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Writing and grammar myth-busting: what roles do writing and grammar skills play in the curriculum?

Ms Lucinda Gilchrist, Head of English, considers the roles of writing and grammar across subjects.

For English teachers, addressing writing and grammar skills is our bread-and-butter. However, in 2012, Ofqual introduced directive that in History, Geography, and Religious Studies, 5% of marks must be allocated to what is traditionally known as ‘SPaG’, or spelling, punctuation and grammar. Meanwhile, all other subjects with a significant written component must ‘make similar requirements for appropriate grammar, spelling, punctuation and legibility’ (Ofqual, 2015: 4). And of course, even more importantly, we need to ensure that pupils understand what is going on around them and communicate clearly in the world outside school. Not only that, but literacy is a form of social and academic empowerment, ensuring that all of us are able to access and interact with texts in a range of academic fields and social situations.

In a recent survey of WHS teachers, 68% of respondents agreed that ‘writing is important in my subject’, and 64% agreed that ‘the crafting of writing has a place in my subject area’. But what is really interesting about this is that, despite clear agreement that writing and grammar skills are important, there isn’t really much consensus of what grammar actually is, how much time and energy teachers across subjects should dedicate to it, and why it is important. If writing and grammar are so universally agreed to be important, it’s even more crucial to unpack what we mean by these terms, and how therefore we should approach them in our teaching.

Defining grammar

So, what do we even mean by grammar? Even this is hotly contested. In the survey, what was particularly interesting was that there wasn’t much agreement of what grammar is, and therefore what role it should play, even within subjects, with even Maths teachers having different views on the importance of writing in their subject. Much of the literature suggests that this is also down to our own perceptions of our competence in writing and grammar (for more on this, see Wilson and Myhill, 2012). Of course, on the broadest level, there is the macro-level view of grammar as the ‘structure’ of a language, an idea which came up in 32% of responses to the survey. However, when it comes to teaching grammar for writing in academic contexts, there are essentially two main approaches to grammar, although, as there is with any debate in education, polarisation of these views is unhelpful.

Most common is the correction/accuracy model, which perceives language as a set of pre-determined rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar (or ‘SPaG’) to which writers must adhere for the sake of clarity and erudition. In a recent survey of WHS teachers, words and phrases associated with this model came up frequently, with 64% of responses referring to ‘accurate’, ‘correct’, ‘proper’ or ‘clear’ English as the aim of teaching grammar. Traditionally, this approach would result in grammar taught primarily through decontextualized practice questions, unflatteringly called the ‘drill and kill’ approach by Laura Micciche of the University of Cincinnati (Micciche, 2004). This has also led this approach to be characterised as a ‘traditional’ (Hudson, 2004) approach to teaching grammar, and although we have moved beyond yawn-inducing practice exercises in teaching English grammar, it is worth interrogating what this model assumes about language and how this informs the way we teach it.

English
Figure 1: should we mark to a ‘single version of English’?

The main assumption is that there is a single version of English which is universally agreed upon to be the ‘correct’ version of English. When we mark pupils’ work, of course we have to contend with the bug-bears of misused apostrophes, comma splices and ‘would ofs’ instead of ‘would haves’, but this could end up being a very reductive view of what language actually is. Linguistically speaking, what we are judging pupils’ work against is Standard English, which is essentially just another dialect of English, in the same way Scouse, Mancunian and Estuary English are all dialects – dialect here referring to the grammar and vocabulary as opposed to the pronunciation. However, unlike other dialects, Standard English has less to do with geography and more to do with class and social groupings; it is a prestigious form of language descended from 1950s BBC English, into which we have to induct pupils so that the writing they produce means they can be taken seriously as scholars.

However, Standard English is more complex than that. Compare the sentences below:

  • Father was exceedingly fatigued after his lengthy peregrination.
  • Dad was exhausted after his long journey.
  • Dad was well tired after his journey.
  • Father were very tired after his lengthy journey
  • My old man was knackered after his trip.

Evidently, the first is not Standard English; the register is absurd for most everyday language contexts, and many of us I’m sure would caution pupils who were writing like this against ‘over-writing’. And it would certainly not be fair, or even politically correct, to tell a Cornish or Welsh dialect speaker that the way they were speaking was ‘wrong’. The only one of those examples which most would agree is Standard English is the second, but it’s hardly eloquent prose.

More than just correcting errors

An added layer of complexity here in that we are asking pupils to actually develop a good understanding of different types of English within the dialect of Standard English; using phrases such as ‘CO2’ and ‘ox-bow lakes’ would sound very weird in a Philosophy essay. And this isn’t just at the level of vocabulary: in different subjects, there are different syntactical structures which are held to be more prestigious than others. For my MA research, I undertook some analysis of the indicative content in GCSE mark schemes in History, Geography and Religious Studies. You can see some of the key features in the table below, where you’ll notice that there are quite clear differences in the expectations of language usage for each subject area.

Figure 2: exam board mark schemes for History, Religious Studies and Geography, showing the differences in the expectations of language usage.

Evidently, it’s not as simple as being right and wrong when it comes to grammar – but that doesn’t mean that the other main model of grammar teaching is a case of throwing the rule-book out of the window in abandon, even if what is traditionally known as ‘SPaG’ isn’t explicitly part of the mark scheme in the English Literature iGCSE; the only reference to the quality of writing in the mark scheme is for AO4, worth 25%, which refers to a need to ‘communicate a sensitive and informed response’.

Figure 3: a sign at Victoria Station, London.

Before we throw our hands up in horror, let’s unpack the genre-based model of grammar first. This model essentially posits that different academic subjects have their own very specific rules and conventions, which pupils will need to confidently use to write convincingly within their subject areas. Thankfully, 92% of responses to the survey disagreed that grammar should only be taught in English; with the genre-based model, part of the requirement of all teachers, regardless of subject area, is to teach pupils how to successfully craft their language for the academic genre they are using, and many subjects have several academic genres: consider the difference between a case study and a discursive essay, for instance. We can see this from our everyday language too: examples of non-Standard English which would be acceptable in a text message or shopping list would not be acceptable in an email or formal school communication, but that doesn’t make them ‘wrong’ in the appropriate context. In this approach to teaching grammar and writing, teaching grammar is a case of making explicit the different ways of writing in different subjects and the appropriate generic conventions.

What next?

So, how do we do this? Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy answer here, and with increasingly challenging examination specifications and curricula, nearly 50% of us cited ‘curriculum pressure’ and ‘time’ being the main hindrances preventing us from tackling grammar as much as we would like.  Other major hindrances are our own confidence and knowledge of grammar; given that in the 1980s grammar teaching had all but disappeared from the curriculum, many teachers were either not explicitly taught any grammar, or taught by teachers who themselves were not explicitly taught any grammar, hardly an auspicious start for teaching an area which we so overwhelmingly agree to be important.

