Extrovert V Introvert

Someone says (THE HEAD TEACHER) "We need to have a conversation."

Extrovert: "OH Great!'

Introvert: "OH God!!"

NUT Magazine

The NUT – National Union of Teachers (when I started teaching you had to be in a union – not sure with the rise of Free Schools and Academies whether that is still true?) of whom I am a member have sent me their new school year magazine with ‘a manifesto for our children’s education’.  I have had a quick read through and am shocked by the number of letters and articles and references to the apparent ‘culling of 50 plus teachers’ – that’s age not waist size!  Though the latter may well be vulnerable as well.  It looks like there’s a lot of it about.  Nobody wants us 50+ teachers, male or female! Apparently.

The main method of getting rid of them seems to be competency and lesson observations!  Hmm my last one was RI (which seems to be the acronym for ‘Requires Improvement” – like I have said before show me a lesson that doesn’t require some improvement – I digress!) and I hear ominous cello music in the background … There’s an encouraging letter, name and address supplied, from someone who managed to go to tribunal and get an unfair dismissal verdict and one hopes a good cash payout.  But it seems most just drift off quietly, like Scott’s Antartic explorers!  Feeling the chill, someone close that tent flap!

As was so kindly pointed out to me on our First INSET day – I am the oldest teacher in the school!  Oh there are ancient teaching assistants amongst the teachers I am the oldest. Actually the head is a year or two older than me but I am still in the classroom.  I think I should be treated like the leader of the house!  It was interesting in a recent staff meeting where we were tracking data that I was the only teacher who knew what the current year 6 children were like as infants (they were my second year one class after moving down from Year 6) and therefore the only person who knew where they had come from.  I think it’s important that a school has people who can do that, who know the children not just as data on a spreadsheet.  I do so love a spreadsheet.  It’s quite hard to type sarcastically!

Anyway it’s time for my nap.  Peace Out!

How Long?

I did wonder how long it’d be before the spectre of OFSTED (the inspection body not the cat! Long story) would be used as a threat/motivation.  Answer 3 weeks well 2 and a half as it was the third staff meeting!

I would like to make the point that 90% of staff meetings have nothing to do with EYFS and what we do!  And I might be being generous with the claim that 10% do have something to do with us!

The concern is that our 4b+ results for last year are not as good as the previous year and it’s apparently a worry that HMI or OFSTED might in a ‘desktop exercise’ notice this and despite our ‘good’ OFSTED rating come to the school and sack the governors (volunteers so can they be sacked?) and the headteacher and/or the senior management team.  Well as I’m none of the above can I just say ‘Bovvered!’ 

Anyway during the ‘discussion’ where the head took on the role of the OFSTED questioner someone, naively in my opinion, said that the results were down to cohort. To which the head replied ‘So you’re blaming the children?’ 

I have thought about this and I think my answer would be yes!  Then I thought I’d better qualify it.  If children were like say pizzas or cars then the difference between the performance between one year and the next would be a concern.  But children are not cars or pizzas!  They are human beings and therefore more like complex dynamic systems like the weather, where one little factor can change the outcomes.  It’s the butterfly in the rain forest, flooding in China analogy.  A little story, a few years ago there was a weather man, Michael Fish, who said that there would not be a hurricane striking the south of England and pedantically he was right there was no hurricane but an extreme wind event (as it was referred as) did take place and they had to rename SevenOaks!!   Apparently 3 of the 30 computer models of that 24 hours weather predicted high winds but 27 didn’t so the weather people went with the majority models! Oh how wrong they were!  But children are more like these complex chaos theory models there are so many variables many of which are outside of a teacher’s control.  So the same teacher can give the same input to a group of children and you may get varying results! Actually because of the small cohorts slight differences are skewed even more!  When a single child counts for 8% or more it doesn’t take much to make a mockery of statistics!  Interestingly the national statistics for all these tests vary very little from year to year it’s only at the micro level that you see the distortions – quantum theory anyone? Anyone?

Mark Twain – ‘There are lies, damned lies and statistics.’

Peace Out

PS I am loving my new babies and looking forward to the new year – staff meetings not withstanding!