Academic
Academic leadership in schools Graeme May explains why the senior leaders formerly known as Directors of Studies and their schools need a Director of Teaching & Learning
It is a noticeable trend amongst independent schools that the traditional Director of Studies role (more often known as the Deputy Head Academic these days) has been supplemented by the addition of a Director of Teaching & Learning. My own school, Abingdon, made this move nearly two years ago and it is difficult to imagine, as it always is, how we did without it previously. When I speak to colleagues in other schools who do not have this role on their staff, the most frequent response is ‘Isn’t that your job?’ or actually ‘That’s my job at my school but I don’t have the time to do it properly’. It is the case that ten years or more ago the role of the DHA/DoS probably had an expectation that the job carried a degree of quality assurance/ control when it came to teaching. To an extent, that is still the case, but the big difference is for those schools who are making a real commitment to the idea of proper, effective development of teaching as opposed to just monitoring. Development has often been seen as what INSET days and courses are for, but I am far from alone in my teaching career in seeing external CPD as largely ineffective and/or not very good value for money. This has been for three main reasons: 1. The quality of external CPD on Teaching & Learning, most often bought in for termly INSET days, is very variable. It is common for colleagues at other schools to send emails
round asking desperately for recommendations as they realise they have to book someone and I’ve certainly been the victim of some really terrible ones. Even when they’re decent speakers, they don’t know your particular context and at least part of their time gets spent introducing themselves and talking about things that aren’t relevant or could have been done more quickly. 2. External CPD for INSET days is often not tied into any meaningful follow-up, so even the best of them can leave staff saying ‘Well, that wasn’t as bad as it might have been’ or even ‘Thought-provoking stuff’, but if the theme being discussed on that INSET day isn’t seen as a theme for the term/year and built into what happens next (in terms of school priorities, structures, HoDs meetings, departmental meetings etc) and actually changes practice in some way, then the INSET was a somewhat expensive way of reminding your staff that they have to start getting up early again after weeks of lie-ins. 3. External INSET courses that staff go on during term can be just as variable and just as short term in their impact. Rarely does a member of staff actually ‘cascade’ in any worthwhile way what they’ve picked up and often who goes on what INSET is rather uncontrolled and certainly tends to be unmonitored (e.g. by the expectation of a follow up report for example). I exclude from this external INSET when the
Spring 2017
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