Figure 4: “it’s not as simple as being right and wrong when it comes to grammar”

However, I think there is also scope to be excited about this challenge, to help pupils see their writing within subjects less as ‘Is this right?’, and more as ‘How much do I sound like a trustworthy and intelligent scholar within this academic genre?’ In English, we regularly consider this through the lens of literature: how do modal verbs e.g. ‘shall’ convey the forcefulness of Old Major’s political speeches in Animal Farm, or how do reflexive verbs highlight Ralph’s self-control in Lord of the Flies? It’s a process which can work just as well applied to subject-specific writing, and to do that, we need to open up the dialogue about grammar, seeing it not as a closed and monolithic body of knowledge possessed by a prestigious few, but as something that within our own subject areas, we absolutely are experts in.

References

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A review of the Musical Theatre Concert & how to engage young people of different ages in musicals

Ms Katie Butler, Performing Arts Assistant, looks back to our recent Musical Theatre Concert here at WHS, as well as how we can engage different age groups in this popular form.

From Tap Dancing to Trunchbull

This year’s Musical Theatre Concert featured a selection of solos, duets and group numbers, with the very on-brand Wimbledon High theme of “Imagine”. This enabled us to tie numbers together through a common thread, while still allowing us to explore all sorts of different styles and stories. We hired in professional choreographer Lily Howkins to help create more specialised dance numbers, along with a brilliant three-piece band who really brought the music to life. This concert showcases the singing and dancing talents of girls across the senior school, providing a chance for Year 7s to perform with Sixth Formers, and for younger girls to have a taste of solo singing without the pressure of a whole show.

Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd was the WHS Senior Musical, with performances in January 2019

After Lilly and Emma kicked off the show with ‘Pure Imagination’ from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we enjoyed Year 8’s spectacular ‘Revolting Children’ from Matilda, featuring ten girls stepping out of their sensible Wimbledon High personas and into a rebellious, anti-Trunchbull mob, with ties tied around their heads and hockey sticks as weapons. We featured more Year 8 talent in the upbeat, energetic Hollywood party number ‘Someone in the Crowd’ from La La Land, with Lauren, Amelia, Phoebe and Alyssa combining pitch-perfect vocals with challenging choreography to their usual high standard.

Another choreography highlight was the tap-toed delight that was ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, with Melody and Lizzy’s vocals combined with the brilliant tap skills of Jasmine and Shangavi. Musical theatre stalwart Erin gave a convincing performance as Evan Hansen, showing real resilience and deftly taking on various characters throughout the night. Sweeney Todd’s ‘By the Sea’ and ‘Seventeen’ from Heathers were presented together, as despite the different musical styles and the twenty-five years between their creation, they explore very similar themes of women trying to convince murderous men to live a normal life with them. For the latter, Erin was joined by Lizzie, who also showcased her fantastic vocal versatility in the contrasting ‘I Feel Pretty’. All in all, it was a wonderful celebration of dramatic skill and musicianship from the entire WHS community.

Little Shop of Horrors
This dramatic moment from Little Shop of Horrors – the Year 9 and 10 musical in June 2018

Curating a Programme

As a facilitator of these kinds of events, the challenge for me was to choose a programme that was varied, interesting, and age-appropriate, engaging all the girls. Appreciation of musical theatre, and indeed of all strands of the arts and storytelling deepens with age, maturity, and life experience, and personal development is particularly accelerated during these teenage years; it’s the reason that Year 11 can sob their way through Les Miserables, yet many Year 8s are twiddling their thumbs by ‘I Dreamed a Dream’, and I was keen to curate a concert that reflected this and provided something for everyone to enjoy.

While we had Year 12 Izzy performing the wistful ‘The Movie in My Mind’ from Miss Saigon, a ballad by a Thai showgirl during the Vietnam War dreaming of a better life, we also enjoyed Izzy from Year 8’s delicately beautiful rendition of ‘Jenny’s Piano Song’ from Howard Goodall’s little-known 2010 musical Love Story (an adaptation of the 1970 film), as well as Anna’s (Year 11) infectiously positive ‘I Can Hear the Bells’ from Hairspray.

The key to a successful programme is contrast – and so with powerhouse, belting performances like Anna’s and Eleni’s rendition of ‘Let Me Be Your Star’ from NBC’s Smash, we also had numbers like Anna’s (Year 13) genuine and engaging ‘I’m Not Afraid of Anything’ from Jason Robert Brown’s song cycle Songs for a New World, and Eleni’s other number, the vulnerable ‘When He Sees Me’ from Waitress, showing off her real versatility as an actress, and brilliant comic timing.

Other performances included the wittily staged ‘Show Off’ from The Drowsy Chaperone by Jasmine & Lilly in Year 12, and the always brilliant Musical Theatre Choir taking on an arrangement of Hamilton’s Helpless that even girls much older and more experienced would have found challenging. As Year 7 girls took to the stage with a lively Disney medley, featuring solos from Melina, Martha, Hannah and Sophia, it was clear that the future of musical theatre at Wimbledon High is in very safe hands. We ended the show with two more similar numbers: ‘The Life I Never Led’ from Sister Act and ‘Nothing Stops Another Day’ from Ghost, sensitively performed by Millie and Shangavi (Year 12) respectively, followed by a rousing ‘We’re All In This Together’ from the upcoming Year 9 & 10 production of High School Musical.

Musical Theatre: more than jazz hands

Having a concert solely dedicated to musical theatre, and particularly lots of different numbers from different shows, allows students to experiment with the differences between acting through song compared to acting through prose, and how despite the snobbery that often surrounds it, musical theatre absolutely provides as much opportunity to get stuck into interesting, complicated characters as straight theatre.

For next year’s concert, I’m keen to develop this further, delving into shows by writers like Sondheim that challenge these stereotypes better than anything else. As a writer of musical theatre myself, I’m particularly interested in using platforms like this to explore adolescent pastoral themes, and with shows like Dear Evan Hansen and Heathers featured, we were able to open up conversations about darker issues like mental health, bullying and violence in schools, performing songs from musicals that wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate as school productions, but that are absolutely worthy of attention and that many of the girls know and love.

I also hope that it introduced both cast and audience to some lesser-known shows, further fuelling their interest in and passion for musicals, and that it demonstrates the versatility of musical theatre as an art form, showing that it isn’t all jazz hands and happy endings, but can be a medium to explore all manner of themes, issues and musical styles.

