HWRK Magazine: Issue 29

educational magazine the online magazine for teachers

HWRK

written by teachers for teachers

A MAnifesto for ChAnge in eduCAtion

ISSUE 29 / FREE HWRKMAGAZINE.CO.UK

ALSO INSIDE

• How SHould we TeacH THe TeacHerS? • uSing ai To creaTe BeSpoke TexTBookS • From STage To Sage: promoTing oracy wiTH STraTegieS From drama • a diFFerenT Journey To primary leaderSHip • How can we make Secondary ScHool work For working claSS STudenTS? • wHy do moTHer-TeacHerS leave?

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PEDAGOGY

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FroM Stage to Sage: ProMoting oraCy witH StrategieS FroM draMa

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talking FloatS on a Sea oF write

CURRICULM

PEDAGOGY

by making positive offers to one another, the conversation can only continue and escalate.

After this, change the instruction to answer every offer with the words ‘Yes but…’, thereby showing what happens when only negative offers are made. Pupils will generally find it harder to think up new suggestions because they keep being shot down.

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Finally, give the instruction for the responses to all begin with ‘No because…’ an outright rejection of the offer. Once pupils are aware of the parameters of positive offers during the work, you’re ready to work on more complex activities where offers will hopefully be as positive as possible.

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There are many different games and exercises that lend themselves well to oracy and you can use the

Dropbox link provided if you want to have a look through the full list.

For now, I’ll write in a bit more detail about one of my personal favourites. You’ll notice that this exercise doesn’t involve a lot of talking, more internalising. In my experience, I’ve found that by actually taking away the right to speak, students can gain more from the exercise, as long as they’re given the instant opportunity to share their thoughts of paper, laptop or oral discussion.

My favourite exercise to do with students of any key stage is the ‘Week in the Life’. This can be adapted for lots of different topics, themes or stories. I enjoy using it for Art too so I’ll use that as a recent example I did with a Year 4 class.

I began by showing the class ‘Going to the match’ by LS Lowry, a wellknown piece, showing football fans

Talking floaTs on a sea of wriTe

on their way to a stadium. None of the class had seen it before or had any preconceptions about Lowry himself or the themes he explored through his art.

Can oracy be developed in isolation, or does it often depend on the quality of the written word?

I gave the class a few minutes on their own with a copy of the painting and asked them to choose one person that appealed to them the most. In the painting, the majority of the peoples’ faces are hidden from view and they all look very similar to one another so it acted as a blank canvas for the pupils. They could create the person’s life from scratch. After giving them some time to choose their character, I asked them to sit somewhere comfortable in the hall or lie down if they preferred.

and persuasively express what they think and to which they can then attach subsequent arguments.

By Claire Sealy

‘Writing floats on a sea of talk’ said James Britton in the 1970s.’ If you can’t say it, you can’t write it. The assertion is that teaching children to write articulately necessarily involves teaching children to speak articulately. But this assertion assumes that writing is transcribed speech. However, because speech and writing are produced in very different communicative situations, there are significant differences in how they are structured. What is more, writing enables a different type of more formal speech.

I said that for now voices weren’t allowed and I asked them to think about their character. Who were they? What was their name? Where

Exploratory talk and presentational talk, to use the categories first proposed by Douglas Barnes and then expanded upon by Neil Mercer, are different from everyday, conversational talk. More formal ways of talking are dependent upon writing.

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PEDAGOGY

uSing ai to Create BeSPoke textBookS

If you can’t write it, you can’t say it. Or as Quntillian said in the first century, ‘By writing we speak with greater accuracy and by speaking we write with greater ease.’ Talking floats on a sea of ‘write.’

Whereas talk is transient, fleeting and ephemeral, writing is durable. It has permanence. Spoken words appear and then disappear in the moment, vanishing without trace. Since working memory is fairly limited, the transience of speech means that it is hard to articulate and organise complex thoughts or to revisit the complex thoughts of others. The development of the technology of literacy extended working memory by outsourcing it to an external memory field – the written word - giving humans the ability to store and retrieve ideas efficiently and accurately.

The very fact that writing could store and enable retrieval of ideas resulted in a new type of communication allied to, but different from the spoken word. Because speech and writing are produced in very different communicative situations, there are differences in how they are structured.

Both types of communication involve trade-offs.

As writing is durable and has permanence, it does not usually involve live interaction with a

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When I introduce this to students I do so with three maxims:

listener. Writing is both asocial and asynchronous. This has the advantage that it is possible to communicate across time and space but this comes with a price. With face-toface speech, the speaker receives immediate feedback should their listeners appear confused, and can act on this and add in more detail.

Writers do not receive real time feedback from their readers so cannot spontaneously adapt their message.

This places a responsibility on writers to explain things more clearly and explicitly than when talking.

1. The descriptive hook must include a character 2. We do not state what our point of view is but rather imply it 3. The character is doing something or something is happening to our character that helps to imply what our position is We then have a go at brainstorming this kind of character for a given

Everyday conversation usually takes place between people who share a context. The speaker can make assumptions about what the listener already knows that a writer cannot. This is further compounded by differences of culture or history.

Vernacular ways of speaking work fine in a local, immediate context.

But for written material that may be read by a reader at some remove in time or space from the author, standardised ways of writing need developing that mitigate linguistic differences.

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So, I began with Claude and asked for content that I needed for each page. I began to use different prompts. Prompts

An example of content that I needed was some historical background on the British in India

To truly tackle inequality, society at large must change, but there are actions which secondary school leaders and teachers can take to help working-class students compete equitably at school and in later life.

I S S U E 2 9 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // 2 5

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How Can we Make SeCondary SCHool work For working ClaSS StudentS?

Why do we need to make secondary school work for working-class students?

If you’re a high ability student from a low social class, you’re not going to do as well in school and later life as a low ability student from a high social class. In other words, it is social class and wealth – not ability – that define a student’s educational outcomes and future life chances.

For proof of this, see the Institute for Fiscal Studies report, The Deaton Review of Inequalities (2022)1, which concludes that disadvantaged students start school behind their better-off peers, and the education system is not succeeding in closing these gaps.

Educational inequalities, says the report, result in substantial differences in life chances, leaving millions disadvantaged 0 6 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // I S S U E 2 9

throughout their lifetime. The report finds that those who have not been successful at school are left behind by an education system which does not offer the right opportunities for further education.

The IFS Deaton Review also finds that educational inequalities translate into large future earnings differences. By the age of 40, the average UK employee with a degree earns twice as much as someone qualified to GCSE level or below.

What’s more, despite only 7% of students going to private schools, this cohort is disproportionately over-represented in many professions.

How do secondary schools currently work against working-class students?

Firstly, there’s funding…

According to Professor Diane Reay’s research, working-class students do less well simply because less money is spent on them. Writing in The Guardian in 2017, Reay highlights the funding deficiencies suffered by state schools which have led to a marked decline in art, drama, dance, and

uSing deSCriPtion in non-FiCtion writing

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music provision.2 Less affluent families cannot afford to pay for their children to experience these activities outside of school.

MaStering Middle leaderSHiP

Reay cites research from University College London that shows £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil.

For secondary, it’s £15,000, compared with £6,200.

Secondly, there’s the school curriculum…

need to buy in and feed in to your vision, they need to share your ‘why’. This in turn will build collaboration and commitment to your vision, along with a culture of clarity and input within your team. If staff understand why you are making the decisions that you are, why you are making changes, they are less likely to resist. Simon Sinek’s book is an invaluable tool to support and guide you on deciding your ‘why’.

In terms of curriculum design, there’s a problem of coverage. Providing all students with the same curriculum further disadvantages those who are already disadvantaged. We should not reduce the curriculum for workingclass students – to do so is to deepen their existing disadvantage, denying them the opportunities afforded to their more affluent peers – but we should offer more – not less, and crucially, not the same – to working-class students; we must broaden the curriculum for working-class students to ensure equity as opposed to equality. @hwrk_magazine

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By Matt Bromley

I started by planning a list of the content that I knew I would need to cover our

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LEADERSHIP

The education system is rigged in favour of the privileged. Workingclass students are disadvantaged from day one: their birth is, all too often, their destiny.

are the questions or tasks that you give the AI bot and the wording of these matters a lot. I started off very polite and verbose and then as I went on I didn’t worry about spelling/manners/grammar and it still worked.

As an example, consider the AQA

Now let’s imagine a student wishes to argue for the statement. Using the descriptive hook strategy perhaps they invent a character named Thomas. They begin by describing Thomas sat in an office, engulfed by stacks of photocopied papers. Gloomily lit with the constant whirr of a broken lightbulb, we find Thomas with head

FEATURE

What Can We Do to Make SeConDary SChool Work For Working ClaSS StuDentS? scheme. I designed a basic slide that would be repeated throughout the textbook including the same page title header, a section for keywords, page numbers and sections for activities. I knew I was going to print the textbooks in colour so I considered the colour of these.

By doing this, students not only flex their creative muscles — in the process ratcheting up marks for craft and control of language — but they create a powerful emotional hook for the reader. Students are re-purposing a typically creative strategy in order to deliver a rhetorically effective argument.

June 2022 question. Students were presented with the following statement: ‘Holidays don’t need to be faraway and expensive. They just need to give people a break from everyday life and the chance to relax’. They were then asked to write an article for a magazine, arguing their point of view.

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FEATURE

I suspect as things are new that school internet filtering systems are not up to date with new practices in teaching.

So I had a choice, to do it all at home or to find a solution. I then saw people on Twitter discussing Google’s AI offer, Claude and went to try it. Thankfully it worked so then became my AI bot of choice when in school.

question. I ask them to be really specific. What is the character’s name? What do they look like?

How old are they? What is happening to them? How do they feel? How do we want the reader or audience to feel? How does this help to express our point of view?

2. Decide on ‘how’. Once you have your ‘why’, then you need to decide on your ‘how’. How are you going to achieve your vision? Your ‘how’ needs to be informed. Whether you were an internal or external candidate for the job you need to make sure your ‘how’ is

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focusing on the right areas that need your attention, and although you can learn a lot from the data; data doesn’t talk.

People do. Create individual meetings with each member of your team and ask them 3 key questions to inform your ‘how’. 1. What do you need to change?

2. What do you need to keep the same?

(What is working?) 3. What are their career aspirations? By ascertaining this information you are allowing your team to help you craft the ‘how’ and ensuring that they feel listened to. From here you can decide where to start your journey and also ensure that you are developing your team on their own professional journeys. It is imperative that you take pauses and evaluate your ‘how’ as you go along. Be aware of ‘escalation of commitment’ bias – the desire to

continue something that you have implemented, even when it isn’t working, because you are afraid to admit a mistake.

Pre-plan meetings where you and your team are going to stop and evaluate your ‘how’. If it isn’t working change it. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and admit a mistake; you don’t know everything and actually a culture of growth and leadership is built from this attitude of trial and error. If you are not afraid to try something, if you show it is ok to make mistakes, you will encourage innovation and learning from your team while avoiding toxic cultures, like cultures of fear, where staff become resistant to change as they fear what may happen if something goes wrong.

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CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: A Manifesto For Change In Education

FEATURES

PEDAGOGY

6. HOw CAN wE MAkE SECONDARY SCHOOL wORk FOR wORkING CLASS STUDENTS?

34. TALkING FLOATS ON A SEA OF wRITE

58. USING DESCRIPTION IN NON-FICTION wRITING

Can oracy be developed in isolation, or does it often depend on the quality of the written word?

Strategies for teaching non-fiction writing in English Language

40. UNDERSTANDING AND SUPPORTING PUPILS wITH ENGLISH AS AN ADDITIONAL LANGUAGE

62. A DIFFERENT JOURNEY TO PRIMARY LEADERSHIP

The education system is rigged in favour of the privileged. Working-class students are disadvantaged from day one: their birth is, all too often, their destiny.

12. HOw SHOULD wE TEACH THE TEACHERS?

An evaluation of support for EAL students in Henry Sauntson considers the typical pedagogical schools toolkit we use in teacher professional 46. DEvELOPING METACOGNITIvE development and whether a different approach MONITORING SkILLS might be better.

How can learners monitor and evaluate their progress throughout tasks? Nathan Burns offers 18. wHAT COULD REMOTE INvIGILATION some tips in his latest article on metacognition.

MEAN FOR EDUCATION? How does remote invigilation work and how 52. FROM STAGE TO SAGE: PROMOTING could it benefit our students?

ORACY wITH STRATEGIES FROM DRAMA

24. USING AI TO CREATE BESPOkE TEXTBOOkS

How to leverage AI to help you create resources for your students @hwrk_magazine

If oracy is something to be brought in from the fringes of the curriculum, how do we as a profession make it front and centre of our pedagogy?

CURRICULUM

LEADERSHIP Thoughts on a different leadership journey towards Primary headship…

68. MASTERING MIDDLE LEADERSHIP

What should middle leaders focus on as they develop their craft? Danielle Walley explores the who, what, why, when and how of middle leadership.

EXPERIENCE 72. wHY DO MOTHER-TEACHERS LEAvE? If teaching is such a family-friendly profession, then, why is it that women aged 30-39 are also the largest demographic to leave teaching every year?

