Elm April 2015

EDUCATION LEADER AND MANAGER

Representing leaders and managers in education P O L I CY

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO WORKLOAD page 6

PROFILE

LEADERSHIP IN CHALLENGING TIMES page 14

M A ST E R C L A S S

TURNAROUND IS A LONG-TERM COMMITMENT page 18

APRIL 2015 @ATL_AMiE

F E AT U R E

THE CASE FOR CHANGE

WHAT DO SCHOOL AND COLLEGE LEADERS EXPECT POST-ELECTION? page 10

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Exciting Opportunities for teachers to Improve Specification knowledge Gain Insight of National Standards Inspire fresh teaching ideas Develop CPD Pearson is recruiting A Level and GCSE Examiners and Moderators across various subjects. See a full list of our vacancies and apply online: www.edexcel.com/aa-recruitment

If you need any further information please contact us at: aaresourcing@pearson.com

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ELM / APRIL 2015

INSIDE 4

Education news, including workload and inspections

6

Workload Challenge: a missed opportunity?

8

The view from Northern Ireland and Wales

10

What do you expect post-election?

14

Jim Krantz on how to lead in challenging times

17 18 20 22

The latest from AMiE

Exeter College on the up

Disciplinary proceedings

Flight or fight

ELM is the magazine from ATL, 7 Northumberland Street, London WC2N 5RD Tel 020 7930 6441 Fax 020 7930 1359 Email info@amie.org.uk Website www.amie.atl.org.uk Editor Paul Stanistreet ELM is produced and designed for ATL by Think Publishing, Capital House, 25 Chapel Street, London NW1 5DH Tel 020 3771 7200 Email info@thinkpublishing.co.uk

Senior sub-editor Rachel Kurzfield Art director Darren Endicott Designer Alix Thomazi Advertising sales Michael Coulsey or Anthony Bennett 020 3771 7200 Account manager Kieran Paul Managing director Polly Arnold ATL accepts no liability for any insert, display or classified advertisement included in this publication. While every reasonable care is taken to ensure that all advertisers are reliable and reputable, ATL can

give no assurance that they will fulfil their obligation under all circumstances. The views expressed in articles in ELM are the contributors’ own and do not necessarily reflect ATL policy.

Official policy statements issued on behalf of ATL are indicated as such. All rights reserved. Material contained in this publication may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior permission of ATL. Cover: Robbie Porter

PETER PENDLE AMiE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Welcome The huge teacher response to the government’s Workload Challenge survey confirmed that accountability and the pressures of inspection are the main drivers of excessive workload in schools. The strength and clarity of the results makes the government’s weak response all the more disappointing. Too many teachers are exhausted because of the demands made upon them by a burdensome accountability regime.

No wonder many are leaving the profession.

Workload is a critical issue across the education sector, not only in schools but in further education too, where changes to the participation age and an influx of GCSE English and maths students obliged to retake qualifications are ramping up pressure on teachers without the support of extra resources.

Teachers deserve better than this. With the General Election only weeks away, it is to be hoped that the new parliament brings genuine action on workload and on an accountability regime which, to be frank, is no longer fit for purpose. This is essential. More widely, we must do more to ensure the viability and sustainability of key institutions that are likely to come under more and more pressure as the march of austerity continues.

The latest swingeing cuts to the further education skills budget will see college resources stretched while schools too face real-term reductions in funding even if the ringfence remains in place. There are some promising noises from the Liberal Democrats and Labour about protecting funding up to the age of 19, but that alone will not be enough. As Martin Doel argues in our cover feature, education funding needs to be put on a fair, rational and stable footing. We need our politicians to listen, think long-term and take a balanced, coherent approach to education. I’m not sure how many more opportunities we can afford to miss.

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NEED TO KNOW

NEWS IN BRIEF

KEEP UP TO DATE WITH THE LATEST EDUCATION SECTOR NEWS AND ISSUES

WORKLOAD CHALLENGE RESPONSE LABOUR ‘COMPLETELY INADEQUATE’ PROMISES TO EDUCATION UNIONS have “Without commitment to expressed disappointment at evaluate the effect of Ofsted CUT TUITION the government’s response to on teacher workload, teacher the Workload Challenge professionalism and the FEES survey, which captured the agency’s ability to inspect

Labour leader Ed Miliband has announced plans by his party to reduce the cap on tuition fees from £9,000 to £6,000 from September 2016. Mr Miliband explained the reduction would be paid for through a cut to pensions tax relief for people with incomes of over £150,000. A Labour government, he said, would also increase free childcare to 25 hours a week, reduce class sizes, and invest to protect the education budget.

However, Labour’s tuition fee pledge was criticised by some, who argued that the benefit would mostly be felt by wealthier students.

Mary Bousted, ATL’s general secretary, said: ‘The way higher education courses are funded and organised simply has to change. A solution must be found to the coalition’s unsustainable model for higher education funding, so the Labour Party is right to be looking into changing student fees.

‘However, any change in the fees universities are allowed to charge, and how students repay, must be accompanied by a thorough analysis of how it will affect the poorest students.’

concerns of 44,000 teachers.

Mary Bousted, ATL’s general secretary, said that teachers would ‘feel ignored and bitterly disappointed’ with the response, which included undertakings to do more to consider the impact on schools when making policy changes, and to introduce a minimum lead-in time for significant accountability, curriculum and qualifications changes.

There was also a commitment from Ofsted not to make substantive changes to inspections during the academic year ‘except when absolutely necessary’.

More than half of respondents to the survey said the burden of their work was driven by accountability and the perceived pressures of Ofsted (53%) and by tasks set by senior and middle leaders (51%), themselves very often driven by the pressures of inspection. The majority of respondents cited recording, inputting, monitoring and

analysing data (56%) and excessive marking (53%) as being burdensome.

The government’s response to these concerns was “completely inadequate”, Dr Bousted said. “Our members tell us that the Ofsted clarification has had very little effect on workload, largely because school leaders do not trust different inspection teams to follow the clarification guidance.

Inspectors are still being told to look for ‘deep marking’ as evidence of effective teaching and learning. As long as these quality-control problems exist, the requirement for teachers to evidence every aspect of their practice will continue unabated.

with reliability and validity, there will be no culture change and no reduction in workload. Fear of a poor inspection judgement will continue to drive unproductive, busy work which does nothing to raise standards – rather, it detracts from them.”

The government’s response prompted union leaders to write a joint letter to Nicky Morgan and Nick Clegg stating that the plans do not adequately address the main causes of excessive workload.

The letter called the response ‘a missed opportunity that will disappoint teachers and school leaders and will hugely undermine the other work that is planned’.

3 MORE INFO Teachers’ responses to the survey are summarised here: www.gov. uk/government/publications/ workload-challenge-analysis-ofteacher-responses. The government’s response is available here: www.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/401909/060215Workload_report.pdf

NEW INITIATIVE TO BOOST MIDDLE MANAGEMENT ONE HUNDRED ‘exceptional’ middle leaders will be placed in some of the most challenging schools in England in a government move to raise standards.

The Department for Education announced that the secondment programme will invite up to 100 outstanding middle leaders – such as heads of department, and subject or year group heads – to apply to spend a year in

under-performing schools, including those in deprived, coastal and rural areas.

It is hoped that the one-year scheme will help raise attainment in struggling schools while offering a useful professional development opportunity for participants.

AMiE called for the initiative to be properly trialled, raising concerns about the relatively short length of the secondments.

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NEED TO KNOW

HUGE CUT TO SKILLS FUNDING

The government has announced further swingeing cuts to adult skills funding, prompting fears that by 2020 the budget for nonapprenticeship adult further education will have disappeared altogether.

The skills funding letter, setting out the government’s funding priorities for the period from April 2015 to March 2016, detailed an 11% cut to the adult skills budget.

However, with the apprenticeship budget set at £770m, funds available for non-apprenticeship adult FE will reduce by almost 25%.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the cuts were a “further blow” to colleges and students, and warned that “by 2020, if the next government continues to cut at this rate, adult further education will effectively be a thing of the past”.