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Are we entering a golden age of careers education and guidance in schools?

Like a boss mug

Mrs Nicola Cooper, Director of Higher Education and Careers at WHS, explores the impact of the Gatsby benchmarks on careers education in schools.

If like me, you finished school before the turn of the millennium, I suspect that your experience of careers education and guidance as a teenager may well have been rather uninspiring. My only recollection is of a hurried conversation with my form tutor in which I enthusiastically expressed an interest in becoming an air hostess, only to have it swiftly dismissed as a totally unsuitable career for an academic student. Even at university the options put forward by the advisers seemed limited to accountancy, retail, teaching or law.

Thankfully those dark days of careers education, information and advice as – at best –  a desirable added extra, are long gone. Nowadays all schools are well aware that helping students to think about and prepare for their working life is a central part of what we do.

The importance of careers education in schools was given a significant boost in 2013 when the Gatsby Foundation commissioned Sir John Holman – Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of York, senior education adviser and former headteacher, to produce a report setting out what career guidance in England would look like if it achieved a ‘good’ rating by international standards.[1]

The eight ‘benchmarks’ proposed by Holman in his report represent a clearly defined framework that significantly raises the bar in the area of careers work in schools.[2] Subsequent to the publication of the report, the Gatsby benchmarks were explicitly referenced throughout the Department of Education’s Careers Strategy[3] and now form a key part of new Statuary Guidance for careers.[4]

The Gatsby Benchmarks
Figure One: The Gatsby Benchmarks

[1] https://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/focus-areas/good-career-guidance

[2] https://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/focus-areas/good-career-guidance

[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-strategy-making-the-most-of-everyones-skills-and-talents

[4] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/careers-guidance-provision-for-young-people-in-schools

Implementing Gatsby

In the last couple of years addressing the so-called ‘Gatsby benchmarks’ has become a strategic objective for all schools (they will form part of the Ofsted framework from 2020). For those of us tasked with leading CEIAG (careers education, information and guidance), their robust nature presents an exciting, if somewhat daunting challenge. Our response here at WHS has been to view the framework as an opportunity to take a completely fresh look at our provision. An initial audit of existing activities against the eight aspects identified by Holman helped identify a number of key areas in which we could develop and extend our programme.

Personalised guidance

Gatsby identifies personal guidance and addressing the needs of each pupil as a key feature of excellent careers advice and guidance. Student review and reflection, already a key feature of the pastoral system at WHS, will in the future also include discussions around more careers related values, interests and aptitudes.  Along with formal 1 to 1 guidance interviews for every student at both KS4 and KS5 and access to labour market information through online platforms such as Fast Tomato and Unifrog, we can now be confident that all our girls have access accurate and up to date advice appropriate to their individual requirements.

‘Real life’ experiences

One of the biggest challenges all schools face in addressing Gatsby is increasing the level of engagement students have with employers and the world of work.  There is a strong empirical base for the benefits of ‘real life’ experiences, on self-development, employability, earnings potential[1] but a combination of health and safety and safeguarding concerns along with the timetable demands placed on teachers by new more rigorous GCSE and A level specifications can mean organising opportunities to meet with employers and experience the world of work can be difficult.

We have had to think creatively and look for innovative ways of bringing the world of work to our students. Running off-timetable enterprise and employability days for Year 9 and 10, inviting speakers (often parents and alumnae) to talk to groups of students informally over a series of lunchtime ‘Getting into…’ talks and sending Year 8 girls off to spend a day at work with a parent or family member are just some of the ways we have sought to increased understanding of working life.

Developing partnerships

One of the more unexpected consequences of the increased focus on CEIAG has been the added impetus for collaboration between schools. This year, working with a colleague at Raynes Park High School, we have established the Merton and Kingston Schools’ Careers Advisers Hub. Sharing expertise, working together to liaise with local chambers of commerce and opening up events like our recent higher education evening to partner schools has not only been an extremely satisfying and enjoyable but also mutually beneficial experience, to both staff and students.

The Striding Out Programme

Striding Out LogoThe biggest impact of Gatsby has been to act as a framework on which we have built our brand new Striding Out programme, which embraces the concept of a truly holistic approach to career and higher education preparation.

The programme consists of three strands; Explore, Equip and Experience – E3 with the key aim of providing all students, from Year 7 through to 13, with opportunities to explore the vast range of higher education and career options available, equip themselves with the skills required for a successful career in the 21st century and gain valuable experience of the world of work.

Response to the changes from students, parents and staff has been overwhelmingly positive so far. Moving forward, having established a coherent and cohesive structure, we are now in a strong position to grow, adapt and develop the programme. This will include working more closely with Heads of Department to explore ways of embedding CEIAG into the curriculum.

A Golden Age?

So to address the question proposed at the start of this article: are we entering a ‘brave new world’ of careers education in schools?

I am convinced that Gatsby has been a force for good; it quite rightly puts CEIAG at the heart of what we do in schools. The core principles of access to up to date information, personalised advice and the opportunity to meet with employers and experience the world of work certainly represent the Gold Standard. However, there is no doubt that addressing the benchmarks is an ongoing challenge, it requires time, resourcing and the cooperation of colleagues across the school, particularly senior management. I have been very fortunate to have had unwavering support for all of the new initiatives we have introduced but I know that for other colleagues, particularly those working in the state sector, money and time is in short supply. So a golden age? We might not be there quite yet but there is an army of dedicated and inspiring careers leaders working in school who now have a robust framework to work towards. As such, from where I am standing, the future certainly looks bright.

[1] http://www.educationandemployers.org/research/the-employer-engagement-cycle-in-secondary-education-analysing-the-testimonies-of-young-british-adults/   http://www.educationandemployers.org/research/work-experience-impact-and-delivery-insights-from-the-evidence/

 

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How do you create a whole school academic timetable?

Mr Bob Haythorne, Director of Academic Administration and Data at WHS, looks at the processes involved to craft a whole school academic timetable.

 

“I don’t know how you do it!”

“I don’t know why I do it!”

If I had £1 for every time I’ve had that exchange about timetabling over the years, I think I’d have been able to retire a few years ago.  If we add the other old chestnuts – “Why don’t you just reuse the same timetable every year?” and “Can’t you just get a computer to do it all?”– I think I’d have been able to retire before I’d even started!  I’ve been asked to write this WimTeach blog about timetabling, but I’m not sure I can do it justice within the allowed wordage:  there are textbooks on it and the standard training course is three days long, so this is just a potted summary of the process.