76. COMPUTING POSTER: Design, Evaluate, Debug I S S U E 2 9 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // 0 3

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CONTRIBUTORS WRITTEN BY TEACHERS FOR TEACHERS

Andy Atherton

Adam Garrett

Andrew Atherton is a Teacher of English as well as Director of Research in a secondary school in Berkshire. He regularly publishes blogs about English and English teaching at ‘Codexterous’ and you can follow him on Twitter @__codexterous

Adam is a UKS2 teacher in Bradford. He worked as an actor before teaching in 2015 in Early Years. He has now taught in every primary year group except year 6. He is starting an MA in Educational Leadership at Manchester

@__codexterous

@teacheradamgt

Ashley Harrold

Ashley Harrold is the CEO of Inspired Online Schools, leading with a commitment to inclusivity and educational excellence. He oversees the operation of King’s InterHigh, the world’s leading British curriculum and IB Diploma online school, and Academy21, a market leader in alternative provision in the UK.

Henry Sauntson

Emma Sheppard

Leila Harris

Henry Sauntson is a Senior Leader and SCITT Director, based in Peterborough. His enthusiasm and interest lies primarily with teacher education and development, especially in the early career stages. We need to be informed, not led.

Emma is the founder of The MaternityTeacher PaternityTeacher Project - Inspiring, empowering and connecting teachers choosing to complete CPD on parental leave.

Leila Harris is a Senior Leader in a large and culturally diverse primary school in North West London. She has a special interest in teaching pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) and embedding global citizenship in the curriculum.

@HenrySauntson

@mtptproject

@LH_231

Charlotte Rowley

Faheema Vachhiat

Matt Bromley

Charlotte is currently a Deputy Headteacher at a primary school in Stoke-on-Trent. She trained as an English Teacher and worked in secondary schools for over ten years. She is passionate about educational research, leadership and particularly key stage 2-3 transition.

Faheemah always seeks ways to innovate her teaching. Through her substack, she shares her reflections on teaching and learning, explores the latest trends and best practices and shares strategies for other educators looking to enhance their approaches to curriculum design.

Matt Bromley is an education journalist, author, and advisor with twenty-five years’ experience in teaching and leadership including as a secondary school headteacher and academy principal, further education college vice principal, and multi-academy trust director. His latest book, The Working Classroom, which is co-written by Andy Griffith is out now.

@CharlK8Rowley

@FVachhiat

@mj_bromley

Dawn Cox

Nathan Burns

Danielle Walley

Claire Sealy

Dawn Cox is a Head of RE & SLE in Essex.

She is also an education author and blogger.

Nathan is a Head of Maths, education article writer and the author of “Inspiring Deep Learning with Metacognition”.

Dani is the Director of Humanities and whole school QA at a secondary Academy in Staffordshire. She is passionate about curriculum, teaching and learning and supporting and developing middle leaders.

She blogs at https://blissful-dwalley1. wordpress.com/

Clare Sealy is Head of Education Improvement for the States of Guernsey. Prior to that she was headteacher of St Matthias primary school in Tower Hamlets for 22 years. Clare writes and speaks about curriculum, assessment, reading, writing and maths. She is also the editor of the ResearchED Guide to the Curriculum. Clare blogs at www.primarytimery.com. In 2021 she received an OBE for her services to education.

@missdcox

@MrMetacognition

@Danihus

@ClareSealy

HWRK MAGAZINE PUBLISHED BY EDU ONLINE GROUP LTD 1st Floor, GD Offices, 47 Bridgewater Street, Liverpool, L1 0AR E: enquiries@edu-online.co.uk T: 0151 294 6215 EDITOR Andy McHugh PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Alec Frederick Power DESIGNER Adam Blakemore MANAGING DIRECTORS G Gumbhir, Alec Frederick Power Legal Disclaimer: While precautions have been made to ensure the accuracy of contents in this publication and digital brands neither the editors, publishers not its agents can accept responsibility for damages or injury which may arise therefrom.

No part of any of the publication whether in print or digital may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission of the copyright owner.

A MAnifesto for ChAnge in eduCAtion The latest exciting round of ministerial musical chairs has left us with the same Education Secretary. In another universe this might be hailed as a wonderful thing, what with continuity of the team and an experienced expert who knows their brief leading the charge. If only. Each day more stories are published, detailing crumbling school buildings and exasperated school staff wondering why the government won’t deal with the latest mounting crisis.

knowledge they can’t develop skills.

The crisis isn’t a small one either. Our education system is not only breaking to pieces, it is almost completely unfit for purpose. Change of personnel at the top might have been a welcome start for many, but true systemic change is needed throughout and brand new thinking is needed in order to drive it.

It sounds like a raw deal. But it’s the genuine experience of some students as things stand.

The issues facing schools, students, parents, teachers and the country are piling higher each day that the required change is put off. But where do we begin? Well, with the students of course. It’s their education. They are the ones whose lives are affected the most and we owe it to them as our moral duty, not just because we’re paid to care. What do they need from their time in school?

1. Reduce the amount of content required by the curriculum for each subject. Lose 10%, 20%, 30%? Going a mile wide and an inch deep serves few students well. Nor does it retain staff, stressed out about how they’re going to fit 8 weeks of lesson content into the next 3 lessons just to get it covered by the exam date.

Knowledge. Skills. Experiences. Access to culture. A sense of belonging. A sense of self.

Do they get all of that from their current curriculum? Possibly not, as one area (knowledge) tends to dominate the rest. Is that a bad thing?

Well, yes and no. Students should know stuff and lots of it. Without HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

But what if this drive for knowledgeat-all-costs leaves no time for afterschool clubs because the staff are too busy running interventions, booster classes and detentions? What if there are no trips because lesson time is too precious to miss? What if they never learn an instrument because tuition costs are too high and the peripatetic teacher can only see them once a week for 20 mins?

So, why not change things? Let’s not tinker around the edges though. It’s time to go big or go home.

Seven ideas for the DfE to consider…

2. Allow teachers to take their time off whenever they need to. Not just PPA, but holidays too. They would still complete their required number of hours per year, but they could have autonomy over their distribution.

3. Properly fund SEND provision and associated services (eg CAMHS) so that students can actually access the world class education that ministers keep promoting and bragging about.

4. Involve industry much more in the development of qualifications. A good start has been made on this, but so much more is needed. Do leading companies in cutting-edge technology play enough of a role in schools, where their future workforce will come from?

Probably not. Incentivise it then.

5. Make it statutory that students can access x number of hours of what we usually call ‘extra-curricular’ activity.

This means sports teams, music tuition, drama clubs, educational visits. They should be put on as high a pedestal as ‘core subjects’.

6. Scrap SATs and Progress 8. They’re crude measures and incentivise all sorts of perverse behaviours. Remove them and those behaviours won’t be adopted so often or by so many, to the detriment of so many students and staff.

7. Scrap Ofsted. The brand is toxic and the organisation does nothing to help schools improve. Accountability is good. But an organisation holding people to account with no reliable standard of what is good practice is pointless.

Andy McHugh

Editor | HWRK Magazine

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What Can We Do to Make SeConDary SChool Work For Working ClaSS StuDentS?

By Matt Bromley

The education system is rigged in favour of the privileged. Workingclass students are disadvantaged from day one: their birth is, all too often, their destiny.

To truly tackle inequality, society at large must change, but there are actions which secondary school leaders and teachers can take to help working-class students compete equitably at school and in later life.

Why do we need to make secondary school work for working-class students?

If you’re a high ability student from a low social class, you’re not going to do as well in school and later life as a low ability student from a high social class. In other words, it is social class and wealth – not ability – that define a student’s educational outcomes and future life chances.

For proof of this, see the Institute for Fiscal Studies report, The Deaton Review of Inequalities (2022)1, which concludes that disadvantaged students start school behind their better-off peers, and the education system is not succeeding in closing these gaps.

Educational inequalities, says the report, result in substantial differences in life chances, leaving millions disadvantaged 0 6 // H W R K M AG A Z I N E // I S S U E 2 9

throughout their lifetime. The report finds that those who have not been successful at school are left behind by an education system which does not offer the right opportunities for further education.

The IFS Deaton Review also finds that educational inequalities translate into large future earnings differences. By the age of 40, the average UK employee with a degree earns twice as much as someone qualified to GCSE level or below.

What’s more, despite only 7% of students going to private schools, this cohort is disproportionately over-represented in many professions.

How do secondary schools currently work against working-class students?

Firstly, there’s funding…

According to Professor Diane Reay’s research, working-class students do less well simply because less money is spent on them. Writing in The Guardian in 2017, Reay highlights the funding deficiencies suffered by state schools which have led to a marked decline in art, drama, dance, and

music provision.2 Less affluent families cannot afford to pay for their children to experience these activities outside of school.

Reay cites research from University College London that shows £12,200 a year is the average spending on a privately educated primary pupil, compared with £4,800 on a state pupil.

For secondary, it’s £15,000, compared with £6,200.

Secondly, there’s the school curriculum…

In terms of curriculum design, there’s a problem of coverage. Providing all students with the same curriculum further disadvantages those who are already disadvantaged. We should not reduce the curriculum for workingclass students – to do so is to deepen their existing disadvantage, denying them the opportunities afforded to their more affluent peers – but we should offer more – not less, and crucially, not the same – to working-class students; we must broaden the curriculum for working-class students to ensure equity as opposed to equality. @hwrk_magazine

FEATURE

HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

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There’s also a problem of content.

Decisions about what knowledge and skills are taught are made by those of a higher social standing rather than by a representative group of people from across the social strata. The national curriculum seeks to equip students with “the best that has been thought and said” but who decides what constitutes the ‘best’? Notions of ‘best’ are, by definition, always subjective, value choices.

Sadly, all too often, these choices are made by politicians from middle-class backgrounds. Every school’s curriculum should celebrate working-class culture alongside culture from the dominant classes.

In terms of curriculum assessment, there’s the problem of the home advantage. More and more students are expected to complete schoolwork at home, whether that be homework,

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coursework, or revision. Those who don’t have a home life that’s conducive to independent study are therefore placed at a distinct disadvantage, which is compounded for those who don’t have parents or carers with the capacity to support them – whether that be in terms of time, ability, or money. And then there’s private tuition… with costs of at least £25 per session, many cannot afford to benefit from this extra support, which exacerbates education inequalities.

There’s also the problem of exam content.

There tends to be a middle-class bias in exam questions. For example, in the summer of 2022, an AQA GCSE English Language question privileged those with first-hand knowledge of foreign travel.

And this wasn’t an isolated example.

And there’s the problem of exam outcomes. The assessment system is

designed to fail a third of students every year – and it’s the working classes who suffer most.

In terms of the hidden curriculum, there’s the problem of attitudes and aspirations. Students in private schools are taught that they are the elite and that their place in society is to rule over others. Working-class students in state schools might be told that we live in a meritocracy – that with hard work and the right mindset, anyone can achieve anything – but they soon realise that merit is all smoke and mirrors; it’s harder to have a growth mindset if you live in an overcrowded, cold, damp, rented flat, it’s harder to attend an after-school drama club if you are expected to collect a younger sibling from primary school, and it’s harder to do well in exams if you’ve got nowhere to study and no access to the internet or a computer.

@hwrk_magazine

FEATURE What can we do to make secondary school work for working-class students?

We can counter classism by following a 3-point plan: 1. Achieve equality for all students through the core curriculum and extra-curricular activities. Rather than dumbing down for working-class students, we should plan and deliver the same ambitious curriculum to all students and then give working-class students fair access to extra-curricular activities. We can design an ambitious curriculum by following a 6-step process: 1. Agree on the vision, 2.

Set the destination, 3. Assess the starting points, 4. Identify the waypoints, 5. Define excellence, and 6. Diminish disadvantage, as well as by embedding the four knowledge domains throughout. And we can provide fair access to extra-curricular

activities by planning a programme that has three purposes: 1. Meeting new people, 2. Exploring new places, and 3. Doing new things, as well as by targeting funding and following a cycle of plan-do-review.

2. Achieve equity for lower-attaining students through curriculum adaptations and interventions. We should do more for those who start with less through adaptive teaching approaches, additional interventions and support strategies including, for some, access to an alternative curriculum. We can make adaptations by ensuring all students are given the same tasks to do and then by providing scaffolds to those who need more or different help initially – scaffolds should be temporary and can be visual, verbal, or written. We can ensure additional interventions are effective by converting the causes of disadvantage into tangible classroom consequences and following a 3-step process: 1. Identify the barriers, 2.

Set the success criteria, and 3. Design and deliver the interventions, then by ensuring interventions are short-term, intensive, tailored, and focused.

3. Provide an extension to the curriculum for higher-attaining students through curriculum enhancements. We should use carefully designed and targeted enrichment opportunities to build knowledge, and cultural capital and equip students with the secret knowledge they need to compete at school and university, in work, and in later life. We can do this by being clear about the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and habits (KASH) our enrichment opportunities are intended to deliver, by selecting the cohort and the staff to deliver the enhancement carefully.

Matt’s latest book, The Working Classroom, which is co-written by Andy Griffith is out now: https://www.crownhouse.co.uk/theworking-classroom

REFERENCES: 1. https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/press-release/lack-of-progress-on-closing-educational-inequalities-disadvantaging-millions-throughout-life/ 2 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/nov/21/english-class-system-shaped-in-schools

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How SHould we TeacH THe TeacHerS?

By Henry Sauntson

Henry Sauntson considers the typical pedagogical toolkit we use in teacher professional development and whether a different approach might be better.