3 MORE INFO The skills funding letter can be read here: www.gov.uk/ government/publications/skillsfunding-letter-april-2015-tomarch-2016. The Skills Funding Agency response is available here: www.gov.uk/government/ news/skills-funding-letter-2015to-2016

A NEW VISION FOR INSPECTION

ATL HAS launched its vision for inspection, proposing a radical reform of school inspections in England.

A New Vision for Inspection in Education sets out the principles for a new system of school inspection that will hold schools to account but also help them to improve the learning and development of all young people.

The report calls for high-quality education to be defined ‘by what is right for pupils in a given school, not by criteria chosen because they are easy to measure or politically favoured’. The nature of inspection, it argues, should be ‘supportive not adversarial; advisory not dictatorial; empowering not punitive’.

Self-assessment and professional dialogue would be central to a reformed inspection regime – with data ‘used to guide, not decide’.

Inspection teams would have

a continual relationship with schools, supporting the improvement of individuals or teams as necessary, but not always looking at all provision on each visit.

The report also argues that there should no longer be ‘a single overall grade for each school that disguises the fact not all provision in a school is at the same level’. Instead, two documents should be published simultaneously, with a shorter report communicating strengths, areas for improvement and agreed steps to take.

The robustness and reliability of local inspection and improvement would be assured by a national agency, staffed by HMIs, who would intervene if, for example, a cosy consensus develops between inspectors and schools in some areas.

Read A New Vision for Inspection in Education at atl.org.uk/visionforinspection

NEET NUMBERS FALL

The number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) in England is at its lowest level for more than eight years, with figures for October to December showing falls across all age ranges. The quarterly figures show that the number in the 16 to 24 age group recorded as NEET has fallen by one percentage point, to 13.1%, its lowest level for the period since 2007, while the 16- to 18-year-old rate fell to seven per cent, the lowest since 2000.

Since 2010, the number of 16-year-olds NEET for the period has almost halved, while the 16 to 24 age range has seen a fall of 146,000. However, ATL warned that planned cuts to the FE and skills sector would make progress difficult to sustain.

GROUPING PROJECT RECRUITING SCHOOLS KING’S COLLEGE London is conducting research into grouping students to raise achievement, and is looking for schools to take part. AMiE members might be interested in participating in the research, which will consider whether better approaches to

grouping students can benefit those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The researchers are looking for schools interested in either best practice in setting or best practice in mixed-ability grouping in Key Stage 3 English and maths. The

project is funded by the Education Endowment Foundation and each school will receive £1,000.

3 MORE INFO Email: groupingstudents@kcl.ac.uk or call: 020 7848 3139. Visit the project website: kcl.ac.uk/groupingstudents

PRIORITISE CHILD POVERTY SOCIAL MOBILITY and child poverty should be the core business of the next parliament, according to a report from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.

The report, Bridging The Social Divide, criticised the slow progress made to date and called on politicians of all parties to explain what they want to achieve when it comes to tackling poverty and improving mobility, and how, if elected, they will do it.

It warns that it would be easy for the cross-party consensus on social mobility and child poverty to evaporate in the face of significant financial, economic and political pressure. It calls on politicians of all parties to shore up that consensus, warning that Britain risks becoming a ‘permanently divided’ nation.

In particular, the report calls on the parties to set out what action they would take to redeploy spending ‘to maximise social progress’, improve the two main drivers of social mobility, education and housing; realign policy on the working poor; and open up the top echelons of British society.

Mary Bousted, ATL’s general secretary, supported the commission’s findings.

“Any government that fails to lift children out of poverty is denying them the opportunity to reach their potential,” she said.

3 MORE INFO The commission’s report, which maps the geographical variations in social mobility across England, is available in full here: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/408405/Bridging_the_Social_ Divide_Report.pdf

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POLICY MATTERS

TEACHERS’ WORKLOAD: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY Tens of thousands of teachers used the government’s Workload Challenge to highlight the problem of excessive workload – the government’s response does little to help them WORDS PAUL STANISTREET

ILLUSTRATION: IKON IMAGES

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n a speech to public-sector workers in October last year, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg drew attention to the growing problem of teacher workload, promising to tackle bureaucracy and give teachers “more time to do what they do best”. Teachers, he explained, were spending too much time on unproductive non-teaching work, such as excessive marking and the preparation of evidence for performance management. When education secretary Nicky Morgan launched the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) Workload Challenge survey later that month, the response was extraordinary, with 21,000 teachers sharing details of their ‘unnecessary and unsustainable workload’ in just three days.

Extraordinary perhaps, but not surprising – the DfE’s 2013 workload statistics show that working hours for all categories of teachers have increased since 2010 – with primary school teachers, on average, working nine hours more each week (59.3 hours) and secondary school teachers working six hours more per week (55.6 hours) (gov. uk/government/publications/teachersworkload-diary-survey-2013). School leaders often work even longer hours.

The School Workforce census found that, on average, leaders now work between 55 and 65 hours each week (gov.uk/government/collections/ school-workforce-census). Workload is also an issue in further education where funding cuts and job losses have meant rising job-related stress. And, as Martin Doel, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, argues in this issue’s cover feature, the influx of GCSE maths and English students and the raising of the participation age have placed yet more pressure on FE’s shrinking resources.

In total, more than 44,000 teachers responded to the month-long survey, highlighting the main areas which, they felt, were adding unnecessary burden to their general workload, and identifying possible solutions. Their responses were summarised in a concise report, published on 6 February (gov.uk/government/publications/ workload-challenge-analysis-ofteacher-responses). The majority of respondents cited recording, inputting, monitoring and analysing data (56%) and excessive marking (53%) as being burdensome (note that not all respondents thought these tasks unnecessary – it was the sheer volume that made them a burden). They also identified lesson/weekly planning (38% – 51% in primary schools and 27% in secondary schools); basic administrative and support tasks (37%); staff meetings (26%); reporting on pupil progress (24%); the setting and review of pupil targets (21%); and implementing new initiatives/curriculum/qualification change (20%). Almost two-thirds (63%) of respondents said it was the excessive level of detail required that made these tasks burdensome, while 45% said that duplication added to the burden of their workload, and 41% that the over-bureaucratic nature of their work made it burdensome.

Tasks such as recording and inputting data, maintaining records and keeping up with curriculum reform and new policy initiatives were cited by people in all types of job role as burdensome. In other areas there was more variation.

Headteachers and senior leaders reported unnecessary and unproductive work stemming from paperwork related to maintaining evidence of school progress (24%), updating policies and action plans (11%), working within

policy remits (9%) and liaising with governors (6%). They also cited the heavy workload involved in making referrals and liaising with external agencies for special educational needs (SEN) pupils (9%), as well as SEN reporting requirements (9%).

Almost a third of classroom teachers, middle and senior leaders cited the burden in workload resulting from being monitored; while classroom teachers and middle leaders were more likely to report unproductive workload arising from behaviour, detentions and the resultant administration.

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POLICY MATTERS

But perhaps the most striking findings concerned the drivers of unproductive and unnecessary work.

More than half of respondents said that the burden of their work was driven by accountability and the perceived pressures of Ofsted (53%) and by tasks set by senior and middle leaders (51%), themselves very often driven by the pressures of inspection. Unsurprisingly, Ofsted also featured prominently in the strategies and solutions suggested by respondents. Of those who filled out this part of the survey, 40% argued for changes in accountability, while 21% urged a review of Ofsted processes and 12% requested clearer guidance on Ofsted requirements – bearing out the teaching unions’ suggestion that “the high-stakes system of accountability in general, and Ofsted in particular, is driving unnecessary workload at unacceptable levels for teachers and for school leaders”. Teachers also called for more support (34%) and for changes to marking arrangements (32%).