It actually starts a long time before September; in fact, we need to have a pretty good idea of what we’re offering to Year 12 over fifteen months earlier, when we hold our ‘Into the Sixth’ events.  This can be affected by the addition of new subjects, the removal of others and changes to the whole structure brought about by new government policies.  Straightaway, we can start to see why it’s not possible to copy the timetable over from one year to the next.  Add in staff moves, random variations in popularity of different optional subjects at GCSE and A-Level, and increases in the size of year groups and it soon becomes obvious why everyone retracts that question after a moment’s thought.  A senior school timetable is critically dependent on the GCSE and A-Level options, so a great deal of time is spent with individual girls in Years 9 and 11, mainly in the Autumn and early Spring Terms, to help them choose and to get the information from them that we need to make a start.

With options in by February Half Term, the fun begins!  The first task is to analyse the numbers to see what the staffing implications are.  Will we have enough Mediæval Tapestry teachers?  Or can we really justify running Industrial Botany for just one girl?  We need to give our part-time teachers a term’s notice of variations in their hours and any recruitment ideally should be sorted before the Easter deadline for giving notice.  Whilst the Head and HR team are resolving those issues, we are crunching these options to fit them into option ‘blocks’ – groups of subjects where classes will be taught simultaneously.  (The number of option blocks is equal to the number of subjects the girls are allowed to opt for).  There is software to help with this, although my experience is that if you ask the program to create a scheme from the raw information, it will give a ridiculous answer, if it can give one at all.  (We don’t want all three Mediæval Tapestry groups in one block if there are only two teachers and only one specialist classroom, for instance;  really we want them spread across three different blocks).  I find that manually allocating about half the groups into blocks based on common sense and experience and letting the software solve the rest works best.  It will then allocate girls to groups and you can see whether some groups are too big or too small, and you can experiment with moving them around until you get a solution you like.  Whether it will timetable is still another matter!

‘Blocking’ is the first stage of actual timetabling and can be a major task in its own right.  This is where we take the 70 periods of our timetable and draw up a table of what could be going on at the same time.  At this stage, its just 70 periods, labelled 1 to 70 – there is no thought about when each period will happen, except for certain fixed periods, like Y11 – 13 Enrichment, which has to be on Thursday afternoon because of its links with outside agencies.  Because Enrichment has so many small groups, it places a strain on staffing, so we have usually scheduled the largest Year group in Years 7 – 10 to have PE at this time.

How the Year 12 and Year 13 option blocks mesh together is critical.  We draw up a table that might look like this:

Table
(In practice, I would show all the actual subjects in each block – usually between 8 and 12 different groups – so that I can see the clashes.)

The ‘No’s are because, say, the planned scheme for Year 12 block A contains three subjects where we only have one teacher, or one necessary specialist room, and these three subjects happen to spread across three different Year 13 (i.e. current Year 12) blocks – W, X and Y.  Something similar will be the case for 12C and 13X clashing, and for 12D and 13W clashing.  In this example, we see that all 12A lessons will have to be timetabled simultaneously with all 13V lessons.  The ‘?’ for 12D and 13Y might mean that it probably could work, but ideally we would keep them apart.  This means there are really only two solutions:

Table2

These will then determine the underlying structure of the entire timetable.  Making the decision about which one to go with is nerve-wracking – one might turn out weeks later to have been a poor choice!  These go into the Blocking table:

Table3

It gets a lot more fragmented after this.  Ideally, two Year 11 option blocks (7 periods each) would sit nicely under each Year 12/13 pairing, but it never works out that neatly.  For a start, there are only six option blocks, not eight, and Maths and English have more than 7 periods.  Again, there are restrictions caused by limited specialist rooms and/or teachers that determine which Year 11 blocks can and cannot go under which Year 12/13 pairings.  And after playing with this for a week or two, it’s time to insert Year 10, with the same issues, but with complications like Enrichment and PSHE being at the same time for Years 11 – 13, but there’s no Enrichment in Year 10 etc.  Bear in mind that the table above just shows one column for periods 1 to 14:  the reality is one column for each period …and a very wide table!  By the way, it’s probably around Easter by now.

Some timetablers would do all their blocking (down to Year 7) before attempting to schedule the lessons into actual periods on actual days, but either because I’m impatient or because we have so many restrictions on what can happen when, I tend to start scheduling now. (E.g. we have a large proportion of part-time staff, who – funnily enough – don’t think it’s really part-time, if you have to be available for all 70 periods, with a small number of lessons randomly scattered around!)  Now, at last, we turn to the timetabling software.  Again, you could try inputting all the information and hitting the ‘Autoschedule’ button, but when it’s finished trying (a few days later), it will either have produced garbage or – more likely – failed.  The problem is that there are too many arbitrary decisions that you would have to make when inputting all that information, so it’s better to build things up steadily, seeing what’s working and trying to keep as much flexibility as possible for later stages.  An example of an arbitrary decision would be to allocate all the teachers to the incoming Year 7 groups:  there is no point being specific about exactly who is going to teach English to which class, because any of the four Year 7 English teachers could take any group, without needing to worry about continuity from Year 6.  Doing so means creating an unnecessary restriction;  doing so across all subjects is just mad!

It starts with the fixed items:  Enrichment, Year 12/13 PE, PSHE, HoYs meeting, SMT meeting and lock these in place.  Then the Year 12/13 pairings, bearing in mind we want double periods etc..  Then Year 11.  Then realise this isn’t going to work, because of some staffing issue.  Rip out Years 11 – 13 and start again.  Repeat as necessary until there’s a satisfactory solution.  Add in Year 10.  Take out Year 10 and adjust the option scheme.  Retry Year 10….

This constant back and forth continues for a few weeks.  We now have some limited options in Year 9, so it’s a similar story and that takes about a week to sort out.  Finally, Years 8 and then 7, where there is much more flexibility, as one class can have Geography whilst another is studying English and another Art etc.. Even so, that’s another week and it’s May Half Term already  – or later!

So, why do I do this?  Because it’s a huge puzzle, but it’s a puzzle where the answer isn’t in the back of the book or in tomorrow’s edition;  it’s a puzzle where you have to keep changing the problem when it can’t be solved to one you think you might be able to solve… or might not, so you try turning it into yet another problem.

But when that final piece of the jigsaw slots into place, that multi-way swap that you think will do the trick does do the trick, that opportunity to move something that you thought you remembered turns out to be right, then I know why I do this!

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Wimbledon High Junior School: Reflections on 16 years of Junior School Leadership

Ms Kate Mitchell, Head of Juniors, retires at the end of this academic year after 16 years as Head of Juniors. Here she explores some of the changes that have occurred that have enabled the WHS Junior School to go from strength to strength.

Kate
Above: From here…
Above: …to there!