There are many agreed ‘mechanisms’ in the current landscape that facilitate professional learning and development for teachers – iterative, expert input, a macro to micro approach, embracing disciplinary approaches – but also many contentions and barriers; many a time I have sat in a room of supposed ‘professional development’ only to feel myself either above it, below it, beyond it, distanced from it or – at worst but by no means rarest – stultifyingly bored and disenchanted by it; the lengthy lecture, the irrelevant context, the somewhat didactic and rather transmissionist approach that lacks conceptual depth or transfer of understanding – genericism pedalled as consistency.

Or, of course, there’s the one-off ‘expert’ input where the influencer or the local ‘name’ makes an appearance, delivers on their specialism and then never returns; did we need that input? Was it relevant?

We know of the Fairy Cake and Fruit Cake analogy – the former is smaller, tastier, gives you an immediate burst but wears off; the latter is heavier, larger, but slowerreleasing and the benefits last for longer.

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The ‘Golden Thread’ that seemingly orients all teacher education is in fact a litany of supposed facts about what makes great teaching, and on these facts is the curriculum of PD built. And yet, to quote Robert Maynard Hutchings, ‘As the Renaissance could accuse the Middle Ages of being rich in principles and poor in facts, we are now entitled to enquire whether we are not rich in facts and poor in principles. Rational thought is the only basis of education and research…

Facts are the core of an anti-intellectual curriculum’.

Facts, or ‘Learn That’ statements, breed compliance; compliance is the most unsound of defences in education (Alexander, 2010).

Teaching adults, or indeed developing them, is far different from teaching children, and yet we do the former to promote the best ways of doing the latter.

However, can we find a way to practice in PD what we preach for the classroom?

Or do the realities of the classroom and the constraints of time on the school PD schedule make this impossible?

How can we teach adults in such a way as to promote those ‘signature pedagogies of our profession’ (Shulman, 2005)? We are looking to deepen the reservoir and extend the repertoire of our teachers in our classrooms, but all these start at different points; when we all sit down together for ‘whole-school’ training we all approach with entirely different mindsets; those wonderful three worlds of a classroom that Nuthall (2007) described – Public, SemiPrivate and Private – take on a whole new context.

I once got given a lovely set of question stems built on Bloom’s Taxonomy in a CPD session that were attached by a single rivet at one end – what did I do? Turned them into a bow-tie to ‘impress’ my more cynical staff-room colleagues….

Look at PD through the lens of the student in the mainstream, mixed-ability classroom (which is, in essence, what a whole-school or even departmentspecific PD session is, albeit with older participants with more entrenched views and opinions); how engaging is the delivery? How relevant is the content? @hwrk_magazine

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How accessible are the concepts?

How is the basic process of learning – attention, encoding, retrieval et al – managed?

Teachers are the hardest audience; we theoretically improve at a lesser rate as we gain experience, we mistake experience for expertise, we form habits that entrench and stagnate our practice (Hobbiss 2020) in favour of reducing the demands of cognitive load.

Professional learning, therefore, needs to both improve knowledge and upgrade / overwrite habitual practices; the largest obstacle to a ‘successful’ programme of development for teachers in respective institutions is the attainment of the prescribed goals, which will be different for each practitioner and their view of success.

Teachers are people; people interpret, understand and conceptualise the same generic goals and appropriate pathways thereto in different ways (Smith, 2017).

Teacher knowledge – or at least the prescribed knowledge as dictated by the HWRKMAGAZINE.co.UK

designed PD curriculum for the academic year – is as objective as it is subjective; all teachers want the best outcomes for their students, naturally, and the cynic would argue that for some it is merely to ensure that they meet review targets (in themselves an issue and worthy of an entirely different 1500 words); however, all teachers will happily argue about the best ways to attain these, and the teacher that uses the same methods year on year and gets great outcomes isn’t going to feel very empowered when a wholeschool dictat imposes a ‘non-negotiable’ pedagogy on them that doesn’t suit their style of teaching, their classroom environment, their subject or phase.

One size fits one – that’s all we need to remember. If that is our root, then our gardening, nurturing and tending to that root must be individualistic too. The best way to achieve this? Maybe we need to hand more responsibility back to the individual to manage their own growth.

Teacher education is far more than just grade-harvesting, it is about society, the individual – dialogue at the heart of praxis.

Indeed, is the goal of any form of teacher education not the development of the teacher as practitioner? To return to our Fairy and Fruit cakes, we need a system of PD in schools where the Fruit cake approach is tailored to the individual, tethered to the classroom and, above all, manageable and relevant for all – Fruit Cake bites, perhaps.

It is sometimes evident that much ‘professional development’ in schools – not deliberately, but as a product of school cultures, teacher perception and available time – fall foul of Lencioni’s ‘dysfunctions’; there is an absence of trust in the material, a fear of conflict through non-engagement, a lack of commitment to shallow implemented interventions, an avoidance of accountability on behalf of the participants and, perhaps worst of all, an inattention to the results – often the things that are most meaningful in the classroom are not the things we can measure through our available matrices, so we make the things we can measure the meaningful ones at the expense of what really matters; the same goes for teacher training and development.

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So, what could a solution be? I feel it is worth considering the principles of Andragogy in our approach to designing effective PD that empowers and enables all teaching staff, and increases not only their own efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness but also their likelihood of engagement.

School Leaders and T&L leads cannot, of course, renounce all accountability for teacher learning, but we can look to ensure that teachers acquire capabilities and competencies necessary to enable them to improve their teaching and therefore student outcomes. We can design and facilitate sessions that ensure teachers broaden their repertoire of strategies and deepen their reservoir of experience, heightening their responsiveness but in a manner that is rich in context.

Through the work of Knowles we can determine that adult learners differ from child learners: • They must focus on solving specific problems

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• Adult education must rely on the experience of teachers • There should be significant knowledge and experience gained by teachers from training • Teachers should be able to analyse and check teaching material • Teachers should receive regular feedback about their progress Now, when we consider every teacher undertaking a PD programme as an adult learner, we can perhaps start to avoid some of the pitfalls highlighted above; the role of the teacher-educator or instructor in an andragogical approach is that of tutor or mentor, developing the capacity of the teacher to become more self-directed – to encourage reflection and self-direction that encourages more transformational learning, and to allow the teacher to adapt their practice alongside their perceptions.

The PD instructor / educator in a school setting therefore shows teachers how to find information as opposed to placing it

in front of them, relates information to the teacher experience in the classroom , and places a focus on problem-solving within the real-classroom scenarios.

PD leaders establish objectives and curriculum based on the teacher input and guide teachers along the ‘learning path’. The strength of the model is that the ultimate responsibility lies with the teacher, not the teacher-educator; a greater sense of motivation and buy-in through the increased feeling of autonomy perhaps? If we teach pedagogy in an andragogical way, perhaps we might have more impact…

To return then to our bite-sized approach; shorter, more iterative PD sessions in smaller groups, allowing for better contextualisation. Yes, the main aims are tethered at macro level to the overall aims of the institution, but the micro environment of the individual classroom and practitioner become the driving force, for therein lie the specific problems that teachers are setting out to solve, and therein also is where the impact will be most readily identified.

An idealistic approach perhaps, but one to be explored.

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What Could Remote InvIgIlatIon mean FoR eduCatIon?

By Ashley Harrold, CEO of Inspired Online School

How does remote invigilation work and how could it benefit our students?

It is always a joy to celebrate your students’ GCSE and A level triumphs, but as I’m sure many of you may agree, success is so much more than a grade. For some of our students at King’s InterHigh, being able to sit an exam is a huge achievement.

In the summer term, our online school made history as 150 of our learners sat their exams at home via remote invigilation (RI). Many of these students had special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), anxiety, health issues and geographical challenges and would have struggled to complete an exam ‘normally’. Over the course of 19 days, as many as 1,554 remotely-invigilated exam sessions took place across 16 different qualifications, all away from exam halls and test centres.

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The pilot, which was trialled in partnership with Pearson, the leading digital media learning company, could be the gateway to changing the future outcomes and life chances of a huge number of children and young people who cannot access traditional exam conditions and set-ups.

That’s why a key part of this pioneering pilot was using RI to personalise students’ exam experiences as much as possible.

Here’s an inside look at how RI worked in practice and a taste of the tools that could hopefully one day be in reach of schools who – like us – are keen to help rewrite the rules around inclusive assessment.

We all know that these learners exist, and that their individual needs are not always being met in mainstream education. Indeed, new research shows that while 60% of teachers believe education is more inclusive and diverse than it was five years ago, 69% say the growing number of students with SEND or additional learning needs are not being effectively supported to aspire and achieve by the current system.1

A student-centric exam journey While RI might sound like a purely technical or ‘remote’ approach to examinations, the reality in this pilot was very much focused on every student.

Our core aim for the pilot was to give every student the chance to experience exams and achieve qualifications, rather than miss out due to their unique needs, ability or circumstances.

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By bringing secure assessments in our students’ homes and chosen environments this summer via RI, our learners with medical conditions could have rest breaks throughout their exams as they needed them. Our students with neurological differences could sit their exams from their bedroom or the kitchen table, in places where they felt most comfortable, and where they could make noise and move around in ways that they just couldn’t have done in an exam hall.

Take our student Amelia who has sensory issues and struggles in traditional exam environments, as an example. Her mother explained how “She finds being sat in an exam hall or classroom with a stranger invigilating the assessment in silence extremely challenging and will hone in on all sorts of small sounds and stimuli, struggling to concentrate on the test itself and doing far from her best.” Through this pilot, Amelia sat her exams from her bedroom with 10–15- minute rest breaks as she needed them and with access to a mini trampoline to help her with her

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physical and sensory outputs, as well as her focus.

their location, and also their webcam and microphone settings.

We even had another student, a young racing car driver, whose professional sporting commitments this year meant that he was required to be racing at the time of his International GCSE English Language A and Mathematics exams.

Special access was granted so that he could take his exams in his trailer at the track!

There was also a chat function between students and remote invigilators. Through this, learners could ask for assistance, for example when checking their set-up was okay or confirming times for rest breaks.

We discovered that RI could widen access to qualifications to students who otherwise would have been unable to achieve their full potential.

How it worked in practice Students involved in the pilot sat their Pearson Edexcel International GCSE exams either onscreen or on paper.

Remote invigilators at Pearson monitored students using three different camera views from three different recording devices. These included views of the student’s screen or printed exam paper,

As well as every exam being watched live by a remote invigilator, the sessions were recorded and reviewed to ensure adherence to exam guidelines. Meanwhile, students completing onscreen exams were required to access the exam platform via an installed Safe Exam Browser or kiosk mode – meaning that everything other than the exam was locked down. This prevented the use of other programmes or the internet during the exam session.

In addition, throughout the pilot, to fully ensure fairness for all students, those involved were unable to access and/or download their papers, and begin their exams, until 30 minutes after those students who were sitting exams in schools.

@hwrk_magazine

FEATURE

The impact How did RI work for us? I’ll let some of our students’ experiences do the talking here…

Amelia not only achieved top grades in all her exams this summer, she also enjoyed the assessment experience, something she would never have said previously: “I really enjoyed sitting my exams from home in my bedroom, as it was very good for accessibility. I can get panic attacks, but being able to sit my exams from somewhere that I felt comfortable and being able to take regular breaks easily and make noise on my trampoline really helped me manage my stress and do my best. I’ll be doing my A levels next and after that I want to go to university. I’m passionate about human rights and want to make a difference for people with disabilities and those who feel marginalised.”

It was a similar story for student Sylvie, who has myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

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She works best in the afternoon so had a staggered start time of her exams and longer rest breaks, whilst still under secure exam conditions. She said RI was a “game changer… With my condition I honestly don’t think that I would have been able to do them in person, or I would have just been so exhausted when I got there that I would have done terribly. My remote invigilator was fantastic, so patient and helpful… I felt really supported and confident throughout.”

in ways that wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.

What’s next?

As for my thoughts of the pilot and the use of RI more broadly: I feel like something momentous is in our grasp; that the responsible use of RI is a key step for ensuring transformation and genuine inclusive assessment for the learners that need it.

Elsewhere, Joba, who most likely would not have been able to sit a traditional exam at all due to his needs, was able to complete six exams from his kitchen table, while his father waited upstairs, rooting him on. While Sonny, the racing car driver, could get his International GCSE grades without impacting his sporting career.

We’re hoping to offer RI again to students this academic year, and I know Pearson is keen to work with regulators to explore how it could be used elsewhere. While it might not be appropriate for all students, we wonder if it could transform access to exams and outcomes for more learners with SEND, or those in alternative provision, hospitals or hospices?

These are just some of the remarkable student stories from this pilot. Our teachers also found the experience a really positive one and have relished the opportunity to see their students flourish

This pilot was an important chapter, and we look forward to being part of where the story goes next.

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Using Ai To CreATe TeAChing resoUrCes

By Dawn Cox

In the summer of 2023 it was unclear if I would have anyone teaching in my department in September so I knew I was going to have a challenge to create resources that ‘anyone’ can use to run a lesson. I didn’t want to have to change our curriculum due to not having specialist teachers so needed a plan to ensure students would have high quality resources regardless. One challenge for RE is that as it isn’t National Curriculum; any existing textbooks won’t match the planned curriculum. So I thought about writing my own to cover precisely what I would usually teach and more!

I personally like using Google for creating resources and using Slides makes things even easier in terms of design and editing.