Much was expected from government but its response disappointed many. The DfE agreed to do more to consider the impact on schools when introducing policy changes, and to introduce a

cause of teachers’ excessive workload, they are also a major contributor to the pressure brought to bear on staff by leaders who know Ofsted’s judgements can make or break a school. The relatively small-scale and insubstantial changes introduced by government will not do nearly enough to reduce the number of hours teachers and leaders spend on unproductive paperwork and excessive bureaucracy each week – tasks that are taking them away from teaching and learning. Supporting leaders to deal better with workload pressures is a positive move, but the root cause must be tackled too.

ATL general secretary Mary Bousted, and the general secretaries of the Association of School and College Leaders, the heads’ union the NAHT, the National Union of Teachers and Voice have written a joint letter to Nicky Morgan and Nick Clegg stating that the plans do not adequately address the main causes of excessive workload.

The letter says: “The government’s response to the Workload Challenge contains little new with regard to inspection and we, therefore, do not believe your proposals will get close to the root cause of the workload problem.

IT IS NOT ONLY ‘FEAR’ OF OFSTED THAT IS CREATING UNNECESSARY WORKLOAD; IT IS THE OPERATION OF THE INSPECTION SYSTEM ITSELF. minimum lead-in time for significant accountability, curriculum and qualifications changes. There will be further support for school leaders, with a clear requirement that they have the skills they need to do the job effectively.

And Ofsted has committed not to make substantive changes to inspections during the academic year “except when absolutely necessary”, and to look at making its guidance more streamlined (gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/401909/ 060215-Workload_report.pdf).

These, of course, are steps in the right direction, as is the government’s wider recognition that workload is a problem.

But they do not go far enough in addressing what is, evidently, the most pressing cause of the unproductive and unnecessary work with which school teachers and leaders are burdened.

Inspections are not only the biggest

The failure of the response... to robustly address these problems is certainly a missed opportunity that will disappoint teachers and school leaders and will hugely undermine the other work that is planned.”

It is not only ‘fear’ of Ofsted that is creating unnecessary workload; as the letter notes, it is the operation of the inspection system itself and the impact it has on the real ‘lived experience’ of teachers and leaders. Fear and compliance are not principles on which educational accountability should be based. Instead, we need a system based on trust and collaboration – one capable of reducing workload while delivering the better outcomes pupils deserve. It is time for a thorough, independent review of the reliability, consistency and validity of Ofsted’s inspections. The big issues can no longer be brushed under the carpet.

TEACHER WORKLOAD IN NUMBERS More than 44,000 teachers, leaders and support staff took part in the Workload Challenge survey.

They reported the following tasks as being excessive and burdensome: • Recording, inputting, monitoring and analysing data (56%); • Excessive/depth of marking – detail and frequency required (53%); • Lesson/weekly planning – detail and frequency required (38%); • Basic administrative and support tasks (37%); • Staff meetings (26%); • Reporting on pupil progress (24%); • Pupil targets (setting and continual review – including target culture) (21%); and • Implementing new initiatives/ curriculum/qualification change (20%).

Respondents were also asked what was responsible for the burden of their workload.

They said: • Accountability/perceived pressures of Ofsted (53%); • Tasks set by senior and middle leaders (51%); • Working to policies set at local/school level (35%); and • Policy change at national level (34%).

Strategies and solutions suggested by survey respondents included: • Changes in accountability (40%); • More support (34%); • Modify marking arrangements (32%); • Reduce the need for data inputting and analysis (25%); • Increase time for planning, preparation and assessment (25%); • Trust teachers as professionals (24%); • Reduce frequency of curriculum/qualification/ examination changes (22%); and • Review/change Ofsted processes (21%).

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COMMENT: NORTHERN IRELAND

Post-election coalition ‘winners’ THE PROSPECT AND COST OF A NEW COALITION GOVERNMENT

COLUMNIST MARK LANGHAMMER DIRECTOR OF ATL NORTHERN IRELAND

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3 MORE INFORMATION

www. ultoniacomms. wordpress. com/2015/01/14/ corporation-taxni-bill-overview

few weeks shy of a British General Election expected to be the tightest in generations, and, all of a sudden, Northern Ireland matters! The balance of forces is such that no party looks capable of forming a government on its own. A new coalition, of whatever hue, may require MPs from three or more parties to form a stable government – and that could mean an alliance with one or more of the Northern Ireland parties.

What happens in Northern Ireland on 7 May could have a major impact on the overall election outcome.

Northern Ireland was excluded from British party politics in 1922 when 26 counties of Ireland gained autonomy from the UK and Ulster unionists made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ in the wider British imperial scheme of things. Electoral outcomes in the 18 Northern Irish constituencies have subsequently been of little relevance to the Westminster parties.

David Cameron will not seek an electoral mandate in Northern Ireland and, should Ed Miliband lead an alternative government, he will do so without a single Northern Irish vote to his name. The notion of ‘no taxation without representation’ never held much water in Northern Ireland.

The Democratic Unionist Party, with eight seats, is likely to remain the largest local party at Westminster. They have recently been courted by

the Conservatives, but have also dallied with Labour.

Sinn Féin, with five seats, is unlikely to abandon its long-standing policy of abstentionism. The nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, with three seats, is a natural ally to Labour but would rank as a minor contributor alongside Plaid Cymru or the Greens in a centre-left arrangement. All these parties could, potentially, play some role if polls remain close.

So, if Northern Ireland matters in the postelection arithmetic, what price will be extracted, and from whom?

The recently published Corporation Tax (Northern Ireland) Bill, outlining the transfer of powers to the Northern Ireland Assembly for the setting of a Northern Ireland rate, gives a clue. For such a vast and important change, it has received scant media attention and almost no independent commentary, other than the standard unions-versus-business narrative. On a full reading, it would not be unfair to say the Bill is clearly written primarily for Scotland, rather than for Northern Ireland. The list of ‘excluded’ or ‘non-qualifying’ industries is fairly long but they can broadly be summarised as belonging to two categories: finance and oil/gas. These just happen to be Scotland’s two biggest industries.

The intention is clear. The first objective is to limit the prospect of Scotland demanding the same powers as Northern Ireland by ensuring Northern Ireland does not get an advantage in Scotland’s key industries. The second is to ensure that, if the politics force the same arrangement to be made for Scotland, finance and oil revenues to the UK Treasury would nevertheless remain secure (see www.ultoniacomms.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/ corporation-tax-ni-bill-overview/ for more).

So, in the post-electoral shake-up, the Corporation Tax (NI) Bill may be our biggest contribution. And, if Northern Ireland does matter in the arithmetic, my guess is that all major British parties vying for government will try to limit sweeteners to general constituency ‘pork’. This may allow for increased Northern Ireland borrowing for capital infrastructure, but nothing ‘big picture’.

As for education, so far it hasn’t featured as an electoral centrepiece. Why would it? So don’t expect education to be a big winner arising out of any post-election coalition-building.

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COMMENT: WALES

Travelling without a map

AS WALES EMBARKS ON MAJOR CURRICULUM CHANGE, MANY IN THE SECTOR WONDER WHETHER THE WELSH GOVERNMENT KNOWS WHERE IT IS GOING

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ales is embarking on its most significant curriculum shake-up in a generation but the direction of travel remains unclear.

Where exactly are we going? Cardiff Bay has churned out initiative after initiative with all the forethought of a headless chicken. Desperate to have an education system that is not only distinct but also better than the English one, the Welsh government has decided to change just about everything that a teacher teaches, as well as seeking to influence the way it is taught and how success is measured. It is accepted that standards here are not what they should be and that something must be done. The question is whether the changes under way amount to a coherent journey towards improvement.

If you are an English teacher in a secondary school in Wales, much of what you will be teaching in September is new. You will have a revised programme of study at Key Stage (KS) 3 and two new GCSEs at KS4, while all three A-levels have new specifications. You need to complete your legacy courses as well, and you will probably be heavily involved in developing cross-curricular literacy, with reporting arrangements becoming statutory this summer, based on guidance that arrived 18 months later than promised. You might also be involved in the soon-to-be-compulsory Welsh Baccalaureate at KS4 and KS5 that starts in September. And it’s not only English teachers standing on shifting sands. The government published a list at the start of the academic year of the GCSE and A-level subjects that will need to meet new specifications, which started appearing around November last year.