Wednesday January 8th 2003: from this, my very first day, I wanted so much to get it right and be the best Head I could possibly be. Who would have predicted heavy snow? Not everyone made it into school that day and nothing could have been considered to be normal for those first few wintery days of my first term. What a very strange way indeed to begin to get to know your staff, parents and girls. I got to know them very quickly, as we played outside, built snowmen and had lots of fun together. What did I learn? The great Monty Python mantra which has stayed with me throughout, ‘always expect the unexpected’!

The very first Year 6 production I saw was ‘Bring Dad Home’. Performed at The Polka Theatre, the girls had the weekend to rehearse in the theatre and it was performed twice on the Sunday – matinee and evening. I then brought things ‘in house’ and for a few years, we used the Junior Hall for our shows, until the Rutherford Theatre was built in 2007 – hurrah for that!

In 2003, hockey, cross-country and tennis were not on the curriculum. The girls simply played netball throughout the autumn with rounders and athletics in the summer. Our only strength was in swimming. My first meeting with parents concluded with them asking me to address the perceived mediocrity that existed in sport. I’m not going to describe to you what you know exists today (take a look at our many recent triumphs detailed in High Ways) but you can see that we have come a very, very long way, in terms of variety and excellence in sport.

Referencing sport leads me to reflect on how the House system has changed. At least in the Junior School, we had a House system; it wasn’t introduced to the Senior School until 2005. Named after four famous women, the girls meet fortnightly, compete in lots of different arenas including sport, music and chess, raise funds for chosen charities and generally make inter-year friendships that last throughout their time in Juniors. A great development in recent years is the cross-fertilization with the senior school where we have the same colour house days and house captains lead house assemblies together. This has become a major part of our vision to create a truly unified school where the playground is not the metaphorical divide between seniors and juniors.

I can’t emphasise enough how important residential visits are in the lives of children. The range we offer to the girls is, as you would expect, carefully matched to the taught curriculum but more importantly, the girls are learning the skills of being away from home. From Year 3, these are stepped up age appropriately in length of nights away from home as well as distance! I included Bushcraft knowing that it is a truly formative experience for all involved – including staff. This complements the recent introduction of the Outdoor Ed programme in Year 6 which leads to national certification. In addition, for Years 5&6 we offer a biennial ski trip and we are about to launch, in the alternate years, and in response to parental demand, a sports tour open to all.

It is what goes on in the classroom that is fundamental to girls’ learning. However, when I meet ‘old girls’ who are now beyond university, it is all of the above that they recall fondly and speak about, rather than the day they learnt their 6x tables.  Why is this? I believe co-curricular activity relies on the strength of the human relationships which inspire the girls to develop and grow their confidence and creates happiness from within. Of course, none of this could be achieved without the dedicated staff who are prepared to try new ideas, give their time and support the myriad of opportunities open to the girls; and it is through the strength of these relationships that deep learning takes place.

I too have been on a learning journey which has been rewarding, fulfilling, exciting, sometimes scary and above all great fun. As I now prepare to stride out I know that I am leaving behind a Junior School which is in truly great shape. I feel privileged to have been at the helm for 16 years and am very proud of all that we in the Junior School have achieved together.

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How do Independent-State School Partnerships (ISSPs) improve education for all?

ISSPS partnership

Nicola Kersley, co-ordinator of Charities and Partnerships at WHS, celebrates the government’s recent push for more ISSPs and looks at their value to all of the schools involved, and looks at how Wimbledon High is embracing partnerships.

ISSPs on the political agenda

Hard to remember though it may be, there was a time that the government talked about things other than Brexit; back in those halcyon days, Theresa May had her focus well and truly on education [1]. Her plans were intended to provide the backbone for her social mobility agenda, and included: the expansion of selective education in the form of grammar schools, the removal of barriers to good schools (for example selection based on faith), and universities and schools in the private sector giving more back to the state sector [2]. Acting swiftly on her ‘education, education, education’ moment, it took May’s government only two months to publish a green paper outlining its plans for the last of these, the partnerships strand to the strategy [3].

Partnerships between state and private schools were first formally given government backing in 1998 [4] when there was funding provided, and they have gone in and out of vogue ever since. May’s new initiative is in the process of renewing their position in the political limelight, and more power to her. Partnerships between schools should be a key feature of our education system, benefiting not only schools as institutions, but also the children they have a duty of care to, and even the wider community as a whole. This article addresses the arguments in favour of these partnerships and cites examples from Wimbledon High to demonstrate the successes that our reasonably young Teach Together partnership program is already having.

Benefits to Schools

The benefits of general collaboration have been explored in depth by Alex Farrer in November 2018’s WimTeach article [5] so I will avoid rehashing the details and rather stick to the more niche scenario of inter-school collaboration. Most obviously, collaboration provides opportunities for economies of scale [6]; if Wimbledon High hosts an Explore lecture and opens it up to attendees from its partner schools the cost per capita is reduced. The same applies for training days for staff and trips to visit universities.

Schools benefit from partnerships because staff benefit from partnerships [4]. It is through the breadth of experience that teaching practice flourishes, and working with pupils and staff from different schools, and indeed different socio-economic backgrounds, epitomises this. Working in ISSPs ensures that we do not become complacent in our own bubbles and that we are aware of other educational landscapes, often to mutual benefit [7]. For example, an ISSP can enable significant sharing of experiences and strategies regarding pastoral policies. Whilst independent schools are more susceptible to some issues pastorally and state schools are more susceptible to others, neither are immune to anything; the larger the knowledge base the better [6].

Figure 1: Local Primary teachers come together to test out new Science resources in our STEAM space

Partnerships also allow for resource sharing; it is undeniable that we in the independent sector are able to access resources and facilities closed off to many state schools. One prong of our partnership work at Wimbledon High is in the provision of access to facilities like our swimming pool, our music facilities (including the secondment of staff), and our Latin teachers allowing for immeasurable benefit to state school pupils, staff and departments. In the Physics department, our highly experienced lab technician is providing support to non-specialist technicians at some of our partner schools, the impact of which is hugely beneficial to those Physics departments and their ability to provide experience in practical work for pupils.

Figure 2: Physics teachers from WHS’s state school secondary partners share CPD and teaching ideas

Benefits to students

At Wimbledon High, one of our most wide-reaching expressions of partnership work is in our Teach Together program. This sees our pupils deliver well-prepared lessons and support to younger partner school pupils, supported by experienced teachers to ensure that benefit is maximised. The WHS girls involved are knowledgeable and respectable sixth formers and year 11s who the younger state school pupils can look up to, not only as ambassadors for their subject but also as aspirational role models. An excellent example of this is the work that WHS girls do every week mentoring Year 8s at Tolworth Girls’ School, a hugely successful project that sees our girls use their peer-counselling training to help Tolworth pupils think through their problems logically and level-headedly. For the state schoolchildren involved there can be only good done by attending extra sessions in a subject in which they need more support, be that academic or pastoral.