So I decided I would write the textbook using Google slides to make it easy to access at school, home and to share with others.

Because of the design process, I managed

to get a two-screen set up for my computer: one for the textbook slides and one for the AI bot. However, on day 1 in school I came across a barrier; my school had blocked ChatGPT and Bing AI. I was interested in how many schools had also done this so did a small-scale poll on Twitter.

This is when I turned to AI. I had signed up to ChatGPT (https:// chat.openai.com/) from home early on after its launch and had done some initial searches. I then saw others discussing other sites on Twitter such as Bing AI and Bard. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to use AI to my advantage and announced that I would be making a textbook for our Year 8 Hinduism unit using AI.

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@hwrk_magazine

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I suspect as things are new that school internet filtering systems are not up to date with new practices in teaching.

So I had a choice, to do it all at home or to find a solution. I then saw people on Twitter discussing Google’s AI offer, Claude and went to try it. Thankfully it worked so then became my AI bot of choice when in school.

I started by planning a list of the content that I knew I would need to cover our

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scheme. I designed a basic slide that would be repeated throughout the textbook including the same page title header, a section for keywords, page numbers and sections for activities. I knew I was going to print the textbooks in colour so I considered the colour of these.

So, I began with Claude and asked for content that I needed for each page. I began to use different prompts. Prompts

are the questions or tasks that you give the AI bot and the wording of these matters a lot. I started off very polite and verbose and then as I went on I didn’t worry about spelling/manners/grammar and it still worked.

An example of content that I needed was some historical background on the British in India

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And this is what I ended up with, using the content it had given me and adjusting for our students.

One thing that became important was including age in the prompts. Some of the ideas and content in the topic are complex and needed to use simpler language. For example, the belief in Brahman….

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@hwrk_magazine

FEATURE I previously had a few quotations from the holy texts for this unit but I knew I wanted the unit to be fully text based from a Theological perspective so this is where the AI bot was excellent. I asked it for quotations to support each concept

that I wanted students to learn about and it did exactly that. It gave me more than I needed but it meant that I could choose which quotations would be most suitable. And after an initial prompt of ‘give quotations from the Bhagavad Gita

on death’, if I wanted more, I just added the prompt ‘more’ and it gave me more! The number of hours saved either looking inside a book or searching online for these specific quotations was huge.

I could then easily copy and paste the information into my textbook.

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I also asked it to draw me a diagram to illustrate a concept however it didn’t work well. Maybe it was a step too far for Claude AI to create something in this way. Maybe other AI sites would do this better.

When I started writing I had in mind a textbook that would be a mix of information and activities for students to complete. I had to ensure that a lesson could happen without a specialist. I experimented with prompts to write activities.

I used the prompt: “Write 5 multiple choice questions on this text” and pasted in the text from the page of information.

It quickly (much quicker than I would have done it!) created the questions with different possible answers. And they were

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good! I then realised that I hadn’t been specific enough for what I actually wanted so asked it for questions with four answer options. Throughout using AI it is what you ask the bot to do that matters in what you get back. The more specific you are the better. The content that I had pasted I had written because it was very specific to our curriculum but if it was general content I have had to add prompts like “for an 11 year old” to ensure it is at an appropriate level.

I then asked for general activities. This

would be a real test for the AI as it is asking them to plan appropriate activities for students to complete using the content given. I was sceptical. However, it did really well. It suggested doable and appropriate activities for the Year 8s. My editing of these was down to pedagogical choice and practicalities. Some involved group work or getting up around the room which I didn’t want for potential supply teachers to have to manage. I wanted basic comprehension and simple creative tasks that a student could complete by themselves in their exercise book.

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FEATURE I also asked it to create some basic comprehension questions on the text. It did well and I could add to/edit these.

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Since writing this first textbook, I have found some other AI sites that I think will do some of this in a better way. For example, QuestionWell (https://www.questionwell.org/) will create the multiple choice questions but also, creates learning

objectives from these and will export to many other platforms e.g. Google Forms, Kahoot so will have multiple possibilities for using the content. I think the content creating bots like Claude will be my go-to for the information but other sites for activities.

Things I’ve learnt along the way

• AI Bots - Consider using different sites for different tasks.

There are an increasing number of sites that are using AI however we need to be clear on how they can be useful otherwise it might become overwhelming.

• Prompts matter - refine these to get the best from the AI bot • Training - Schools need to do some awareness training of the existence of AI (especially that students can use) and then some practical training on how to use AI to our advantage in our teaching.

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I’m now writing the next textbook for the next topic and it will hopefully be quicker to write than the first one.

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PEDAGOGY 34. Talking Floats On A Sea Of Write

Can oracy be developed in isolation, or does it often depend on the quality of the written word?

40. Understanding And Supporting Pupils With English As An Additional Language

An evaluation of support for EAL students in schools

46. Developing Metacognitive Monitoring Skills

How can learners monitor and evaluate their progress throughout tasks? Nathan Burns offers some tips in his latest article on metacognition.

52. From Stage To Sage: Promoting Oracy With Strategies From Drama

If oracy is something to be brought in from the fringes of the curriculum, how do we as a profession make it front and centre of our pedagogy?

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PEDAGOGY

Talking floaTs on a sea of wriTe Can oracy be developed in isolation, or does it often depend on the quality of the written word?

By Claire Sealy

‘Writing floats on a sea of talk’ said James Britton in the 1970s.’ If you can’t say it, you can’t write it. The assertion is that teaching children to write articulately necessarily involves teaching children to speak articulately. But this assertion assumes that writing is transcribed speech. However, because speech and writing are produced in very different communicative situations, there are significant differences in how they are structured. What is more, writing enables a different type of more formal speech.

Exploratory talk and presentational talk, to use the categories first proposed by Douglas Barnes and then expanded upon by Neil Mercer, are different from everyday, conversational talk. More formal ways of talking are dependent upon writing.

If you can’t write it, you can’t say it. Or as Quntillian said in the first century, ‘By writing we speak with greater accuracy and by speaking we write with greater ease.’ Talking floats on a sea of ‘write.’

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Whereas talk is transient, fleeting and ephemeral, writing is durable. It has permanence. Spoken words appear and then disappear in the moment, vanishing without trace. Since working memory is fairly limited, the transience of speech means that it is hard to articulate and organise complex thoughts or to revisit the complex thoughts of others. The development of the technology of literacy extended working memory by outsourcing it to an external memory field – the written word - giving humans the ability to store and retrieve ideas efficiently and accurately.

The very fact that writing could store and enable retrieval of ideas resulted in a new type of communication allied to, but different from the spoken word. Because speech and writing are produced in very different communicative situations, there are differences in how they are structured.

Both types of communication involve trade-offs.

As writing is durable and has permanence, it does not usually involve live interaction with a

listener. Writing is both asocial and asynchronous. This has the advantage that it is possible to communicate across time and space but this comes with a price. With face-toface speech, the speaker receives immediate feedback should their listeners appear confused, and can act on this and add in more detail.

Writers do not receive real time feedback from their readers so cannot spontaneously adapt their message.

This places a responsibility on writers to explain things more clearly and explicitly than when talking.

Everyday conversation usually takes place between people who share a context. The speaker can make assumptions about what the listener already knows that a writer cannot. This is further compounded by differences of culture or history.

Vernacular ways of speaking work fine in a local, immediate context.

But for written material that may be read by a reader at some remove in time or space from the author, standardised ways of writing need developing that mitigate linguistic differences.

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PEDAGOGY

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PEDAGOGY The transient nature of spoken language places burdens on the working memory not only on the speaker but on the listener.

Spoken language is structured to accommodate this. For example, when speaking, we buy thinking time both for ourselves and listeners by using voiced hesitations such as ‘um’ and ‘ah’. We pause, repeat and rephrase so that listeners have time to absorb the spoken message and to give ourselves time to plan our next utterance.

Hesitations are not only acceptable, they are necessary. The fixity of writing means these working memory workarounds are not necessary. The written word does not vanish once uttered. The reader can revisit written utterances. The reader can pause, hesitate. The writer is expected to have already rephrased their thoughts into the clearest utterance possible prior to publication. Repetition, so necessary in spoken language, is frowned upon in writing. Writers deliberately try to use synonyms rather than repeat the same word within a sentence.

Speaking involves thinking on the spot. Writing gives you take up time to monitor and edit your thoughts. You can write a sentence, pause, reread it, reword it, change the order, extent it, abridge it or delete it. You have time to think about word choice, literary devices, removing repetition, adding in rhetorical devices, changing sentence length. Writing can be polished in ways that conversational speech cannot. Writing is expected to be polished in ways that conversation speech is not.

Fragments abound in conversational speech. In writing, the sentence rules. The basic unit of spoken language is what is called a tone group, not the sentence. A tone group is a group of words said in a single breath and carrying a single thought. The permanence of writing permits more complex sentences,

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sentences which might include subordinate clauses. Sentences and clauses are ways of indicating to the reader the boundary between one thought and another.

In speech, tone of voice, timing, volume, stress and timbre communicate not only meaning but also attitude and emotion. These have no direct correlate in writing.

Instead, punctuation plays a crucial though not entirely straightforward role in communicating meaning and emotional intent. Adverbs and adjectives are also much more common in writing, since emotion and intensity cannot be inferred from tone, stress volume or facial expression.

Far from perceiving the absence of social interaction as weakness, formal academic writing sees its deliberate impersonal stance as underpinning objectivity. Academic thought becomes an ongoing truth quest untrammelled by group loyalty or personal circumstance. It codifies detachment from the sphere of social influence by such deliberately impersonal devices as writing in the third person, using passive voice constructions and nominalised forms of verbs (evaporation rather than evaporate, decision rather than decide). Modal verbs convey the provisional, tentative and challengeable nature of written thought.

Learning to write is therefore really complex. Learning to write isn’t just about learning to transcribe transient spoken utterances into permanent representations, it is about learning to communicate differently, using a different syntax.

It’s learning a whole new way of sentence-based communication.

When we learn to write, we learn a new language, a language that is no one’s natal tongue - the language of ‘write.’ And it is a language we need to learn to speak not only in order to write – maybe AI will do a lot of that

for us in the future – but in order to think the kind of complex, extended thoughts that writing makes possible. Learning the language of ‘write’ turbocharges the ability to think abstractly and analytically. If you can’t write it, you can’t think it or say it.

This language of ‘write’ can be spoken as well as written. It is the language of presentational speech.

When listening to a speech or a documentary, you are probably listening to the language of ‘write’.

But at some point, this oral event was written before it was spoken.

There’s a script or an article, or a blog or a book or a plan behind the spoken event. People just don’t talk at length in extended and coherently joined sentences without either having written it down first.

Behind the scenes will be planning and preparation, research and revision.

So what does this mean for oracy in the classroom? The phase and subjects we are working within must shape our decisions. With younger children who cannot yet decode or handwrite with fluency, talk acts as a scaffold for thinking in ways that writing cannot. Children are beginning to learn sentencebased communication through being read to and by hearing adults use exploratory and presentational talk and through being encouraged to begin to use such forms themselves. Ideally, though sadly far from the norm, writing lessons will include explicit focus on developing sentence-based communication both orally and in writing before expecting writing at length. Oral rehearsal is not a replacement for writing, it is part of learning how to write well.

Acquisition of the basic building blocks of phonics, handwriting and sentence syntax are necessarily foundational to becoming a writer and it does children a disservice

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to expect them to write at length before these prerequisites are in place. Instead, oral storytelling, prompted by story maps, provides the space for composition.

Alongside this, teachers should plan for and encourage talk for a range of communicative functions - see EYFE the language of learning by Alex Bedford and Julie Sherrington for more on this.

Once children can decode and handwrite – writing is able to act as a scaffold for talking (and vice versa). Though we must pay heed to what makes sense in curricular terms for each discipline. Imposing school-wide oracy rituals without due regard for what works for specific subjects is an all too familiar way of taking a good idea and ruining it. But where exploratory talk does make sense within a subject, initially this may take place in the casual vernacular. Sentence dominated idioms are too clunky for spontaneous, social interaction, and plain weird used within conversations.

in the curriculum will make learning more accessible because talk is easier than writing. This misconception leads some to embrace oracy as fairer and more inclusive and others to reject it as involving a dumbing down of expectations. But learning to communicate in the asynchronous and asocial language of ‘write’ is not easier than conversational language; it’s much harder. This is not about chatting in class. The language of ‘write’ is a specialised kind of language that gives students the ability to talk about and hence think about things that otherwise they couldn’t. If we believe that all children belong in academic spaces, then all children are entitled to be taught how to use this powerful language.

Learning through talk, though potentially valuable, is not by itself going to be enough to enable children to develop the syntax of the language of ‘write.’ Children also need to learn about talk,

and in particular the sentencebased structures of exploratory and presentational talk . Curriculum planning needs to include explicit instruction in the syntactic structures of the disciplinarily appropriate language of ‘write’.

Expecting children to use writing or speech to communicate extended thought, when children are still novices in learning the syntax of this new language sets many up for failure. Talking in ‘write’ is even more challenging (given you are attempting to speak spontaneously in a medium designed for asynchronous communication that you may not have been explicitly taught) than writing in ‘write.’

Calls for more oracy often seem to place more emphasis on the mode of communication - spoken rather than written - rather than the type of communication - casual, consultative or formal. Oracy is not a simple alternative to writing; writing enables powerful oracy. If we want better oracy, we also need better writing.