The main accountability measures are changing too. The same cohort affected by the changes above will also be the first to face a new measure of pupil performance based on the capped points score in nine subjects. The first five subjects are specified, and must be GCSEs. The remaining four can be equivalent qualifications. With Welsh language a compulsory element, that means there are seven compulsory examined subjects, six of which will

COLUMNIST DAVID HEALEY DEPUTY HEAD OF YSGOL FRIARS, A CO EDUCATIONAL COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL IN BANGOR be GCSEs, and seventh the Welsh Baccalaureate. On top of that is the usual health, physical and religious education to fit in. All this is just becoming apparent to Year 9 students making what we once called ‘choices’. There isn’t much room left for choice.

There are two other new performance measures to note. Categorisation replaced banding this January and the Welsh Baccalaureate measure comes into force in 2018. Our current trajectory is towards a subject-based, highly prescriptive curriculum with high-stakes performance measures.

Last month’s wide-ranging review of Welsh education from Professor Graham Donaldson pointed another way. It received a cautious welcome from unions and professionals, partly due to the fact that it contains 68 recommendations on areas ranging from the core purposes of education through to leadership and accountability. It will take many years to fully implement and embed.

Significantly, though, it is steering the system away from a subject-based approach towards creating a more homogeneous and consistent experience for children. It recognises the perverse effects of performance and accountability measures on the curriculum and on teaching and learning. And it leads us away from the league tables of recent years, instead encouraging local and national inspection systems to take a “professional dialogue” approach that will support school improvement.

So, where are we going in Wales? At the moment, we are stuck on the roundabout trying to decide which exit to take.

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F E AT U R E

The case for change With the General Election just weeks away, we asked school and college leaders what they expect post-election – and what needs to change WORDS PAUL STANISTREET ILLUSTRATION ROBBIE PORTER

any school and college leaders will be looking ahead to the next parliament with trepidation. The outcome of next month’s General Election may be uncertain but there is no great mystery about the political climate that will prevail after it. Austerity continues to dominate political discourse and further cuts to the education and skills budgets are inevitable. Even if the schools budget receives real-terms protection, increasing costs will mean genuine struggle for

many headteachers and their already over-burdened staff. Further education, which has not, historically, enjoyed the protected status of schools, will be bracing itself for still deeper cuts, with the adult skills budget, in particular, under unprecedented pressure.

The scale of the challenge is impossible to ignore. Nevertheless, Martin Doel, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, argues there will also be opportunities, particularly in the early months of the new parliament. “A new government, of whatever political make-up, is often open to new ideas,” he says, and there are some encouraging signs in the pre-election debate about education, particularly in pledges by Labour and the Liberal Democrats to protect education funding through to the age of 19. But manifesto pledges are written on paper, not stone, and the unpredictability of the election’s outcome makes the direction of policy after it more than usually difficult to call.

Financially viable Nobody, however, is predicting a loosening of the financial belt.

Whichever party – or parties – is in power come May, says Robin Bevan, headteacher at Southend High School for Boys, “all schools are set to face a real-terms reduction in available resources of between five per cent and 10%, as a result of ‘flat cash’ protection of the national schools budget and rising costs, principally in the employment of staff”. The challenge for any incoming government, he says, will be “the effective management of this reduction” to ensure schools remain viable.

“In low-income secondary schools – some receive as little as £4,250 per pupil per year – the issue will be ‘viability’. Is it still possible to deliver a ‘core and options’ curriculum at this figure? The evidence suggests this is below breakeven. In high-income schools, where per-pupil funding has been in excess of £8,000 per year – the issue is APRIL 2015 | ELM 11

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sustainability. Which facilities will need to be cut? There is a high risk of schools entering deficit, or worse. Others will be left languishing with expensive equipment going rapidly out of date.”

Financial viability and sustainability are pressing issues in further education too, as Doel acknowledges. Further education colleges and sixth-form colleges have seen their financial position worsen over the past few years, as a result of the government’s decision not to protect post-16 budgets.

Notwithstanding promises to protect education funding up to 19, “education funding still needs to be put on a more rational and stable footing and there needs to be fairness”, Doel says.

“Regardless of whether the ring fence is extended, the post-election government must undertake a once-ina-lifetime review to look at the whole education budget and how money is spent at each stage to ensure we can adequately provide for all young people throughout education and training. If this doesn’t happen, we risk having a completely imbalanced system where investment in early years is wasted by a failure to complete the job at the other end of the age scale.”

‘A learning tax’ Sixth-form education is one area where funding is slipping below adequate levels, argues James Kewin, Deputy Chief Executive of the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association. “The coalition’s funding and curriculum policies are threatening the high performance of sixth-form colleges and jeopardising the education of students,” he says, citing the imposition of VAT on sixth-form colleges – “a learning tax” – and plans to remove the link between A-levels and AS-levels and treat them as separate qualifications.

More cuts would mean the offering to students narrowing still further.

“We hope the Conservatives will rethink their plan to leave the 16–19 education budget open to further cuts,” Kewin says.

“Sixth-form education is funded at a lower rate than both pre-16 and higher education – and, within this, schools and academies receive significantly more funding to educate their students than sixth-form colleges. Three funding cuts introduced since 2010 have already forced sixth-form colleges to cut courses and reduce the support available to students. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have committed to protect

sixth-form funding from further cuts – the Conservatives have not. But all parties need to increase the funding available for sixth-form education to repair some of the damage done since 2010. An incoming government should maintain sixth-form funding at current levels while a review of funding across all stages of education is undertaken.

This should inform the introduction of a national funding formula – up to and including the age of 18 – based on the actual cost of delivering the curriculum.”

Calls for a comprehensive review of education funding will be supported by many across the sector, particularly those who have grown tired of the simplistic interventions of politicians and their failure to engage adequately either with evidence or with the experts, the education professionals themselves.

“The style of leadership from recent government ministers has created a cultural expectation that any shortcoming in education should be addressed with immediate robust intervention,” says Bevan. “The result has been a swathe of system-wide impositions to redress the excesses or inadequacies of small groups of schools.

The challenge to any new government is to distinguish between system issues and local issues; to respond using existing powers with calm and measured leadership.

“Perhaps the worst recent episode has been the response to so-called extremism in a number of schools. The issue is real. It requires action. However, a response that declares an obligation on all schools to promote ‘fundamental British values’ is philosophically questionable, impossible to ‘police’, and was bound to trigger absurd school-level responses from Ofsted-anxious school leaders. At a very basic level, systems primarily exhibit the qualities of how they are led, not what they are told to do.

Ministerial leadership needs to ‘grow up’ and recognise this.”

There was some recognition of this in the Department for Education’s (DfE’s) response to the Workload Challenge, which captured the views of 44,000 teachers concerned about their ‘unnecessary and unsustainable workload’. The DfE indicated that it would do more to consider the impact on schools, and introduce a minimum lead-in time for significant accountability, curriculum and qualifications changes. “This could have

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F E AT U R E

been stated as the department’s new resolve to avoid the more crass and incompetent aspects of change management – aspects that would be wholly condemned within any school,” Bevan says. “The challenge is to recognise that change management involves shared purpose, secured with a clear rationale, a phased implementation plan and an understanding of the knock-on effects. For example, does the government understand that the scale of qualification reform and curriculum revision currently under way will occupy nearly all teacher development time for the next three years? I doubt it.

A listening ear to the profession would be a simple and obvious expectation.”

It’s critical that the new government listens to the concerns of teachers, particularly around workload, Martin Doel agrees. “There will be challenges ahead as colleges are asked to do more,” he says. “The most immediate challenge

“are not the answer to every problem”.

Many young people will not be ready to start an apprenticeship and the government must ensure there is a strong pre-apprenticeship programme in place to prepare young people for what will probably be their first job, he says.