Figure 3: WHS sixth formers help Ricards Lodge KS3 students with Maths extension activities in an after school club

The benefits to the independent school participants are less obvious but certainly no less meaningful. Teachers know better than most that you do not really understand something until you have taught it, and it is in this assertion that the greatest benefit to the pupils lies. By preparing and delivering sessions for younger learners, the pupils are not only reinforcing their understanding of a topic [8] but also enhancing their ability to express their knowledge clearly, an undeniably important skill not least for university and job interviews. At Wimbledon High, we have a vast range of projects that allow our girls to inspire younger pupils with their chosen subjects, such as teaching Science to local primary schools at St Boniface and St Matthews. The girls are able to really develop their academic rigour when preparing the sessions, then hone their communication skills as they deliver them. When we work with other cohorts more similar in age, the abilities to collaborate and compromise are necessities. These skills are essential in projects like our science scheme with Ark Putney Academy (APA) in which our Year 11s, 12s and 13s are working with Year 10s from APA to collect real data about melting ice caps for scientists at the centre for polar observation and modelling [9]. Work like this is an invaluable practice in confidence building and teamwork.

Figure 4: APA and WHS students work together to collect data for the Institute of Research in the School’s MELT initiative

Measuring impact

The question for us working in partnerships is not whether or not there is a mutual benefit provided by partnership work because we know it to be fact. Rather, the question is how to demonstrate quantifiably this benefit. As an independent school, not only are we interested in measuring the value of each of our projects for the sake of growth and improvement, we are also required to report to the Independent Schools Council about the impact that they are having [10]. Evidence gathered is often qualitative and anecdotal making the impact difficult to quantify [11], but by using questionnaires issued to both staff and pupils, we have been able to track certain success measures such as interest in the subject and confidence. We are also able to look at tracking data of those pupils that we are working with and hope to see progress by using baseline data and tracing attainment over the course of the year, albeit a method made problematic due to significant external variables.

Conclusion

The government’s renewed push for ISSPs is a truly welcome initiative that we are embracing at Wimbledon High. By sharing resources and widening our circles of communication, staff and schools are already benefitting. Partnerships allow cohesion between the two sectors, and a breaking down of barriers and negative preconceptions. They enable teachers and support staff to benefit from high-quality professional development and the sharing of expertise [4].

Partnerships are also great for pupils involved, providing opportunities for learners from widely differing backgrounds to interact with each other in a positive and often innovative learning context. Those activities relating to academics are beneficial to all parties involved, providing support to the younger pupil being taught, and a revision opportunity and confidence builder for the pupil delivering the lesson. They foster imaginative, creative and exciting classroom and extracurricular provision. Mentoring projects give our girls excellent experience in peer counselling and provide positive role models for the state schoolchildren.

The challenge that we face moving forward is how to measure the impact that we instinctively know that we are having. We will be working over the next year on formulating meaningful measurement tools to provide quantifiable data, whilst we continue to expand the program to ensure that it is as wide-reaching and impactful as possible.

References

[1] T. May, “Why I’m giving education a huge boost,” The Telegraph, 7 March 2017.
[2] Lexington Communications, “Theresa May’s education education education moment,” 19 January 2019. [Online]. Available: http://lexcomm.co.uk/theresa-mays-education-education-education-moment.
[3] Department for Education, “Schools that work for everyone,” Department for Education, London, 2016.
[4] Ofsted, “Independent/State School Partnerships,” Ofsted, London, 2005.
[5] A. Farrer, “The Importance of Collaborative Learning,” Wimbledon High School, London, 2018.
[6] D. P. Armstrong, “Effective school partnerships and collaboration for school improvement: a review of the evidence,” Department for Education, London, 2015.
[7] J. Turner, “Building bridges: A study of independent-state school parterships,” National College for School Leadership, Nottingham, 2004.
[8] K. Kobayashi, “Interactivity: A Potential Determinant of Learning by Preparing to Teach and Teaching,” Frontiers in Psychology, Shizuoka, 2019.
[9] P. B. Parker, “IRIS MELT – Introducing the Challenge,” IRIS, [Online]. Available: http://www.researchinschools.org/projects/melt.html. [Accessed 02 03 2019].
[10] Department for Education, “Schools that Work for Everyone, Government consulation response,” Department for Education, London, 2018.
[11] M. Bourne, “Independent State School Partnerships – impact of and lessons learnt,” Department for Education, London, 2017.

 

 

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Toward the Unknown Region: how do we impart the skills and knowledge required for students to be successful in careers that currently do not exist?

Future of Jobs 2

Toward the Unknown Region[1] – Mr. Nicholas Sharman, Head of Design & Technology looks at whether integrating STEAM into the heart of a curriculum develops skills required for careers that do not currently exist.

The world of work has always been an evolving environment. However, it has never been more pertinent than now; according to the world economic forum, 65% of students entering primary school today will be working in jobs that do not currently exist[2].

As educators, this makes our job either extremely difficult, pointless or (in my view) one of the most exciting opportunities that we have been faced with for nearly 200 years since the introduction of the Victorian education system. The idea of relying solely on a knowledge-based education system is becoming outdated and will not allow students to integrate into an entirely different world of work. Automation and Artificial Intelligence will make manual and repetitive jobs obsolete, changing the way we work entirely. Ask yourself this: could a robot do your job? The integration of these developments is a conversation all in its own and one for a future post.

So, what is STEAM and why has it become so prominent in the UK education system?

The acronym STEM was (apparently) derived from the American initiative ‘STEM’ developed in 2001 by scientific administrators at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)[3]. The addition of the ‘A’ representing the Arts, ultimately creating Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths. Since the introduction of STEM-based curriculums in the US, the initiative has grown exponentially throughout the globe, with the UK education system adopting the concept.

So why STEAM and what are the benefits? STEAM education is far more than just sticking subject titles together. It is a philosophy of education that embraces teaching skills and subjects in a way that resembles the real world. More importantly, it develops the skills predicted to be required for careers that currently do not exist. What are these skills and why are they so important?

Knowledge vs Skills

When we look at the education systems from around the world there are three that stand out. Japan, Singapore and Finland have all been quoted as countries that have reduced the size of their knowledge curriculum. This has allowed them to make space to develop skills and personal attributes. Comparing this to the PISA rankings, these schools are within the top 5 in the world and in Singapore’s case, ranked No1[4].