Exploring ideas with others in the moment means participants need the thinking time that voiced hesitations and repetitions provide.

But children need to learn how to switch code. They need to translate informal conversational talk into the more formal language of ‘write’, revisiting, editing, extending or abridging their thoughts with the aim of being able to share with an audience using polished formal presentational language whether orally or in writing. White boards are helpful here, acting as a ‘no man’s land’ between transient speaking and the formally phrased sentence, enabling fleeting phrases to be captured, revised and recast into sentenced-based idiom, while allowing erasure of that revision.

It is sometimes assumed that because conversational language comes naturally, including talk

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REFERENCES: 1. see James Mannion The transformative power of oracy – ORACY CAMBRIDGE

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Understanding and sUpporting pUpils with english as an additional langUage The Department for Education (DfE) defines a pupil as having English as an additional language (EAL) if the pupil was exposed to any language other than English during their early years and continues to be exposed to that language in the home or in the community (2018).

By Leila Harris

The EAL community is a diverse group with varying levels of English.

Furthermore, this group is growing.

It was recognised in January 2018 that 21.2% of pupils were classed as having EAL, an increase of approximately 3.7% since 2012 (DfE, 2012, 2018). Through this paper I provide an insight into how schools may be able to provide appropriate provision to cater for and support the distinct needs of this group of pupils.

I will attempt to demonstrate this by

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addressing three questions: • What is EAL? • What does an inclusive school culture and ethos look like?

• How can we best support our pupils with EAL in school?

Despite the significant number of pupils who speak English as an Additional Language, there seems to be very little guidance and training for teachers about

how to support bilingual pupils. I address the questions listed above and through my exploration of each question, provide examples based on my personal experiences as a practitioner working in a large and socioeconomically diverse setting in north west London.

At the school in which I work, over forty-nine different languages are spoken and each year group from Reception to Year 6 has more than 90% EAL. This paper is borne out of reflections on the work

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that we have done in my school around teaching and learning for bilingual pupils. We are incredibly proud of the range of languages spoken and it’s humbling to see the pride our children take in sharing their languages, cultures and heritages with others in our school community. The value system and ethos we have developed is nourished by all members of the school community contributing and demonstrating care, respect and curiosity in each other’s language, heritage and cultures.

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What is EaL? This question is deceptively simple to answer. I have already detailed the definition given by the DfE which defines EAL as a child who was exposed to any language other than English during early development and continues to be exposed to it in the home or community.

The complexity of the definition needs to be explored as this covers a wide range of pupils including:

those who arrive from other countries and whose first language is not English; those who have lived in the UK for a long time and may appear to be fluent but who also speak another language at home; those who were born in the UK but for whom the home language is not English. There is additionally the range of their school experiences to be considered, which may have been in this country or abroad, or alternatively, no school experience.

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PEDAGOGY There seems to be a range of terms used for pupils with EAL including English as a Second Language (ESL) and ‘bilingual’. However, it is more inclusive to use the term ‘EAL’ or ‘multilingual’ as English may be a third or fourth language spoken, rather than a second (Sword, 2021).

The reported figure of EAL pupils across the UK is 21.1%, but I suspect this figure is likely to be much higher.

It is possible that some families may not feel comfortable to share their home language and heritage with schools, or perhaps there is a misunderstanding around the term EAL, which may be considered to be a child who does not speak English well, if at all. This has implications for schools and the messages they convey to families about the value they place on bilingual pupils.

It is evident that EAL pupils are not a homogenous group and that a single approach to supporting them to access the curriculum and achieve their potential cannot be found. Pupils who speak English as an additional language face many challenges. As well as acquiring vocabulary, picking up pronunciation and understanding grammatical structures, pupils will also need to be able to learn through the English language.

What doEs an incLusivE schooL cuLturE and Ethos Look LikE? Understanding the school community is critical but this goes beyond the facts and figures about the number of EAL pupils and languages spoken. In my role I have realised the underlying importance of developing strong and positive relationships within the school community. Encouraging pupils to learn a few key words and phrases in other children’s languages is a

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simple way to show that you want everyone to be included, feel special and valued.

A possible way to facilitate pupils to feel included and reduce feelings of isolation and segregation is for them to take on the role of ‘teacher’ to the rest of the class to teach key words and greetings.

Additionally, if children are new arrivals and speak little or no English, hearing a familiar greeting can reassure a child who finds themselves in an unfamiliar setting, with people who may not be able to communicate in their language and with other life elements such as food which are also unfamiliar.

Building links between the school and families may also go beyond the direct school community and may include local businesses, places of worship and other local organisations. These are the places and people the pupils look to for help in shaping their outlook on their world as well as the aspirations that they hold for themselves.

The complexity and diversity of this growing group of bilingual pupils in schools is astounding but should be celebrated. All our pupils are entitled to equal access to a broad and balanced school curriculum and the learning and using of more than one language is an asset. Research has shown that good development of a child’s home language has a positive effect on the development of other languages (Sharples, 2021).

In my school context, pupils are celebrated as ‘Language Ambassadors’ and are given responsibilities to help to guide new families around the school explaining the school day, structure and routines in their home language. This serves to create a positive atmosphere in which being

able to speak other languages is valued and encouraged as teachers actively ask pupils to do this and take on the role of translator.

To truly show how diversity is celebrated and valued it needs to be promoted across the whole school; in the displays, the ways we teach and the work we do.

This also includes using home languages in lessons so that pupils are able to access the curriculum whilst learning and acquiring the English language. By encouraging collaborative learning activities, pupils are encouraged to discuss their learning. Vygotsky (1978) reminds us that dialogue with a more expert other is crucial as this helps to develop one’s own language, the complexity of language and language structures within a purposeful context.

Families need to be reassured by practitioners in schools that bilingual pupils should be encouraged to speak, retell stories, sing rhymes and songs in their home language, firstly to continue their cultural and linguistic traditions and heritage but also secondly as use of home languages provides structures that may also be transferred to English.

This has been referred to as Translanguaging’ – “the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential.” García (2009, p. 140). Translanguaging pedagogy challenges are what Jim Cummins (2008) called the ‘two solitudes’ approach to bilingualism, in which languages were kept strictly separate. National events such as ‘International Mother Language Day’ provide opportunities for children to share parts of their culture, heritage and traditions.

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As community groups begin to grow across the school, one way of supporting pupils to promote their language is to facilitate first language groups. This can also be shared across the whole school through an assembly to which children’s families may also be invited. In my school context, we used international mother language day to draw together a whole school themed week celebrating diversity.

The week was called ‘sharing lives through love’ and pupils were asked to share poems and rhymes in their home languages which were displayed around the school; pupils were asked to come to school in their traditional dress and create classroom signs displayed in their home language (for example: wash your hands with soap; book corner; please switch lights off when you leave the room). Seeing scripts in

other languages around the school building which pupils identify with is a visible way of demonstrating how different languages are encouraged and valued.

Inviting the children’s families in to school is a way of breaking down barriers between the school and the pupil’s family. Our school hosts coffee mornings twice a week. One of these sessions is specifically for Afghani mums who are keen to connect with others as well as learn English.

Given the context and school community, our school has developed and built a connected curriculum which places the children’s learning within a clear context. In this way, the pupils’ learning across the curriculum is connected (rather than being

taught discretely) which helps to provide opportunities to build on learning, as well as build a range of opportunities to hear and use a rich language and vocabulary. In addition, a wider global dimension can always be extrapolated from the curriculum to make direct links to pupils, as well as making the curriculum relevant to them.

For example: when learning about traditional stories, stories from a range of cultures can also be incorporated; in Maths when learning counting songs and rhymes, alternative songs in different languages can also be shared; when learning time pupils could link this with finding the time in their home country; when writing instructions for how to play a playground game, traditional games from other countries may also be included.

Celebrations across the school year are another way of connecting the curriculum and making learning accessible and relevant to pupils.

Our school were asked to contribute to a ‘community cookbook’ which shared recipes from their culture for celebratory events.

Creating an inclusive culture and ethos must, however, be treated with sensitivity. Some things that teachers here may consider to be common practice and ‘normal’ may not be so for students from other cultures. For example: in China, teachers are seen as authority figures and there is very little teacher-student interaction. In fact, speaking to the teacher may be considered as daring and may make a student feel uncomfortable, particularly if asked to express their own thoughts and ideas (Wan, 2001; Zhang and Xu, 2007). This can be addressed through the culture and learning climate promoted so that pupils are encouraged to work and learn collaboratively, use discussion as a tool to explore learning and staff model and facilitate this to be done respectfully.

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PEDAGOGY hoW can WE bEst support our pupiLs With EaL in schooL? Throughout this article the complexity of the EAL group has been highlighted. As educators, it is our duty and responsibility to support all pupils. It seems appropriate that students from other countries be included in lessons by being made to feel comfortable to share their culture and experiences of which there are two main benefits. Firstly, the pupil’s self-esteem and engagement with learning is heightened and secondly, this helps peers to better understand other perspectives.

Research suggests that pupils with EAL who have had appropriate support often outperform their monolingual peers (Bialystok and Craik, 2010). As practitioners, we also carry a responsibility to provide a rich language environment in which pupils are facilitated to hear, understand and ultimately use through speech or writing.

Based on my experience and observations of working in a multilingual classroom, I have observed that visual prompts for the children (e.g. real artefacts, film clips) support EAL learners to access their learning. It is most useful to use ‘real life’ photos as opposed to ‘comic style’ pictures as these do not always represent the items accurately. Furthermore, the use of actions and songs can help to provide visual cues to facilitate language learning. As an example of this in the classroom, children are facilitated to retell a story incorporating story language using the Talk for Writing technique (Corbett and Strong, 2017).

Below is a list of some ideas which may support EAL pupils in the classroom to access and actively participate in learning. Although it may seem that many of the strategies could also serve to benefit all learners, specifically for bilingual pupils these need to be accompanied with rich language as well as opportunities for purposeful and meaningful talk.

Providing purposeful and meaningful opportunities to work collaboratively in mixed ability groups serves to increase student engagement and gives EAL pupils an opportunity to practise speaking in a less intimidating context.

Encouraging pupils to speak in lessons could include children using their home language, as well as displaying their work in their own home language, and using technology to support translating work during a lesson. It is crucial that EAL children are paired with supportive peers who are perceived as being good role models.

Providing families with a newsletter outlining key vocabulary is a useful way of communicating what we will be learning as well as making this accessible to pupils in a variety of languages.

Activating a pupil’s prior learning enables learners to build on what the child already knows and builds the interconnections between ideas.

In the classroom, this may involve a pre-teaching session (prior to the main lesson) in which pupils are introduced to key vocabulary. For example: when cooking, groups of pupils may be asked to help gather the equipment and ingredients needed so they are familiar with key words.

Using talk partners is a useful way to allow pupils to think of what they want to say and rehearse how to say it before sharing this with a wider audience. Similarly, the use of speaking frames, writing frames and sentence starters which provide models of sentence construction is a good way to help develop language and build in more complex language structures, as well as supporting the children to create sentences independently. The building of

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more complex sentences may also be supported by programmes such as Widgits (symbols to support communication), colourful semantics and the like as they help to visually prompt children to build longer and more complex sentences with details.

Once a question has been asked, it may be useful to give pupils an extra minute or two as ‘thinking time’ before asking pupils to share their ideas with a larger group.

It is also important to understand that language learners go through several stages on their journey to language fluency. Most children with EAL, particularly if new to the country, go through a silent period and will begin speaking when they feel confident to do so. It can be tiring, frustrating and has the potential to be embarrassing if you are unable to understand what is happening or make yourself understood in the classroom. This may manifest as challenging behaviour. Most children respond well to empathising with the challenges they are facing and encouraging them to persevere.

At the beginning of this section I commented that practitioners have a responsibility to model a variety of rich language and vocabulary.

However, it is also important to be aware of phrases and idioms such as ‘a rainy day’ or ‘I’ll let you off the hook’ as they will need further explanation.

We also cannot and should not do this isolation, and so it makes sense to use translators and dual language texts for children and their families so we can encourage them to use their culture and traditions to support learning in this country.

summary: Through this article I have discussed how multilingualism in schools should be considered as an asset.

This is supported by the research particularly as EAL pupils who have received appropriate support often outperform their monolingual peers (Bialystok, 2010). Research has also

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shown that students in schools with high percentages of pupils with EAL have an enhanced ability to think creatively and to use higher order cognitive thinking skills (Sword, 2021).

Through the promotion of collaborative working and pupil talk rich lessons, the creative thinking skills may also be shared and benefit

monolingual speakers. Our responsibility as staff working in schools should be to provide a rich language environment for all, in which staff model and provide the children with opportunities for purposeful talk to support language development and learning.

Schools may be seen as microcosms for society and through this lens we

have an opportunity to shape future generations and society through the children and families we work with. If we demonstrate how it is possible to welcome those with different abilities, share our similarities and celebrate our differences we will have planted a seed to support the growth and development of a global community in which we can work and learn together as respectful and caring citizens.

rEfErEncEs: Bialystok, E., & Craik, F. I. M. (2010). Cognitive and Linguistic Processing in the Bilingual Mind. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 19–23 Corbett, P. and Strong, J. (2017) Creating Storytellers and Writers Cummins, J. (2008) Teaching for Transfer: Challenging the two solitudes assumption in bilingual education. In: Jim Cummins and Nancy H. Hornberger (eds). Encyclopaedia of Language and Education Vol. 5: Bilingual Education (2nd edition edition). Boston: Springer Science + Business Media.