Nevertheless, apprenticeship funding has been significantly increased, while other routes have narrowed, including for adults, who have been mainly responsible for the increase in apprentice numbers under the coalition. Other adult further education has been disappearing fast. The latest 24% cut to nonapprenticeship adult skills funding led the Association for Colleges to warn that by 2020 adult FE could be a “thing of the past”. Despite the re-routing of funding, however, the number of under-25s starting apprenticeships is falling.

Better pay for apprentices is crucial in turning this trend around, says Anthony Bravo, Principal of Basingstoke College of

SYSTEMS PRIMARILY EXHIBIT THE QUALITIES OF HOW THEY ARE LED, NOT WHAT THEY ARE TOLD TO DO. MINISTERIAL LEADERSHIP NEEDS TO ‘GROW UP’ AND RECOGNISE THIS. is the increase in workload due to the influx of students studying GCSE English and maths because they failed to pass first time around. There is now also a requirement for everyone to participate in education and training until their 18th birthday, which means colleges will need to find the teaching staff and space on campus to cope with the increased number of young people. They will also have to find the money to pay for teaching these young people without any extra funding.”

Pay up for apprentices All of the main parties have made positive noises about apprenticeships.

However, as Doel points out, apprenticeships, while important,

Technology. Apprentices aged 16 to 18 or 19 and in their first year are currently paid a national minimum of £2.73 per hour and receive no help with living costs – another serious funding disparity which should be addressed in the next parliament, Bravo argues. A “measured approach” to apprenticeship funding will be required by the new government, he says, and there should be more freedom for colleges to respond to local need. “Our Local Enterprise Partnership has identified that higher-level qualifications – level 4 and above – will be key to future employment in our area.

We would like to see government funding for further and higher education become more responsive where needs such as this are highlighted.”

Colleges need more freedoms to work with local employers to create qualifications, Doel says, and young people need more and better information about the opportunities available to them post-16. The Association of Colleges is calling for a careers hub in every local area, supported by schools, colleges, universities and Job Centre Plus, and led by the Local Enterprise Partnership with its links to employers. Poor quality career advice is another reason for the poor take-up of apprenticeships among under-25s. Guidance for young people continues to favour academic pathways and there remains a major cultural challenge in ensuring vocational routes attain parity of esteem with academic ones. Cuts to skills funding reinforce the impression that, as a nation, we value only academic attainment.

Better careers information and guidance, backed by adequate financial support, is critical if we are to ensure that every child is able to achieve their potential and make the right transition to further education, higher education or work. But, of course, our children and young people also require choice, and those choices have been narrowing under the pressure of funding cuts. This has to change. As ATL/AMiE argues in its election manifesto, children and young people need a broad and balanced curriculum that focuses on the development of practical skills, as well as academic excellence, and values both equally. They need skills for work, including basic literacy, numeracy and IT skills, and the vital ‘soft’ skills employers say they want; and they need skills for life, including resilience, creativity and empathy. Young people need to feel they have a stake in society, that they are valued and supported. And adults need opportunities to retrain and re-skill throughout their working lives.

Nothing less is required if education is to play a full role in securing a prosperous future for us all.

AMiE’S KEY ELECTION MANIFESTO THEMES ASSESSMENT

TRANSITION

NOT FOR PROFIT

WORKLOAD

ACCOUNTABILITY

Young people need an assessment system and a curriculum that are both broad and balanced.

Transition from school to further education, higher education and work needs financial support and excellent careers guidance.

Education and students’ futures need to be prioritised over profit.

Education professionals need an end to excessive working hours and a genuine career path through a national pay structure.

Schools and colleges need an accountability system based on collaboration, with local inspection and a new role for Ofsted.

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PROFILE

Leadership in challenging times IN TURBULENT TIMES, IT CAN BE DIFFICULT FOR LEADERS TO CREATE THE KIND OF TRUSTING AND PURPOSEFUL WORKPLACES THAT DELIVER HIGH PERFORMANCE. IT’S A PROBLEM JIM KRANTZ, WHO RECENTLY GAVE THE INAUGURAL FETL LECTURE, HAS BEEN REFLECTING ON THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER WORDS PAUL STANISTREET

I

n times of unprecedented policy turbulence and fiscal constraint, many school and college leaders struggle to define a clear mission for themselves and their institutions. The challenge is significant, and multi-faceted. How can leaders ensure their workplaces are characterised by trust and collaboration, in the face of so much top-down structural change? How can they sensibly manage the stress caused by turbulence and the pressures of accountability – what do they absorb and what do they pass on to staff? These are all questions which, in one form or another, have preoccupied Jim Krantz over a long career. Few people better understand the dynamics of leadership in modern organisations.

Krantz has spent his career at the intersection of two ways of looking at the world, namely systems thinking and psychoanalysis. It gives him a distinct perspective when it comes to understanding organisational change and has led him to work in a tradition that seeks to reconcile two apparently contradictory approaches to thinking about organisations. On the one hand, there is the structuralist tradition, proponents of which see structure – from the broadest strategic level to the minute detail of job design – as the defining factor in work performance.

On the other, there is the human relations tradition, which sees the quality of human relationships as what really matters when it comes to creating high-performance, high-productivity workplaces. For Krantz, neither could be the whole story. “You can never fully maximise one side of the equation

without taking the other into account,” he says. “But there is a way to think about them in correlation with one another, and that has been a very important development in the history of thought about organisations.”

Tavistock tradition It was within the Tavistock tradition, and the work of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, in particular, that Krantz found “the perfect place in which to integrate these two perspectives”. The Tavistock Institute was founded in 1947, bringing together people from different disciplines to apply psychoanalytic and systems thinking to group and organisational life. “The school of thought is based on being able to relate the social system, the human dynamics, with the formal organisation,” Krantz explains. “Both unfold according to their different kinds of logics, but they are nevertheless deeply interdependent when it comes to the performance of organisations and the wellbeing of the people in them.”

The most famous example of the application of the Tavistock approach concerned the introduction of new technology in the coal-mining industry in the UK in the late 1940s. The mechanised ‘long-wall’ mining method had been expected to improve performance but, instead, resulted in increased absenteeism, industrial accidents and poor productivity. Eric Trist, one of the founders of the institute, was asked to look at the issue.

He found that the new technology had resulted in the breakdown of social systems that had developed around the old short-wall technologies. “Those

social systems were a critical element both in ensuring safety and in getting the work done,” Krantz says. “When that variable in the equation dropped out, things went wrong. Trist and his colleagues were able to suggest a solution in which a modified version of the new technology could be introduced in a way that allowed the social system to function. It was the integration of the two, the technical and the social, that allowed progress to occur.” The study informed the development of socialtechnical systems thinking, which postulated that neither the formal (technical or structural) nor the informal (social) sub-system alone was sufficient in understanding organisational performance. They had to be understood jointly, in relation to one another. That insight, more than any other, has shaped Krantz’s practice.

Unstable environment Organisations exist in increasingly dynamic and unstable environments, Krantz argues – an insight that will undoubtedly resonate with many in the UK’s schools and further education sectors. The latter, as City and Guilds recently pointed out, has been overseen by 61 different secretaries of state in the past 30 years, and has moved between government departments 10 times.

Uncertainty is one of the main concerns of education leaders, a symptom, Krantz suggests, of a wider turbulence. “Our world is hyper-turbulent,” he says.

“When something happens in one part of the world it is experienced in another, and, of course, technology is changing fast. We have seen a breakdown in stable boundaries, familiar structures.

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PROFILE

C V Jim Krantz is the founder of WorkLab, a consultancy that specialises in using management and behavioural science to help organisations translate strategy into action, and create methods that accelerate development and learning. Before becoming managing principal of WorkLab in 1988, Krantz was a senior consultant at the Wharton School Centre for Applied Research, and action research fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. His Further Education Trust for Leadership lecture in March was attended by college and university leaders, employers and the leaders of most of the country’s sector bodies and think tanks.

This tradition, for example, was for many years based on the notion of small groups mediating structures, enabling people to think about their experience.