I am sure we cannot wholly attribute this to a skills-focused curriculum; however, it does ask the question – what skills are these schools developing and how much knowledge do we need?[5],[6]

  1. Mental Elasticity – having the mental flexibility to think outside of the box, see the big picture and rearrange things to find a solution.
  2. Critical Thinking – the ability to analyse various situations, considering multiple solutions and making decisions quickly through logic and reasoning.
  3. Creativity – robots may be better than you may at calculating and diagnosing problems, however, they are not very good at creating original content, thinking outside the box or being abstract.
  4. People Skills – the ability to learn how to manage and work with people (and robots), having empathy and listening
  5. SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) – learning how to use new technology and how to manage them
  6. Interdisciplinary Knowledge – understanding how to pull information from many different fields to come up with creative solutions to future problems.
Future of Jobs graph
The Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum showing the pace of change in just 5 years

All of the above skills are just predictions. However, the list clearly highlights that employers will be seeking skill-based qualities, with this changing as future jobs develop and materialise. So do we need knowledge?

Well, of course we do – knowledge is the fundamental element required to be successful in using the above skills. However, as educators, we need to consider a balance of how we can make sure our students understand how important these skills will be to them in the future when an exam grade based on knowledge could be irrelevant to employers.

What subjects promote these skills?

As a Technologist, I believe there has never been a more important time in promoting and delivering the Design & Technology curriculum. The subject has for too long been misrepresented and had a stigma hanging around it due to previous specifications and people’s experiences, comments such as ‘so you teach woodwork then?’ really do not give justice to the subject.

With the introduction of the new curriculum, allowing students more opportunity to investigate and build these future skills, the subject has never been more relevant. Looking at the list of promoted skills, I cannot think of another subject that not only promotes these skills but also actively encourages the integration into every lesson. Do not get me wrong, all subjects are as equally important. Design & Technology is a subject that is able to bring them all into real-world scenarios. If we think about the knowledge that is developed in Science for example – where students can look at material properties and their effect on the user’s experience, or Religious Studies and how different signs, symbols or even colours can have different meanings in cultures affecting the design of a fully inclusive product – they can all be related to Design and Technology in one way or another.

Comparing the Design & Technology curriculum to the future skills list, we can break down the different skills it develops. It encourages mental elasticity through challenging student’s ideas and concepts, thinking differently to solve current and real-life problems. It allows students to develop critical thinking, through challenging their knowledge and understanding; ensuring students develop the ability to solve problems through investigation, iteration and failure, ultimately building resilience. It goes without saying that the subject not only encourages creativity but allows students to challenge concepts and ideas through investigating and questioning. Furthermore, it teaches the concept of ‘design thinking’ and collaborative working, allowing students to develop people skills, understanding how people work, interact and think; enhancing empathy and understanding. As technology progresses the subject follows suit, permitting students to implement and understand how new and emerging technologies are embedded, not only into the world of design but the Social, Moral and environmental effects they create. Lastly and probably most importantly, is how the subject teaches interdisciplinary knowledge. I like to describe Design & Technology as a subject that brings knowledge from all areas of the curriculum together, the creativity and aesthetics from Art, the application of Maths when looking at anthropometrics, tolerances or even ratios, how Religious Studies can inform and determine designs, how science informs and allows students to apply theory, or even the environmental impact Geography can show. I could go on and explain how every subject influences Design & Technology in one way or another, although, more importantly, it shows how we need to look at a more cohesive and cross-curricular curriculum; when this happens the future skills are inherently delivered in a real-world application.

Looking back at the question at the start of this article, we can start to conclude why having the concept of STEAM at the heart of a school environment is so important. However, it is not good enough to just ‘stick’ subjects together, there has to be a bigger picture where knowledge and skills are stitched together like a finely woven tapestry. Ideally, we would look at the primary education system, where we remove subject-specific lessons, develop co-teaching, learning that takes place through projects bringing elements from all subjects in to cohesive projects; teachers would become facilitators of learning, delivering knowledge not in a classroom but in an environment that allows more autonomous research and investigation. However, until the exam system changes, this is not going to fully happen.

So what could we be doing more? I believe we should be focusing on more cross-curricular planning, developing skills application and using knowledge to enhance learning. By developing a curriculum centred around a STEAM approach, we can start to develop the skills required for our students and the careers of the future.

References: 

[1] See https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/245 for the text to Ralph Vaughan Williams’ piece for choir and orchestra entitled ‘Toward the Unknown Region’
[2] https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018
[3] https://www.britannica.com/topic/STEM-education
[4] http://www.oecd.org/pisa/
[5] https://www.weforum.org/focus/skills-for-your-future
[6] https://www.crimsoneducation.org/uk/blog/jobs-of-the-future
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Is this the end for experts?

Wimbledon Wonderers logo

Ms Mari Nicholas, Head of Academic Scholarship at WHS, looks at how WHS is scholarly and why we should be lifelong learners.

Judith Butler, Science Philosopher
Judith Butler, Science Philosopher

From Thales of Miletus, Zarathustra and Confucius to Nancy Cartwright, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Judith Butler, over the centuries, philosophers have debated and cogitated the big questions. According to the University of Oxford, the study of Philosophy develops analytical rigour and the ability to criticise and reason logically. These skills can be applied to questions ranging from how we acquire knowledge and form moral judgements to central questions in the philosophy of religion. (Ox.ac.uk, 2019)

An expert is a person who is knowledgeable about or skilful in a particular area. Being scholarly means having or showing knowledge, learning, or devotion to academic pursuits. One could argue, therefore, that one does not need to be a philosopher in order to be an expert or indeed scholarly. We can all develop knowledge, become skilful and devote ourselves to academic pursuits without having to give up the day job!

Work hard, pass exams and get a job?

There are myriad benefits of lifelong learning, not least the joy of discovering something new. Every day is a school day, perhaps more for teachers than most, as rarely a day goes by when one does not learn something new from the girls we are fortunate enough to educate.

Major advantages of continued learning include improving our mental and physical health: it fosters a sense of identity, an ability to cope and a sense of purpose. Studies have shown that learning leads to a greater sense of wellbeing and continued education in life contributes to a ‘cognitive footprint’, which may delay the onset of dementia. Physical health is also improved and longitudinal studies have shown a lower risk of coronary heart disease, higher probability of cervical screening and improved nutrition. In fact, learning as a whole has an impact on mortality, although one can attribute this evidence to both early as well as adult education.