Garcia, O. (2006) Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century. In: Ajit Mohanty, Minati Panda, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (eds). Multilingual Education for Social Justice: Globalising the Local New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, pp. 128-145 Department for Education (2018) Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics, January 2012 Department for Education (2018) Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics, January 2018 NALDIC (2016) What is Translanguaging? – EAL Journal Sharples, R. (2021) Teaching EAL: Evidence-Based Strategies for the Classroom and School Multilingual Matters: Bristol Sword, R. (2021) How to Support EAL Students in the Classroom Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press Wan, G. (2001) The learning experience of Chinese students in American universities: A crosscultural perspective College Student Journal, 35(1), 28–44 Zhang, Z., & Xu, J. (2007) Chinese graduate students’ adaptation to learning in America: A cultural perspective. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 3(1), 147-158 Zhang, Z., & Xu, J. (2007b). Understanding Chinese international graduate students’ adaptation to learning in North America: A cultural perspective. Higher Education Perspectives, 3(1),45-59

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Developing Metacognitive Monitoring SkillS How can learners monitor and evaluate their progress throughout tasks? Nathan Burns offers some tips in his latest article on metacognition.

By Nathan Burns

Welcome back to the third article in this series on metacognition. If you haven’t read the first article in this series on metacognitive theory (link) then it will be well worth your while reading that. The more you understand the theory behind metacognition, the more you will understand the strategies that are covered in this article.

Content CheCklists

The purpose of this article is to put some ‘meat on the bones’ of how metacognition can be introduced into the classroom, maximising impact for student learning and minimizing the amount of additional work that you need to do. The focus here will be on monitoring – an individual’s ability to consider the progress that they are making on a task, and whether

The first strategy is the idea of a content checklist. This list could be produced by yourself as the teacher, in collaboration with students, or led completely by individual or groups of students. The purpose of the list is to include everything that must be included within the perfect response to a question, task or problem. Through identifying all of the required factors, students can

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they are heading in the right direction. In essence, monitoring is the process of evaluating during a task, to ensure that the task is completed as effectively and efficiently as possible.

then tick them off the list as they go through completing their work.

Through ensuring that students are ticking these off as they go, it will mean that students do not get to the end of their work and suddenly realise that they have missed out a considerable number of points that they ought to have included within their work. Furthermore, through having this list, students will be able to identify which factors they need to include and ensure that they are included within their response to the task at suitable points, rather than shoe-horning them in at the end or including a final paragraph nailing some of these points, but at a place in their response where it perhaps does not make a huge amount of sense.

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PEDAGOGY This is a hugely easy to use strategy, and even led by you, will only add on a couple of minutes to task planning at very most (and less if students make the lists themselves, too!).

key Questions Similar to the previous strategy, this strategy focusses on breaking down a larger question or task into smaller chunks. Rather than identifying key information that ought to be included in a response, however, this strategy focusses on breaking down a larger question or task into smaller bitesize questions.

Once again, these questions could be written by you, in collaboration with students, or led by individual students or groups of students instead. It may actually be that you show students how to break down a larger question into smaller, bitesize questions too, as a form of modelling to students, so that they can see how an expert would go about the task.

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By breaking down the task, students can then work their way through each of the sub-questions or tasks that they have, ticking each one off in turn. Once again, this ensures that students do include everything in their final response as required, and don’t miss anything out. It can also help to ensure that students order their responses in a sensible manner, rather than just remembering right at the end that they ought to include something.

Either way, it is an easy way to ensure that students break down a task in a suitable manner and also ensure that they do complete all sections of a given task or question.

Flow Map This is a strategy that will likely already be in place in your classroom. The focus with this strategy is once again to break down a question or task, but this time to place in chronological order the steps which must be taken to complete the task successfully.

One thing that you will often find with students is that they have difficulty in knowing the way in which they should complete a task.

Even if students are aware of each of the components of a successful answer/competition of a task, they can struggle with knowing how to go about actually completing the task.

Once again, these flow maps – placing the steps in a chronological order – could be produced by you, you with students, or students alone. However, this is probably one of the more helpful strategies to design with students. Model to students what stages they should be completing the task in and explain why. Perhaps once you have done this once, the second time you could do it with student input, and the third time students could do it in groups or individually. As with all of these strategies, there are scaffolds that we eventually want to remove, so going through a ‘I Do, We Do, You Do’ method is a very successful way of doing this.

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The benefit of this strategy is that we are removing a load from students when they are completing an answer. Rather than students having to consider the content requirements and task requirements, they can instead just focus on the former – more than enough for students to be doing. This also helps students with monitoring, as they will be going through each stage, and in the correct order, too. No more getting to the end of a task and discovering that key points have been missed or that they have approached it in the incorrect manner!

warning signs The last strategy is perhaps my favourite of the four, and it definitely supports content learning more than the other strategies. The focus here is on developing a list of things that students should NOT have in their answer/task response, building upon misconceptions.

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For example, if a student were faced with a Mathematical task involving the perimeter or area of a shape, they should under no circumstances get a negative length (this is impossible). Equally, if measurements are in cm, then an answer where the answer is in km seems very unlikely and should make you doubt yourself and double check what you have done.

Therefore, this strategy provides students with things that should they come up in their answer, they need to instantly re-evaluate, as they have likely gone wrong.

Often, students will not be aware of an issue with their approach, until they get a final answer/ write-up which just ‘doesn’t make sense’. Through using this method, these issues should be spotted far sooner.

With reference to producing this list, I find that it is often best to develop it with students.

Additionally, it is a strategy best

used towards the end of content teaching, where students are strong with the content being tested, and are most likely to be able to draw out common mistakes/misconceptions that they shouldn’t find in their answers/ responses. Through developing this list with students, we are focussing in on non-examples, significantly improving students’ subject knowledge, and helping to develop their schema of a topic.

So, those are the top four strategies to help develop the monitoring abilities of students.

Consider how amazing it would be to have a class of students who active check their work as they go, rather than just stumbling through to an answer or response, and then needing to start again because it is ‘obviously wrong’. Try out one, two, or even all of these strategies, and see which work best for you, your subject, and your students.

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From Stage to Sage:

Promoting oracy With StrategieS From Drama If oracy is something to be brought in from the fringes of the curriculum, how do we as a profession make it front and centre of our pedagogy?

By Adam Garrett

If your school is like mine, you may have noticed several meetings, twilights and CPD opportunities for oracy being made available to staff this year. Like many others, I’ve met this with cautious optimism. The presumptive Labour government is touting oracy as its educational cornerstone should they be elected next year.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Bridget Phillipson MP have been talking up the importance of students using oracy both as a skill for life and as a tool to help manage mental health.

So, if oracy is something to be brought in from the fringes of the curriculum, how do we as a profession make it front and centre of our pedagogy?

Dialogic talk and the power of knowing how to debate healthily

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and passionately is paramount. Do the children in our classes need to know how to speak fluently at an Oxford Don’s dinner party?

Perhaps. Do they need to learn how to agree to disagree when met with opposition in life? Definitely.

In my opinion, using drama and more importantly using drama correctly, is the most powerful way of championing oracy and unlocking the ability to develop dialogic talk.

I must quickly declare an interest.

I’ve been a teacher for eight years now but before that I trained at Italia Conti Academy in London and worked for several years as an actor, director and workshop facilitator, mainly in schools. The biggest trap I saw teachers and leaders falling into was trying to crowbar drama, acting and performance across the curriculum where it wasn’t always necessary.

In my experience, a lighter touch is key. Using drama games and exercises to work in tandem with overarching questions and themes across subjects is fine but they also work well as stand-alone activities to enhance skills in speaking and listening.

Before moving onto a longer, more in depth exercise, it’s important to establish that ‘offers’ need to be as positive as possible. An easy way to demonstrate this is through 3 mini games ‘Yes and…’ ‘Yes but…’ and ‘No because…’.

In pairs, pupils label each other as l A and B. A makes an offer e.g. let’s go to the cinema. B can only respond with a sentence that starts with ‘yes and..’ e.g. – yes and we could get tango ice blasts too. B then offers their own sentence for A to respond with another ‘Yes and…’ sentence.

This highlights to the pupils that

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by making positive offers to one another, the conversation can only continue and escalate.

After this, change the instruction to answer every offer with the words ‘Yes but…’, thereby showing what happens when only negative offers are made. Pupils will generally find it harder to think up new suggestions because they keep being shot down.

Finally, give the instruction for the responses to all begin with ‘No because…’ an outright rejection of the offer. Once pupils are aware of the parameters of positive offers during the work, you’re ready to work on more complex activities where offers will hopefully be as positive as possible.

There are many different games and exercises that lend themselves well to oracy and you can use the

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Dropbox link provided if you want to have a look through the full list.

For now, I’ll write in a bit more detail about one of my personal favourites. You’ll notice that this exercise doesn’t involve a lot of talking, more internalising. In my experience, I’ve found that by actually taking away the right to speak, students can gain more from the exercise, as long as they’re given the instant opportunity to share their thoughts of paper, laptop or oral discussion.

My favourite exercise to do with students of any key stage is the ‘Week in the Life’. This can be adapted for lots of different topics, themes or stories. I enjoy using it for Art too so I’ll use that as a recent example I did with a Year 4 class.

I began by showing the class ‘Going to the match’ by LS Lowry, a wellknown piece, showing football fans

on their way to a stadium. None of the class had seen it before or had any preconceptions about Lowry himself or the themes he explored through his art.

I gave the class a few minutes on their own with a copy of the painting and asked them to choose one person that appealed to them the most. In the painting, the majority of the peoples’ faces are hidden from view and they all look very similar to one another so it acted as a blank canvas for the pupils. They could create the person’s life from scratch. After giving them some time to choose their character, I asked them to sit somewhere comfortable in the hall or lie down if they preferred.

I said that for now voices weren’t allowed and I asked them to think about their character. Who were they? What was their name? Where

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PEDAGOGY did they work? What were the events that had happened prior to them attending this match? Did they enjoy football? Why were they there? I asked them to work on this independently and not to notice or interact with others unless directed.

At the end of the exercise I asked the pupils to create a mind map about their character, writing everything down about them, which could then be used in our writing classes and when we explored the themes of Lowry’s work.

After this, I asked them to imagine that it was 7am and they were getting up on a Sunday morning, visualising all that was around them. I asked them to think about their house, who they lived with, what they did for work or where they went to school.

Other simple oracy games can involve asking the class to find a moment to clap in unison. Often there’s a lot of trial and error and typically more dominant personalities take over.

After a few tries though, the group listens together, not just to the sounds but to the feeling of the group, finding that moment to clap once in complete unison. When it happens, it’s an incredible moment of achievement.

Over the next 10-15 minutes, they lived a week in the life of their character, all leading up to the match itself on the following Sunday. I guided them through their week, asking them to act out what they did during the mornings, afternoons and evenings.

Sometimes these varied on different days. Pupils would decide completely independently what their character did- some worked every day and got up at the crack of dawn, some never went to work and spent all day walking around town or in cafes. One decided he worked in accountancy and only went to work on a Friday!

‘Grievances’ is also a really good game to encourage pupils to think and speak on their feet. Working pairs, we establish that Person A has done something wrong but they don’t know what it is. Person B enters the scene, angry at whatever the grievance is, but only they know what it was Person A did wrong. It is up to the audience to decide what it was while watching the scene. Person B can express their displeasure but they can’t directly say what the grievance is.

This exercise promotes great dialogic talk. The children in my classes have had healthy debates about the grievances and whether the responses met by the characters warrant the level of grievance demonstrated. I have then used this to work in tandem with the larger questions posed by our topics in school such as opinions on government, morals and ethics.

Dialogic talk, oracy and simple speaking listening skills can be such a powerful tool for children of any age to succeed. This extends both in and out of the classroom. Using drama efficiently can be the key to unlocking its benefits. Using forum theatre, conscience alley, hot seating or thought tracking are all great springboards that the majority of us will have an awareness. From that point on, the debates and discussions can begin because the children will have ‘lived’ that feeling of being in the debate.

After that, the possibilities are endless. I hope you enjoy bringing this into your classroom during the year and starting those debates.

All of these offers were positive though, they kept the action going positively. About halfway through the exercise, I gave them the chance to speak but they could only say one sentence. The sentence had to sum up their character. Some examples were: ‘I’m not afraid to look at her’ ‘If I don’t go to the football, I can’t get up in the morning’ ‘Why did I have children?’

‘I don’t love you anymore’ ‘Football is my life’ (I’m pretty sure this child hadn’t watch Ted Lasso in case anyone is curious)

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EXPAND YOUR MIND ONE SUBJECT AT A TIME

58. Using Description In Non-Fiction Writing Strategies for teaching non-fiction writing in English Language

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CURRICULUM

Descriptively NoN-Descriptive: UsiNg DescriptioN iN NoN FictioN WritiNg

It is tempting to see creative writing as distinct from non-fiction writing; the two existing at opposite ends of a literary spectrum. This is a position enshrined in most GCSE specifications.

By Andy Atherton

Consider AQA English Language. The final question of Paper 1 asks students to write ‘creatively’, often framed as though they are submitting an entry to a creative writing competition.

Paper 2, though, is geared towards non-fiction, with students writing their own article, letter or speech.