That’s gone now. We don’t have stable small groups for the most part. People exist in larger groups, and they are coping with more primitive dynamics and anxieties. People have to cope with much more anxiety-laden, confusing uncertainty without the familiar structures that enabled them in the past to contain the experience productively.”

that staff understand. “Clarity of purpose is one element that allows people in groups to cope with the uncertainties and with the turbulence,” Krantz explains. “An organisation is a task system, a set of activities designed to accomplish a certain purpose. The purpose is part of an institution. It’s not the organisation itself. But an organisation has goals – and these must be things that can be accomplished – which allow the organisation to carry out the purposes of an institution. The

CLARITY OF PURPOSE IS THE TILLER OF A SHIP. IT’S HOW YOU KNOW WHAT CHOICES AND TRADE-OFFS YOU HAVE TO MAKE. Leaders, Krantz says, existing on the boundary between the inside and outside of organisations, face a tough challenge in such an environment.

“That’s a very important dimension of leadership: how do you shield your organisation, appropriately, from the anxiety, and how much of it do you pass along? The leader’s job is to knit the internal and the external together in a way which creates productivity and commitment, while also addressing the authorising environment. This is a highly refined capability of leaders, to connect the inside and the outside in a way that works.” A failure to respond adequately can leave leaders “detached and depressed or defensively omnipotent and grandiose”, undermining prospects for the kind of collaborative workplaces Krantz believes every sector needs. Those who respond well are likely to have a clear sense of purpose and a set of objectives

capacity to accomplish these purposes requires a capacity to make decisions based on a clear understanding of what’s meant to happen. Clarity of purpose is the tiller of a ship. It’s how you know what choices and trade-offs you have to make. So often, people will say: ‘My problem is I don’t have enough people or enough resources.’ There’s a fundamental error in that kind of thinking. All management is the management of scarce resources.

When someone says they don’t have the resources, the unspoken question behind it is, ‘What are you meant to accomplish, and how realistic is it?’”

Learning from experience The need to adapt to emerging conditions requires organisations to learn from experience, Krantz argues. One of the key elements of his work is to help leaders “make sense of their experience in systemic terms as well as in personal

terms”. That experience, Krantz says, is a huge potential source of information about the organisation around us, yet we “treat these experiences as if they are about our person and not to develop the category system that would allow us to decode what it means for the organisation”. Learning from experience “requires a recognition that one is susceptible to dynamics that are not of one’s own making. And it’s often a struggle for leaders to recognise their own vulnerability. But that’s where learning from experience comes from”.

Understanding is important, not only in improving performance and building trusting, collaborative workplaces, but also in promoting and making a case for funding of an area of activity. Krantz gives the example of the US community college sector, “the most important and successful anti-poverty programme we have”. Yet, despite its importance, it exists in an “in-between space” which is not well understood and there is ambiguity as to its function. Such confusions, Krantz says, create issues in terms of performance: “When a system is expected to do two things rather than one thing, its resources are dissipated to some degree.” There are often huge expectations of the leaders of these systems but also constraints from above and ambiguities, particularly when it comes to having “a clear vision of what an organisation is meant to be about”.

Yet that, as Krantz make clear, is the critical factor in coping with turbulence.

3 MORE INFO This article is an edited excerpt of an interview which appeared in Remembered Thinking, the first major publication of the Further Education Trust for Leadership

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R E S OUR CE S/C ON TA C T S

LEADERSHIP DURING DIFFICULT TIMES Leadership breakfast forums – UK venues

A

MiE, in conjunction with Hays Education, is pleased to bring you two leadership breakfast sessions, at locations across the UK. All sessions are free to attend for AMiE members, and start between 8:30am and 9:30am, varying depending on location.

School governance Our school governance breakfast seminar will bring together governors and school leaders to explore and discuss current challenges. You will hear from Estelle Morris, Chair of the Strategy Board at the Institute of Effective Education and former Secretary of State, and John Dunford, the National Pupil Premium Champion.

• Maidstone, 28 April 2015 • Stafford, 12 May 2015 • Coventry, 13 May 2015 • Birmingham, 14 May 2015 • Leeds, 19 May 2015 • Leicester, 20 May 2015 • Portsmouth, 11 June 2015 • Guildford, 18 June 2015 • Sheffield, 8 July 2015

Leading in impossible times In challenging times, being a school leader is an especially difficult task.

Sir Tim Brighouse, one of the most influential figures in education, and David Cameron, a well-known presenter and trainer across the education sector, will offer insight into what makes a successful leader and the factors that can lead to unsuccessful leadership. This will be a great opportunity to share ideas with two experienced leaders and network with like-minded individuals.

• Oxford, 13 May 2015 • Worcester, 20 May 2015 • Birmingham, 10 June 2015 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION OR TO BOOK YOUR PLACE, PLEASE EMAIL ATL@HAYS. COM STATING YOUR NAME, CONTACT DETAILS AND PREFERRED LOCATION. Hays Education runs Job-Finder, a dedicated recruitment service for ATL and AMiE members. This is a unique partnership aimed at providing members with the very best career advice and job opportunities. For more information about the service, go to: amie.atl. org.uk/about-amie/member-offers/ job-finder-hays-education.asp

ABOUT AMiE We are the only union to represent managers and leaders across the entire education sector, providing: • help, advice and support: a confidential helpline, online guidance and a network of professional and experienced regional officers to support you in your role as both an employee, and as a manager or leader • excellent personal and professional development: accredited training and development opportunities for you in your role as a manager or leader • a voice in the education debate: an opportunity to influence policy and get involved in issues that affect you • publications and resources: a range of free publications focused on contemporary leadership issues • more for your membership: discounts and rewards for you and your family on a range of products and services.

And, with 50% off your first year’s membership*, there’s never been a better time to join AMiE. Join online at amie.atl.org.uk/join or call 0845 057 7000 (local call).

Let AMiE take you further.

WHO CAN JOIN? Colleges: AMiE welcomes managers at all levels in FE colleges, sixth-form colleges and adult education providers.

Schools: We warmly invite school headteachers (including those in academies), deputy headteachers, assistant headteachers, acting headteachers, bursars and business managers to join AMiE. We also have many members in national organisations, training organisations and other areas of the education sector, including HE.

CONTACTING AMiE AMiE 35 The Point, Market Harborough Leicestershire. LE16 7QU Tel: 01858 461110 Fax: 01858 461366 amie.atl.org.uk National helpline Tel: 01858 464171 Email: helpline@amie.atl.org.uk

LEADERSHIP COURSES FOR MEMBERS AMiE has a UK-wide network of elected representatives and members of staff who can help you with your queries.

For more information on your regional contact and their contact details, please see amie.atl.org.uk/aboutamie/your-union/contact-us.asp Here is a selection of course names and dates.

MANAGING PERFORMANCE THROUGH CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS Bristol 9 June 2015

GETTING THE NEXT FIVE PER CENT Bristol 3 July 2015

LEADING OTHERS London 14 May 2015 York 20 May 2015 Manchester 1 July 2015

CREATING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAM Manchester 7 May 2015 Birmingham 25 June 2015

For more information on these courses and to book, please see amie.atl.org.uk/join-in/cpd/overview.asp

David Green Assistant director of AMiE (employment services) Tel: 01858 411540 Mobile: 07711 929043 Email: dgreen@amie.atl.org.uk Mark Wright Assistant director of AMiE (leadership and management) Tel: 020 7782 1530 Mobile: 07436 805330 Email: mwright@amie.atl.org.uk For membership queries, please contact the membership department on 020 7782 1602 or email: membership@atl.org.uk. *TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY, VISIT AMIE.ATL.ORG.UK FOR FULL SUBSCRIPTION DETAILS, MEMBERSHIP ELIGIBILITY AND FURTHER INFORMATION.

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MASTERCLASS

‘IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PEOPLE’

A college can’t be turned around overnight. Getting Exeter College to ‘outstanding’ demanded long-term financial stability and a culture shift that built trust and accountability, and raised aspirations among staff and students in every part of the college WORDS PAUL STANISTREET

n this job you need stability,” says Richard Atkins, principal of Exeter College. “The best leaders provide that. They tend to stay in the job and commit a significant part of their career to their college. This is a job for at least seven to 10 years.

