dreadful, humiliating standard. They should have been making one sub-level progress every two terms, i.e. 6 sub-levels (two complete levels) in 4 years. And they've only gone up one level, i.e. three sub-levels. And it's because we weren't (i.e. I wasn't) on top of things.
I can learn from this how essential it is to put the leadership and management, and constant monitoring, of teaching and learning, at the very forefront of my work all the time. Not just in theory, but in terms of time spent it, and on observing and monitoring and quality assuring what goes on. And to be tough and demanding of the staff. Being friendly and understanding with them results in letting the kids down at their one and only shot at education. And that means, if staff fail to hand something in, or to do it properly, I should be on top of them immediately and demand it, done properly. But again, my excuse is a lack of experience, lack of training, total lack of support.
Huh - some excuse for Eyal, Eli and Benjy ... and all the others.
And I need to show real leadership for all the staff all the time: directing them, setting clear goals with a clear strategy. For meetings, I need to make it clear what's going to happen, and what the outcome is going to be; and to have a long term plan and goal, with a route to get there, i.e. a schedule of agenda'd meetings. Etc. But what training have I ever had in all this? None - not here, certainly not at JFS.
It's going to be humiliating when these kids go on elsewhere. Their reading and writing levels are atrocious.
But the staff are also culpable. Are we to blame for not anticipating that Ian would fail to administer any practice papers? For Rob's failure to lead Literacy as he should? And so on.
Another thing that I can learn is how important it is to have a clear "vision" (horrible word) of what I want the staff to actually do. Vague concepts like "monitor and track progress" are useless: you need to have every tiny practical detail worked out so you can present it and implement it.
And you need good strategies - like Sara's idea for addressing failure to use full stops and capital letters properly, by making children stick a small "I've checked for full stops and capital letters" sticker on every piece of work - which the teacher can instantly check for. Simple and practical - but Ian didn't implement it, and we never followed up his (and others') failure to implement this and other IEP strategies.
The PiE tests aren't brilliant, with sometimes confusing layout, exercises and structure, and the instructions are mechanistic and wooden, but they do show some diagnosis. Of course, all three boys have real problems - Eyal misses too much school for holidays, and the parents couldn't care less about education and don't support at home; Eli has S&L, comprehension and social communication difficulties (but "unfortunately" his level isn't low enough to trigger a statutory assessment or statement - but then again, we haven't been doing all we should) and Benjy is showing distinct signs of dyslexia. And it's necessary for the test administrator to scaffold a lot for the kids by showing them how to do the exercises, rehearsing with them, showing them simple strategies for tackling them (read through the whole passage, say "something" where there's a gap and then look at the word list for the right word, go back and read over your answers; SoundsWrite strategy of point and sound out each letter and then say the word, etc). But they show something. And that something isn't progress in English, not here. It will be humiliatiing when we have to present these results to the children's next schools: we have failed them. Big guilt trip.
Closing this school is the best thing we could do for the kids. Even though the parents think we're wonderful, so do the governors and loads of others, and the kids love it here, and the staff all pat each other on the back about how we're not a failing school, we just haven't got children, but really we're very good, best in Hackney, blah blah, Gareth knows the truth. It's the old story: the worm that lives in horseradish thinks it tastes sweet.
Of course, we were inheriting staff and systems that have been mired in this appalling self-perpetuating cycle of failure for years and years. Low standards, lower expectations of self and children, abysmal systems, non-existent or appalling records, failure to monitor and evaluate pupil progress to see whether they're making satisfactory progress in the light of prior attainment, almost total failure to use ongoing assessment to infrom planning and teaching (and certainly no systematic strategy for making this happen), and appalling ways of working. Etc.
Should we have done more? Yes. Could we have done more, inheriting such an atrocious, failing system, with our combined experience of three years in primary (3 + 0 !)? I don't think so.
So in the meantime, we have another eight weeks or so with these children. We must do something for them. Sara's going to try to do SoundsWrite with the main target children in Ian's and Rob's class.I hope we can at least ameliorate things a bit.
The taste of failure is bitter, and its legacy is shattering self-doubt, and the conviction that I am living the Peter principle: that I'm a fraud without the basic skills, ability, characteristics and knowledge to do the job. And the kids here have paid the price.
What a mess.