The two modes of writing exist in silos, separate from one another.

Students write creatively and then, later on, they don the hat of nonfiction.

Yet, as I’ll argue in this article, it is a mistake to think this way. In reality, the two are similar in many powerful ways. Good non-fiction writing demands a narrative thrust

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and sense of story just as much as creative writing does. It needs to be emotive and carefully crafted just like descriptive writing. Likewise, creative writing should deliver an ‘argument’, something it hopes to say. Helping students to appreciate the many ways these two ostensibly separate forms coalesce and cohabit in fact strengthens their ability to write each one.

In what follows, I want to focus on how to leverage the creative and descriptive within non-fiction writing, helping students to produce persuasive and effective.

To do this, I’ll outline a structural shape for non fiction writing — called DPRN — that I introduce

to GCSE classes each year, paying particular attention to its specifically creative inflections.

D: The Descriptive Hook Most non-fiction writing tasks ask students to respond to a specific statement or view. In the ‘Descriptive Hook’, they should imply their view by asking the reader to imagine a scene and describing it.

The aim of the descriptive hook is to create a character that will help students to convey their point of view without actually stating what it is. They invent a character that they feel will most emotionally

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and persuasively express what they think and to which they can then attach subsequent arguments.

When I introduce this to students I do so with three maxims: 1. The descriptive hook must include a character 2. We do not state what our point of view is but rather imply it 3. The character is doing something or something is happening to our character that helps to imply what our position is We then have a go at brainstorming this kind of character for a given

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question. I ask them to be really specific. What is the character’s name? What do they look like?

How old are they? What is happening to them? How do they feel? How do we want the reader or audience to feel? How does this help to express our point of view?

By doing this, students not only flex their creative muscles — in the process ratcheting up marks for craft and control of language — but they create a powerful emotional hook for the reader. Students are re-purposing a typically creative strategy in order to deliver a rhetorically effective argument.

As an example, consider the AQA

June 2022 question. Students were presented with the following statement: ‘Holidays don’t need to be faraway and expensive. They just need to give people a break from everyday life and the chance to relax’. They were then asked to write an article for a magazine, arguing their point of view.

Now let’s imagine a student wishes to argue for the statement. Using the descriptive hook strategy perhaps they invent a character named Thomas. They begin by describing Thomas sat in an office, engulfed by stacks of photocopied papers. Gloomily lit with the constant whirr of a broken lightbulb, we find Thomas with head

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CURRICULUM

in hands. The monotony of daily life is clearly getting the better of Thomas. Slowly, the student builds up a grim image of his life. What he needs, the writing implies, is a break — a holiday. It doesn’t matter where, but anywhere would be a welcome relief from the suffocating stack of documents slowly surrounding him.

The great benefit to this approach is that it is designed to pack an emotional punch and to hook the reader in. I explain to my students that the great orators (I use the example of Barack Obama) do this all the time: they begin by telling the story of an individual and then wrap into this a wider point or conviction. This is, I say, exactly what we’re doing and it’s a cornerstone of effective rhetoric.

However, it also serves a structural purpose since we can now refer to this character throughout our piece, threading the ideas it initiates as we move through our argument. The descriptive folds itself into non-fiction.

PRN: Position, Relevance, Now

overview of the issues at stake. The personal intermingles with the general. Students utilise aspects of the creative — character, emotion, story — to illuminate and embellish the explanatory.

Next comes ‘Relevance’. Students address why this issue is relevant to modern society and why their readers ought to be thinking about it. Perhaps students discuss topical issues such as burnout in the workplace and the intensity of office life. Returning again to Thomas, they extol the virtues of a holiday as a way to recharge. What matters to Thomas, they argue, is that he is able to find a moment of solace in an otherwise busy world.

It doesn’t matter how much it costs or where it is, but rather the impact it can have. And Thomas, they make clear, perhaps echoing the Inspector, is just one of millions suffering the same fate.

Finally, students arrive at ‘Now’.

Here, they offer their reader a specific action to take. What is the solution? What should readers do? For a final time, they invoke Thomas and all those like him

that might be reading. Here, we find Thomas no longer encircled by papers. Instead we find hm sat in a comfy chair in a quiet coffee shop reading a good book. Not a beach. Not a swimming pool. No umbrella-d cocktail in sight. He doesn’t need any of this. What he needs is a break. And he’s found it not in some exotic location, but in a peaceful village.

The reader should keep this in mind, the student claims, when they next go to book a holiday. They should remember what matters. It doesn’t need to be expensive, it just needs to be different.

And Now… And now, finally, with a call to action of my own. When you next teach non-fiction writing, keep the creative in mind. We learn from creative writing the power of characters and the power of stories. We learn about the impact of narrative trajectory. The beginning and the end. But all of this works for non-fiction writing too. Not opposites, but distinctly harmonious.

With the descriptive hook fully established, students can now develop their wider piece.

Next, they shift into what I call ‘Position’. Having only implied their view in the descriptive phase, now they can be far more emphatic and explicit. Thomas doesn’t care where his holiday is, they might say, only that he has one. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s expensive or faraway, but what matters is that it punctuates the daily grind, offering a light in an otherwise gloomy existence.

Continuing to lean on their opening description, students return to the example of Thomas, but now embed this into an

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LEADERSHIP 62. A Different Journey to PrimAry LeADershiP Thoughts on a different leadership journey towards Primary headship…

68. mAstering miDDLe LeADershiP

What should middle leaders focus on as they develop their craft? Danielle Walley explores the who, what, why, when and how of middle leadership.

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A Different Journey towArDs PrimAry HeADsHiP Thoughts on a different leadership journey towards Primary headship…

By Charlotte Rowley

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LEADERSHIP

A bit about me…

I began my career in 2011 as a secondary English Teacher. I was a bright-eyed and enthusiastic trainee with a love of pedagogy, a passion for working with young people and the never-ending entertaining moments as well as hilarious one-liners that come out of teenagers’ mouths. I am proud to say, that I remain just as animated and am grateful for the opportunities that I have been given to solidify this love for the vocation of teaching even further.

After two years I was fortunate to achieve a role as a Head of Year, the route that I always knew I wanted to venture down. Supporting and nurturing the young people in my care pastorally was something that I loved. Coupled with this role, I also led on PSHE and Citizenship across the school, gaining insights into subject leadership too. At the same school, I led staff CPD and worked closely with trainees and Early Career Teachers.

In 2018 I moved to another secondary school and began a new role as Assistant

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Headteacher. A key responsibility within this role was Key Stage 2-3 Transition, which I found so interesting.

Working with the primary schools in and outside of our multi academy company (MAC) and supporting children on their step-up to secondary school gave me a valuable insight into the Primary experience and I carefully contemplated that headship in a primary school setting could perhaps be the long-term goal for me.

Over my three years as a senior leader, I shared this goal with the headteacher.

To gain further experience, particularly of the strategic development of primary schools I became a Foundation Governor for a local primary and several months following this I was offered the opportunity of a secondment as Deputy Headteacher in one of the schools within the MAC, which after an application process and interview became substantive.

Since this, between June 2022 and June 2023 I spent twelve months as interim Principal at another primary school

in our Collegiate, which was invaluable experience and confirmed that Primary headship is the role that I wish to work towards.

How I adjusted and learned from others…

When I first moved over to the Primary sector, I embraced the opportunity to learn. We should all as teachers and leaders within education, be advocates for our own learning and champion this within our practice. The passion and fervour for developing ourselves, creates and fosters a culture of learning, aspiration and goal setting for both staff and pupils, which surely is why we do the job that we do.

I recognised when I made the move to Primary that I should be proud of my achievements to date and ensure that I use my leadership knowledge and subject specialism within my new setting, but I also appreciated that I was working with very experienced teachers and leaders who could also teach me.

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This openness to learn and recognition that sometimes people know more than you and that’s ok, was important to hold onto. I did not have all the answers (do we ever?). But this collaborative approach builds relationships and achieves more in the long run, because it creates a culture of sharing good practice, while empowering others, showing to them that they are valued.

How it all links together…

immersed in a setting which is three times the size of their primary school (more if a small or single form entry primary) as well as having to adapt to a new timetable, lessons, students and teachers. It can be very overwhelming.

Using my knowledge of transition and secondary teaching certainly helped, as I was able to share with Year 5 and 6 children how exciting secondary school is, inject some positivity and enthusiasm for the step-up, as well as provide children with specific tools to become more

independent and resilient learners, in readiness for their first year of high school.

So ultimately, although this was a big change after ten years of teaching and leading within high schools, I have come to the realisation that leadership is leadership and that all of us who work and lead within education, no matter what phase, should share the same common goals – that we want to develop young people and give them the best opportunities and memories of

As someone who has always seized CPD opportunities and never likes to stand still, having new goals and aspirations is important to me. Continuing to develop my ‘craft’, adapting my teaching and leadership and taking it in another direction was something that excited me.

I honestly think that every teacher in their career should at least observe or if possible work in an Early Years classroom.

I was blown away by the self-regulation, independence and complexity when I first watched the lessons unfold. These skills are what we try and develop at secondary level, yet at ages 3 and 4 children seem to possess these with organic flair. The level of depth and planning that goes into preparing an Early Years environment is staggering and so joyful. We can learn such a lot from these practitioners and the children within their class.

I predominantly worked closely with upper key stage 2 when I first became Deputy Headteacher. Having taught key stages 3-5 helped enormously because I knew first-hand the expectations at secondary level and it enabled me to challenge pupils, thus, continuing to use my subject experience and knowledge.

Sharing real Year 7 and 8 style lessons for the more able learners gave pupils a sense of enthusiasm, as well as ambition and drive.

Working in the Primary sector also helped me to realise even more that some children really do have genuine anxieties and worries about transition. They have the protection of one classroom, one teacher, a cloakroom, a small dining room (certainly compared to high schools) in their microcosm. They are then suddenly

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LEADERSHIP their school life, paving the way for their future so that they look back in fondness, but also look ahead in readiness for the next stage in their school life and / or professional journeys. If we lead with heart, this will be achieved.

Some advice…

There is so much that Primary colleagues can learn from Secondary and vice versa, which should be tapped into even more to create and strengthen relationships between schools, but also to ease the transition for learners as they take the leap to key stage 3.

- Tell people what you want: My own drive, ambition and love of learning has led to this point, but I am also so grateful to have accessed professional coaching and truly believe that this has supported me and given me the confidence to be open about goals and to not be shy about

Below are some points that I hope will inspire and motivate, particularly if you are thinking of taking your career down a different path:

sharing these. It is not arrogant to have dreams and vocalise them. Coaching helped me to realise this and gave me some tangible steps (many of which I have included within this article) to assist in getting there.

- Ensure you get the most from your performance management / appraisal process: Set out targets and CPD that you feel will support and help you to achieve long-term goals. This sounds so obvious, but all too often they are seen as ‘tick box’ exercises and they shouldn’t be.

- Recognise we are always learners and should embrace this: Showing a love of learning sets a positive example to those whom you lead and those whom you teach. Pass on that passion.

It creates a positive buzz and fosters a culture of collaboration and growth.

- Ignore that ‘Imposter Syndrome voice’ and recognise and appreciate that you have worked hard to get where you are: It’s often too easy to think that we are undeserving of new roles or that we don’t know what we’re doing, but hard work pays off and it’s crucial to remember that and that you’ve worked for where you are.

- Be brave and take that leap! When I look back, it’s true that the most challenging moments and the times where I have been encouraged to stretch out of my comfort zone have been the most valuable. This doesn’t mean that they have been seamless, but they have been character building, eventful and wonderful learning opportunities. For that I am truly grateful.

Transition, particularly for key stage 2-3 pupils will always be an interest of mine, as it bridges my background of both Secondary and Primary. Supporting our learners with their next steps is so important to me. I also, however, feel strongly about developing and empowering staff with the next stage in their career and I hope that my own narrative and transition inspires them.

My advice is to take that next step, it may just lead to a staircase of opportunity!

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Mastering Middle leadership What should middle leaders focus on as they develop their craft? Danielle Walley explores the who, what, why, when and how of middle leadership.

By Danielle Walley

10 years ago as I approached my first middle leadership role I had no idea how much I didn’t know. I was full of fresh ideas and enthusiasm, excited for change and had a clear idea about what I was going to do. What I didn’t have a clear idea on was how to lead people or manage change. I experienced a distinct lack of training or guidance available for middle leaders at the time and my line manager was happy as long as I was ‘doing’ something. I look back now and can see all the things that were wrong, including my approach, but the nickname of ‘bull in a China shop’ still haunts me today as I think I made every mistake in the book.

Yet, through a determination to improve, I turned to books and literature to teach me what I needed to learn to become a

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successful middle leader. I adopted a mind set of improvement and evaluated my mistakes and used them to learn what not to do next time.

However, as I watch the landscape of middle leadership change, and more and more TLR roles being created to drive initiatives like literacy, oracy and transition within schools, I don’t want the next generation of middle leaders to have to learn the hard way, like I did.

I am a big believer in owning and learning from your mistakes, but this doesn’t mean we should allow the cycle of unprepared and untrained middle leaders to keep making the same mistakes I did in the hope of producing better leaders at the end! There must be another way!

So what’s my solution? Well, senior leaders need to craft and implement middle leader development programmes in schools, but as I don’t have the power or influence to demand that, in the short term I will just share some of the key lessons that I have learnt the hard way; and that I wish someone had told me in the first place!