I don’t think you can dramatically improve in the short term.” Atkins is in his 14th year as principal of Exeter – his final one, as he plans to retire at the end of the year. The past three years have seen the college achieve two ‘outstanding’ grades from Ofsted and win a clutch of provider awards. It took four years to get the college from the ‘notice to improve’ it received in 2008 to ‘outstanding’ but the journey took significantly longer than that, Atkins says. “Long-term success comes from a long-term plan. The foundations have to be secure and the infrastructure must be sound. Once those building blocks are in place, you can concentrate on what’s important: students and staff.”

When Atkins joined the college it was struggling. Academic performance wasn’t particularly strong and it faced a number of underlying financial and structural problems. “It wasn’t a failing institution but it was not performing

particularly well and it had a number of structural issues, including the fact that the college was spread over 14 sites. We were just emerging from financial inadequacy and were moving to satisfactory. We developed a strategy to reduce the number of sites we had, sell off some of them and build new ones, to rationalise the space. We ensured the finances were robust so we were making a small surplus every year. That was the first phase. It took between five and seven years. That journey, which took us from satisfactory to very good, was mechanistic. But, until we had sorted out the property and financial issues, it was difficult to move to outstanding.

That part of the journey has been more cultural. But getting the foundations in place made it possible.”

Since 2008, when the college was graded ‘good’ at inspection, the focus has shifted, Atkins says. “It has very much been on matching the right student to the right course, teaching, learning and assessment, engaging staff and empowering leaders – and consolidating the difficult work we did in the early years.” The ‘good’ grade was accompanied by a technical ‘notice to improve’ which, according to college vice-principal John Laramy,

“highlighted a number of challenges that until then hadn’t been fully recognised”, and gave the college impetus to build on its hard-won financial stability and continue its improvement. “The college was hungry to improve,” Laramy says.

A new policy of ‘right student, right course’ was adopted in 2008.

This meant the college would no longer accept a student on a course that was inappropriate to their experience and level of entry qualification. “That sounds simple but to get that to be part of the culture is very difficult,” says Laramy.

“It’s about everybody within the college feeling a responsibility to the young person and to the teachers who will be teaching them, to try to place them on the programme that is right for them.

Most colleges have entry criteria but often those criteria do not match the people on the course. We have a very tight system now. The entry criteria actually translate to the students who get onto the course. And that means teachers are being set an achievable goal. That change has had a real impact.

It’s now totally ingrained.”

At the same time, the college introduced a regime of internal inspection, a key prong of a new

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approach to monitoring which emphasised accountability and responsibility but sought also, in the words of assistant principal Julie Skinner, to “give people freedom to innovate and be effective teachers in the classroom”. “We wanted a system that didn’t just tell us things we already knew,” Laramy says. “We wanted a mechanism that was helpful, that demystified Ofsted and gave staff more confidence.” The inspections are led by an associate inspector who spends a day in a particular faculty and tries to “get under its skin”, talking to staff and students before feeding back. The system enables managers to track

it is needed and there is a robust system of intervention for teachers who are struggling. “Staff are not expected to be outstanding from day one,” says Skinner. “They have mentors, and there are new teacher programmes to help them. And they are guided through the processes by those around them. New teachers are formatively observed within the first six weeks and summatively thereafter. If they come in with a grade 2 [‘good’] straightaway, that’s great. But, if they or any other member of staff gets observed at grade 3 [‘requires improvement’], that triggers support. We have a team of improvement practitioners who

WE WANTED A MECHANISM THAT WAS HELPFUL, THAT DEMYSTIFIED OFSTED AND GAVE STAFF MORE CONFIDENCE. performance and demonstrate impact.

“It offers a fresh pair of eyes,” says Skinner. “And that can often turn up things you just don’t see yourself. They get a very detailed report that serves as an action plan to improve. Even when you are outstanding, there are still things you can pick up on and improve.”

Honesty is critical, Laramy says, and is part of the leadership team’s responsibility to students and staff.

“Nobody benefits from being told they are amazing if they are not. And the internal inspection system gives us a high degree of confidence in the judgements we make. At the same time, we have refined our management information system to actually deliver things that make a difference. So, for example, we track attendance and retention and take action if things are below the standards we set. We don’t wait until the end of the year to find out there is a problem. We intervene in-year and put support in place.’

Staff are offered support and professional development where Richard Atkins believes the best leaders provide stability

support others to improve. They work confidentially with that individual in whatever way works best for them, whether that is in the classroom or talking through strategies every week.

If they get a grade 3 the following year, that triggers an informal meeting, where we triangulate evidence and try to work with that individual to ascertain what support they need. If they don’t improve we take more formal steps, but that rarely happens. It goes back to accountability. We expect ownership and accountability from all staff for their students’ success.”

Lesson observation can only offer a snapshot, Laramy says. Other metrics, such as student feedback and success rates, are important in creating a system that is fair and credible, and that staff can believe in. It’s also important that the grading system is transparent. The processes must be clear, and staff should have the freedom to deliver in their own way. “You need to have a very clear mission and a clear vision, and you need whole-college buy-in. Everyone should

be clear about what you want to achieve.

And you need the right people. If the people aren’t right, you need the processes and structures to manage that.” Skinner agrees: “It’s all about the people. But you have to have patience.

It doesn’t happen overnight. You evolve these different strategies to make sure people are part of this journey.”

By 2012 the college had been selfassessing as ‘outstanding’ for several years and Richard Atkins volunteered the college to take part in Ofsted’s ‘no notice’ inspection pilots. “We were desperate to be inspected because the more you assess as outstanding the more you want official validation of your judgement,” he says. “They did the pilot in 2012 and we got outstanding. They came back and did a full inspection in 2014 and we got outstanding again. That gave us a lot of confidence.” Having raised people’s ambitions and expectations, Atkins says, the challenge then was to “give them the confidence to be outstanding year on year”.

“We worked really hard to get to where we are,” says Laramy. “But in some ways it is harder to stay there.”

The key, says Atkins, is ensuring the balance is right between accountability and trust. “You have to have both. We want to empower people and let them get on with their jobs, but they are accountable too. And everybody makes mistakes, me included. We’ve tried to create a culture where that isn’t a problem provided you tell us about it so we can resolve it. Trust is important, but it takes time. That is why I think being a principal is a long-term job. I’m in my 14th year and the college became outstanding in my eighth year. I’m sure there are some people who could have completed the journey earlier but I don’t think you could have taken this college to outstanding in two or three years.

This level of change – of culture, of climate, of trust – is always going to take considerably longer to build up.”

ABOUT EXETER COLLEGE Established in 1970, Exeter College is a large tertiary college, with a £38m turnover and between 10,000 and 12,000 students, as well as 24 AMiE members, including the principal. Its mission is: ‘To be an outstanding, dynamic and thriving college, working with

partners to provide inspirational education and training for our community.’

It has a broad curriculum – students can study everything from aircraft engineering to catering – and offers higher education alongside apprenticeships.

The college was judged as outstanding by Ofsted in a ‘no notice’ inspection in 2012, and again in a full inspection in 2014. It won the Times Educational Supplement Outstanding Provider of the Year in 2012 and BTEC College of the Year in 2014.

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ADVICE

Any teacher can face disciplinary proceedings because of a parent’s complaint. Often they come to nothing but, if they are taken further, AMiE can guide you through the steps and offer support at any formal meetings or hearings so that you are fully prepared WORDS DAVID GREEN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF AMiE (EMPLOYMENT SERVICES)

I am an assistant headteacher with a proud record of 20 years working in the profession. Yesterday, I made a mistake and accidentally hurt a pupil when trying to stop him fighting with another child.

The parent has complained and our headteacher has told me she has no choice but to go down the disciplinary route. What is going to happen?

First, try not to panic.

You’ve done the right thing by contacting AMiE. We will assign a regional officer to support you. If you have not already received them, ask for full written details of the allegation. Your employer will need to carry out a proper investigation before deciding on the next step. Whoever is appointed to do this should speak to everyone who can shed light on what happened.

This will mean speaking to you, of course, so expect to attend an investigation meeting. Try to prepare for this by reviewing the facts: who, what, where, when and why. Think of any mitigating circumstances and make a note of witnesses who could support your case. Try to anticipate

what you will be asked, and take along the information you need to help you. Some people find it helpful to prepare a chronology of events.

Where possible, make sure you are accompanied at the meeting by your AMiE regional officer, a school ATL rep or a colleague. Representation at an investigation meeting may not be written into your employer’s disciplinary procedure but it is good practice. Answer only the questions you are asked and, if necessary, ask for an adjournment to consult your representative. Where you have some doubt, answer with something like “to the best of my recollection” or simply say that you don’t know. Also, if the questioning is such that you are unable to put your understanding of

THE PROCEDURE AT HEARING FORMAL, BUT IT ISN’T A COUR CHAIRING SHOULD BE IMPART ENSURE THAT EVERYONE FOC events across, politely challenge the way the meeting is being run.

Remember that an uncomfortable silence can lure you into saying something you might later regret.

So, avoid expanding on what you say further than is necessary. At the end of the meeting, ask for a copy of the notes and check the content.

At this stage, the investigator may conclude that you have done nothing wrong, or that only informal action is needed. But if the investigator believes there is a case to answer,

Intervening in a fight between pupils can have consequences for teachers, but AMiE is here to help

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U N I O N M AT T E R S

a disciplinary hearing (sometimes called a disciplinary meeting) will follow. The purpose of this is to consider the evidence and decide what disciplinary action, if any, should be taken. Before the hearing you should be given full details of all the allegations against you, and a copy of any documentary evidence (including witness statements and any investigation report), as well as a list of any witnesses who will be called. You have a legal right to be accompanied by a union representative. At the hearing, with your AMiE regional officer’s help, you will be able to present your version of events, supported by your own evidence and witnesses.

The procedure at hearings tends to be fairly formal, but it isn’t a

ARINGS TENDS TO BE FAIRLY A COURT. THE PERSON MPARTIAL, AND NEEDS TO NE FOCUSES ON THE EVIDENCE. court. The person chairing should be impartial, and needs to ensure that everyone focuses on the evidence.

Breaks should be scheduled and, ideally, refreshments provided.

If at any time you wish to consult your AMiE regional officer, you should ask for an adjournment.

Any disciplinary action taken against you must be reasonable in all the circumstances. It should take account of any mitigating circumstances, your previous disciplinary record or performance, and the type of penalty issued for similar cases. However, misconduct does not have to be proven beyond reasonable doubt, so an employer can reach a conclusion based on the balance of probabilities.

Hopefully, your particular case will not get this far but, if you are disciplined, you should be informed of the penalty, the time limit before it expires, the nature of any expected improvement in conduct and the consequences of any failure to do so.

You should also be made aware of your right to appeal.

3 MORE INFO Further information on disciplinary matters, including in relation to suspension and investigating complaints, can be found on the AMiE website.

NEW GUIDANCE CLEARS UP CONFUSION The Department for Education’s original guidance on ‘disqualification by association’ has caused widespread confusion amid claims that ‘unnecessary obligations’ are being placed on employers and employees. New guidance for school leaders makes things clearer WORDS DAVID GREEN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF AMiE (EMPLOYMENT SERVICES)

Disqualification by association AMiE has published a short briefing for school leaders in England on ‘disqualification by association’.

This follows updated guidance from the Department for Education (DfE), and comes after ATL and other unions pressed for clarification in response to widespread misinterpretation of the rules by employers.

The DfE’s original guidance on the law – which can be used to disqualify school staff who live with someone convicted for a violent or sexual crime – was described as ‘unclear’ when it was published in October last year.

The rules apply to those working in a relevant childcare setting, or who manage such provision.

Significantly, the revised DfE guidance makes clear that it is not necessary to ask your staff to complete a checklist or declaration form when carrying out your checks as this is not a legal requirement, and may result in non-relevant information being provided that breaches the requirements of the Data Protection Act and/or the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Also, the guidance says that, where someone does meet the criteria for disqualification by association, they should be moved to other duties, or given special leave pending application for a

waiver from Ofsted. They should not be placed on suspension.

A copy of our briefing can be found on the AMiE website.

FE members’ working time The final results of AMiE’s survey of further education members’ working time will not be known until after this issue of ELM is published. However, early signs suggest a significant long-hours culture.

We are expecting the results to show that half of AMiE’s membership in FE work, on average, between 49 and 60 hours a week, with a further 10% working over 60 hours. Most members take work home with them and, worryingly, 40% do not find time to take their full holiday entitlement.

An in-depth analysis of the survey’s findings will appear in the next issue.

Occupational health in FE colleges The Further Education Safety and Health Forum (FESH) is currently working on practical guidance for occupational health surveillance.

If you have any experience of occupational health strategies that you can share, FESH would like to know. Please contact David Green (dgreen@amie.atl.org.uk) who is AMiE’s representative on FESH. FEBRUARY APRIL 2015 | ELM 21

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FINAL WORD

he problem of teacher flight from the profession is compounded by a looming teacher supply crisis. There were, last year, 5,000 fewer entrants to initial teacher training (ITT) than in 2011. This problem is further compounded by the fact that pupil numbers are rising – by a projected 18% in primary schools over the next eight years.

It is worth noting that recruitment to ITT normally goes up in a recession and down when the economy recovers.

But this is not the pattern of the past five years. It might be interesting to consider the reasons why this might be the case.

One major reason might be that making an ITT application is hard work – there are so many different routes available, and information on the pros and cons of each is patchy.

Graduate debt is undoubtedly another major issue for potential applicants, who may want to teach, but who are worried about adding a further £9,000 tuition fee to their existing undergraduate debt.

And then there is the issue of ITT recruitment. The move to School Direct, the government’s preferred school-based training route, has led to a decline in acceptances onto ITT courses. As a whole, School Direct recruited only 61% of its allocation; while conventional university-led teacher education met 89% of its recruitment targets.

No progress has been made in improving the ethnic diversity of

“AT A TIME OF IMPROVING GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT, IT IS IMPORTANT THAT TEACHING IS A JOB THAT IS ATTRACTIVE TO NEW ENTRANTS. THIS MEANS THE GOVERNMENT MUST ACT TO IMPROVE TEACHERS’ AND SCHOOL LEADERS’ WORKING LIVES.”

FLIGHT OR FIGHT M A RY B O U ST E D, AT L G E N E R A L S E C R E TA RY

the profession. The problem may be that schools, with less experience of the ‘unfinished article’ which is the ITT applicant, rather than the trained teacher, set the entry bar too high and turn away candidates who, with good support and training, could make very good teachers.

We cannot divorce teacher recruitment from teacher retention.

At a time of improving graduate employment, it is important that teaching is a job that is attractive to new entrants. This means that the government must think seriously, and act, to improve teachers’ and school leaders’ working lives. It is a great shame that the coalition government’s response to the workload survey did not acknowledge, and deal with, the two greatest drivers of workload: the pressures of the accountability system, including Ofsted, and the in-school bureaucracy created by the accountability system.

No education system can exceed the quality of its teachers. So, if I were Secretary of State for Education (!), I would, immediately, do four things.

1. Abolish training fees for ITT (bursaries for STEM have their place, but they are a sticking plaster when there are secondary and primary shortages). Graduates are already loaded with debt. If the government is serious about teacher recruitment it has to provide some financial relief.

2. Re-establish a national placeplanning process to ensure ITT providers are training teachers in the geographical areas that have established need.

3. Institute a review of the National College for Teaching and Learning to determine whether the agency has the ability to solve the problems it has created in its rushed, hasty and often chaotic move to schoolbased training.

4. Get serious about teacher and school leader professionalism and do much more to create working conditions that are compatible with normal, busy lives, and provide an entitlement to continuing professional development.

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