1. Start with why

Why did you want to be a middle leader?

What does a flourishing department look like under your leadership? What are you trying to create here? It is imperative to have a clear vision for what you’re doing and why you are doing it, and then ensure that your vision permeates through your actions and decisions. Your team also

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LEADERSHIP

need to buy in and feed in to your vision, they need to share your ‘why’. This in turn will build collaboration and commitment to your vision, along with a culture of clarity and input within your team. If staff understand why you are making the decisions that you are, why you are making changes, they are less likely to resist. Simon Sinek’s book is an invaluable tool to support and guide you on deciding your ‘why’.

2. Decide on how

Once you have your ‘why’, then you need to decide on your ‘how’. How are you going to achieve your vision? Your ‘how’ needs to be informed. Whether you were an internal or external candidate for the job you need to make sure your ‘how’ is

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focusing on the right areas that need your attention, and although you can learn a lot from the data; data doesn’t talk.

People do. Create individual meetings with each member of your team and ask them 3 key questions to inform your ‘how’. 1. What do you need to change?

2. What do you need to keep the same?

(What is working?) 3. What are their career aspirations? By ascertaining this information you are allowing your team to help you craft the ‘how’ and ensuring that they feel listened to. From here you can decide where to start your journey and also ensure that you are developing your team on their own professional journeys. It is imperative that you take pauses and evaluate your ‘how’ as you go along. Be aware of ‘escalation of commitment’ bias – the desire to

continue something that you have implemented, even when it isn’t working, because you are afraid to admit a mistake.

Pre-plan meetings where you and your team are going to stop and evaluate your ‘how’. If it isn’t working change it. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and admit a mistake; you don’t know everything and actually a culture of growth and leadership is built from this attitude of trial and error. If you are not afraid to try something, if you show it is ok to make mistakes, you will encourage innovation and learning from your team while avoiding toxic cultures, like cultures of fear, where staff become resistant to change as they fear what may happen if something goes wrong.

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3. Consider your when

A top tip here is that- not everything needs changing at the same time! Decide 3 clear priorities that you are going to focus on for year one. Consider what will make the biggest difference and allow you to improve other areas, for example, there is no point in prioritising curriculum if the behaviour is so poor that teachers can’t get through the content. In this situation focus on behaviour in year one, and then review the curriculum in year two. It may be good to work with your teams (especially if you have other middle leaders in your team) to create a timeline: What needs to happen first?

What’s the short term plan? Then you can derive your medium and long term plans.

Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Don’t be afraid to run your own clock. In schools it feels like everything runs to a deadline, and senior teams want changes made yesterday – but don’t allow the clock to force you into decisions or initiatives you aren’t comfortable with. If the way your team are approaching teaching year 11 isn’t working, don’t carry on because you’re worried exam season is coming up, stop the clock, evaluate, and make changes.

4. Build your who

A leader is only as good as their team.

As Henry Ford once said “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” Building a team culture can be challenging, but consider the leader you need to be to foster psychological safety within group discussions to ensure candour and honesty from your team. Listen. Seek to understand before trying to be understood. Speak last in a meeting. Sit in a circle. Start questions with ‘how’ and ‘what’ while avoiding binary questions when having team discussions. This ensures that you are encouraging openness and input from your colleagues as valued members. You need to get to know your team; lead them professionally but care about them personally. Lead with dignity, respect and honesty. Highlight and praise the behaviours you wish to be repeated – not in a patronising way, people see straight through that and often get embarrassed and resentful, but in a way that clearly highlights the behaviour you want repeated and the positive outcome: consider ‘I see you arrived at your duty on time today, it really helps

support the flow of students on the corridor, thank you’. Have an honest and transparent approach to your leadership.

Staff will feel safer working with you if they know where they stand with you; have difficult conversations often.

Don’t them build up into resentment, or allow negative behaviours to pollute your positive culture. Calmly challenge the behaviour as and when it arises in an non-confrontational manner such as ‘Sarah, I noticed your year 10 books need marking. The students would really benefit from some feedback on their most recent essays.’ Staff will respect your high expectations and honest approach to their work

5. Consider your what

‘What’ you do will have a huge impact on those around you. The most effective and lasting transformations often stem from small changes – houses are built brick by brick. If you don’t want staff to do a certain behaviour then model that example and don’t do it yourself.

If you want your staff to be punctual and prepared for meetings then lead by example and ensure you are on time to every meeting. To quote Mark Green “To lead by example, you must hold yourself to an even higher standard than your team”. Keep your word, do what you say you’re going to do, be punctual sending out communication such as meeting agenda’s or minutes and keep asking for feedback!

Finally, middle leadership can be really tough, but be kind to yourself. The best leaders in the world make mistakes and face challenges, but see each day as an opportunity to learn and grow. Reach out to me on Twitter/X - @Danihus.

ReFeRenCeS: Marquet, D. (2020) Leadership Is Language: The Hidden Power of What You Say and What You Don’t. Penguin Books Ltd Sinek, S (2011) Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire everyone To Take Action. Penguin.

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72. Why Do MotherTeachers Leave?

If teaching is such a family-friendly profession, then, why is it that women aged 30-39 are also the largest demographic to leave teaching every year?

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Why Do Motherteachers Leave?

If teaching is such a family-friendly profession, then, why is it that women aged 30-39 are also the largest demographic to leave teaching every year?

By Emma Sheppard

Teaching: from the outside, it seems the most family-friendly of careers. After all, we begin work at 8:30am, and finish at 3:30pm, and enjoy thirteen weeks of paid holiday with our children, don’t we? It makes sense, then, that we are a femaledominated industry. Teachers are caring, nurturing and good at being creative and playing, yet we need to be structured, fans of routine and masters of warmfirm discipline, as well. We are society’s mothers, raising and guiding the next generation with a whiteboard pen filled with love.

Indeed, women aged 30-39 – that key childbearing demographic – make up a quarter of our workforce. And, according to TeacherTapp, 55% of these women are mothers1.

If teaching is such a family-friendly profession, then, why is it that women aged 30-39 are also the largest demographic to leave teaching every year?

In 2022, they made up 22% of our leavers, outnumbering 25-29 year olds – that ECT demographic favoured by our media and recruitment strategies – of both genders, by more than 1,100. In real figures, we lost 8,965 women aged 30-39 alone and – according to research from The MTPT Project, anywhere between 50-82% of

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these are leaving for reasons specifically pertaining to motherhood.

workload as the main reason they would consider leaving teaching2.

We can’t offer a more accurate estimation of how far the motherhood penalty in education is impacting our retention figures because until 2018 when The MTPT Project began their study into women aged 30-39 and what motivated them to remain in, or leave the profession, no formal research had been undertaken into the mother-teacher demographic.

When teachers become parents, however, the workload that has previously been endured suddenly becomes unmanageable. Staying late to catch up, prepare or attend meetings becomes an impossibility with childcare facilities that close at any time between 2:40pm and 6:00pm. Planning and marking in the evening is out of the question when dinner time, bath time, bed time and multiple interruptions from babies and toddlers even after lights-out take precedent. Women – who still take on the majority of caring and domestic responsibilities – find themselves working double shifts and balancing nearly three full-time jobs teaching, caring for their children, and managing a home.

So, why are mother-teachers leaving, and to what extent do they act as the canaries in the coal mine, warning us of issues endemic to the education system, that will eventually drive others to leave?

Workload It may come as no surprise that the primary reason for leaving cited by female teachers aged 30-39 was workload. 69% of the 498 survey respondents chose the long hours, unmanageable expectations and requirement for evening, weekend and holiday work as a factor in their decision to quit. In this way, this demographic are no different to other teachers, with 92% of all colleagues citing

If meeting the expectations of an average teacher or leader role, however, is impossible with a family at home, it serves to highlight exactly what we are asking of our colleagues even before they become parents. If the workload could be managed prior to having children, it was because teachers were dedicating far more time beyond their contracted hours to their jobs. Mid-week cinema trips, meals with friends, weekends away or time for health, fitness, or a hobby are denied to our younger colleagues working 48 to 57 hours per week3.

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EXPERIENCE Lifestyle Choice 53% of respondents to The MTPT Project’s initial survey response stated that teaching did not provide them with the lifestyle they wanted – they felt they had no balance, nor time to pursue interests other than teaching.

The 27 mother-teachers who took part in the study’s follow-up interviews described their transformed lifestyles having left teaching. They enjoy greater flexibility if they have found new careers, allowing them to spend more time with their families and friends. Even when they earn less, their household outgoings are often reduced because they are spending less on outsourcing childcare. Their pace of life is slower, and they have time to notice, appreciate and invest in what is important to them.

the sometimes fragile peri- and postnatal period where teacher-mothers are vulnerable, not just to depression and anxiety, but the exacerbation of these mental health conditions by the emotional and physical strain of teaching.

The transition back to work following a period of leave was revealed to be the beginning of the end for some motherteachers. Battling sleep deprivation, and the overwhelm of juggling so many high stakes plates – their own babies’ needs, student progress, planning, marking, safeguarding, observations, meals, health – these teachers were still relied upon as leaders, and experienced professionals who could cope with the demands put upon them. Regardless of their competence, expertise and resilience, however, there is always a crashing point if human beings experience too much change, too quickly, and without

appropriate support.

Interview participants also spoke about the pressure of social narratives surrounding both motherhood and teaching, with clear dichotomies emerging: mother teachers understood that they could either be “good mums” or “good teachers”, but not both. They could either love their babies, or their jobs, but one must come first. They could either work part-time or pursue career progression, but not both. For many participants in the study, the guilt of feeling as if they were failing at everything was overwhelming, and forced them to the point of choosing between motherhood or teaching.

And if we perceive there to be an “either / or” choice between our own children, and someone else’s, whose are we likely to choose

Teaching and parenting are greedy professions, often leaving no room for an identity beyond “Miss”, “Mum” and “maid”, but interview participants who had left teaching spoke about going on journeys of self-discovery to reveal the “me” that may have been lost sometime in adolescence, or never even given the chance to emerge. They spent time gardening, found they could be truly present with their families at Christmas, really relax on holiday; they walked, reconnected with their religious communities, cooked, exercised, picked up their instrument again.

Mental Health and Wellbeing The poor mental health and wellbeing suffered by teachers is well-documented, with the Teacher Wellbeing Index telling us that 78% of staff experienced mental health issues due to their work. There is significant overlap here with the workload issue, but also the unhelpful culture of presenteeism that pervades the teaching profession, and the impact of lack of funding and resources4.

Half of the mothers originally surveyed cited poor mental health or wellbeing as a reason for leaving, with a number of interview participants describing specific incidents of burnout, break down or crisis. Further discussion highlighted

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Family Commitments – Children Indeed, 42% of survey respondents identified their commitment to their children as contributing to their decision to leave. However, the qualitative interviews exposed the complex interpretations of the survey option, “Family Commitments – Children”. Participants didn’t just check this box to indicate that they wanted to spend more time with their children, but rather spoke about a number of factors preventing them from fulfilling the dual responsibilities of mother and teacher.

Inadequate childcare provision, for example, and the lack of flexibility at school, particularly at the beginning and end of the day, meant that some

teachers literally had no way of caring for their own children and turning up at work. In some cases, the timings just didn’t match up. In other cases, partner and family support simply wasn’t available. And – a trend we are seeing increase as childcare provision flounders – wraparound care or nursery places just didn’t exist.

Unfortunately, with men still outearning women in the majority of heterosexual couples, when one salary has to be sacrificed to provide childcare, it is often mothers who reduce their hours, or drop out of the workforce altogether.

Participants’ vision of what motherhood would look like also contributed to their decision to leave. In the interviews, teachers spoke about important value sets associated with the idea

of motherhood: that they would attend important life events, play a dominant role in their own children’s development, and have the time and headspace to be present and make memories. When the need to be on duty on the first day of their own school clashed with their child’s first day in Reception, or when motherteachers found themselves too tired or busy with school work to enjoy their own children, they found their values significantly violated.

Rather than continue in this state of conflict, therefore, women found set ups that enabled them to fulfil the definition of motherhood so important to them and, in some cases, find professional fulfilment in a different industry.

The MTPT Project’s research paints a bleak picture of the incompatibility of motherhood and teaching in our current climate. However, it is important to note that the opposite study also exists. Here, we learnt of all the ways that schools and wider society can support mother-teachers to remain and thrive in the profession they love.

Key themes and actions emerging from the accounts from mother-teachers who had stayed focus on the supportive nature of their schools, compatible childcare arrangements, appropriate flexible working arrangements, and positive communication between school and teacher during the maternity and return to work period.

Can teaching be a family-friendly career choice? Right now, the answer is both “yes”, and “no”, and greater collective action is definitely needed to better understand the experiences of mother-teachers, and the support measures that enable them to remain our schools.

All data that remains uncited is from The MTPT Project’s study into female teachers aged 30-39 who have stayed in, or left the profession: www.mtpt.org.uk/research

REFERENCES 1. https://x.com/iaincford/status/1694658081093820751?s=20 2. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1148571/Working_lives_of_teachers_and_leaders_-_wave_1_-_core_report.pdf 3. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1148571/Working_lives_of_teachers_and_leaders_-_wave_1_-_core_report.pdf 4. https://www.educationsupport.org.uk/resources/for-organisations/research/teacher-wellbeing-index/

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