Adult learning has a positive effect on your employability, raising aspirations, increasing earnings and improving job satisfaction.  Adult learning fosters a capacity to be assertive and to collaborate with others in the workplace (Billett, 2014). It is beneficial for your employer too, increasing productivity, employee commitment and resulting in a slower turnover of staff.

Community learning and vocational training are associated with improved community engagement, local involvement and volunteering (Bosche and Brady, 2013; Feinstein et al., 2008). In particular, adult literacy and numeracy have a positive impact on communities, leading to greater tolerance of others and increased trust in people of different nationalities and religions. Finally, adults who participate in learning themselves are more likely to engage in their children’s education, improving outcomes. Where levels of inequality are high, this effect is particularly pronounced (OECD, 2016).

What does Scholarship look like at WHS?

Wimbledon Wonderers logo Alongside high-quality provision in lessons, the academic stretch programme challenges our learners throughout the school.

Girls in Years 7 and 8 attend Wonderers sessions where departments take their education beyond the curriculum and enjoy learning for its own sake. This academic year, a diverse range of subjects has been covered, from Classics “The link between myth, poetry and art”; Product Design “Principles behind designing and the utility of products” and Maths “The Maths behind knitting”.

Tea and T’inking is an informal discussion group where older students come together to hash out the big ideas. Topics covered so far this year include: politics “what we might consider as an ideal political system and the deficiencies in our system”; general knowledge “what do we mean by general knowledge, how is it useful and how might it be applied?”; modern linguistic and visual culture “Why are young people attracted to memes, what do they mean and what is their importance?”.

Rosewell Lecture logoOur robust Explore and Rosewell lecture series welcomes external speakers to challenge and provoke those girls in Years 9 to 13 to think more deeply both within and without their subject specialism. Parents, teachers and partner schools are welcome at these lectures. Our external speakers have included: Janet Henry, Chief Global Economist for HSBC, “Diverging fortunes”; “In conversation with” Gillian Clark, poet, playwright, Explore logoeditor, broadcaster; Prof Vicky Neale, Whitehead lecturer at the Mathematical Institute, “Closing the Gap, the quest to understand prime numbers”; Dr Guy Sutton, “Mind and brain in the 21st Century”.

An integral part of being a member of staff at WHS is continual study and the development of expertise in their field. Regular training from Trust or external providers to in-house Twilight sessions cover a range of topics from “How to become a Head of Department” to “Giving feedback on exams, tests and assessments” and allow staff to develop professionally, leading to benefits for themselves, the students and the school.

Brain books

In addition, a group of staff from across the school make up a professional reading group, Brain Books. Every half term they discuss books in education that relate to their role within the school. These discussions inform their teaching, feed into departmental discussions and might eventually change the way we teach and learn at WHS. “Teaching Backwards” by Andy Griffith will be the next book to challenge preconceived notions of how excellent teaching and learning should look.

Lazy Teachers Handbook A discussion of “The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook” by Jim Smith drew the following comments:

  • His ideas cover a variety of pedagogical areas i.e. differentiation, lesson structure, plenaries, assessment, planning and pupil self-esteem.
  • It is good to dip into and provides inspiration for different ways of doing something.
  • One suggestion that I used today with some success is the think-pair-square-share idea for sharing ideas within the class. It doesn’t involve any pre-planning or moving of furniture and develops a range of skills for pupils.
  • I read the book in its entirety and was entertained; I picked up lots of useful strategies. It lacked a rigorous evidence base and that was a sticking point for me as his own particular style dominated. Having said that, in the past couple of weeks I have utilised a number of things and have made note of more. I use continuums or opinion lines in lessons at all levels to help students develop arguments and have experimented with his suggestions of mixing up different points of view in different ways to get individuals differentiating their interpretations in a more nuanced way.

 

Independent Thinking“Independent Thinking” by Ian Gilbert elicited the following:

  • Great for dipping into: the very structure of this book is creative and anti-linear, juxtaposing the author’s observations, ‘thunks’, witticisms, poems, stories, mini-essays, all to spark the reader’s own ‘out of the box’ thought processes.
  • His short observations or perceived wisdoms could work really well to spark interdisciplinary debate and to develop flexible growth mind-sets although ‘profound’ wisdoms slip into cliché and become a bit grating.
  • The book was unscientific, presenting anecdotal evidence as fact; not only that, but at times it seemed to be anti-science, evidenced in the chapter ‘How to know whether you’re a humanist or a scientist’ which lists a series of damning indictments on scientists.
  • The emphasis on building a child’s positive self-image was great – nurturing a feeling of ‘can do’, even if not ‘yet’.
  • It is not immediately relevant to my classroom teaching, but pastorally and more widely the ideas he had about creating opportunities to engage intellectually with the work of charities as well as support them with action were valuable.
  • “30 things exams don’t test” works very well with my ‘being human in an AI age’ agenda. It had a “Good school checklist” – are we walking the walk with our vision and values? Perhaps leave the poetry to other people?
  • It has made me reflect on my teaching and question, ‘How am I preparing today’s children for life in tomorrow’s world?’ Are my actions helping the girls in my class or school to in the future, have a positive effect on the world?
  • I would like to think that a copy of this book was given to all those who work at the Department of Education!

In summary, is it the end for experts? No. Lifelong learning has a huge impact on our health, wealth and happiness. I believe we should be scholarly and become experts despite what others may think.

Bibliography

Billett, S., 2014. Learning in the circumstances of practice. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 33(5), pp. 674-693.

Bosche, B. and Brady, B., 2013. Benefits des community learning: Ergebnisse aus Irland, in Benefits of lifelong learning. DIE Journal for Adult Education, 1, pp. 30-34.

Feinstein, L., Budge, D., Vorhaus, J. and Duckworth, K., 2008. The social and personal benefits of learning: A summary of key research findings, London: Institute of Education, University of London.

OECD, 2016. The productivity-inclusiveness nexus. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/globalforum-productivity/library/The-Productivity-Inclusiveness-Nexus-Preliminary.pdf

Ox.ac.uk. (2019). Philosophy and Theology | University of Oxford. [online] Available at: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing/philosophy-and-theology?wssl=1  [Accessed 13 Mar. 2019].

 

 

 

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Why does Wimbledon High School need a behaviour system?

Richard White, School Consultant teacher and Head of Year, explores the benefits of an integrated and centralised behaviour system in schools and why they are so important.

Why?

When I first started discussing the need for a whole school behaviour system ‘why’ was ostensibly a very sensible question. Generally, pupils at WHS are well behaved and there are not a great deal of problems with disruptive behaviour in lessons. On the whole, they treat each other well and show respect towards adults.

Yet this ignores a number of very good reasons, perhaps most importantly that children need clear boundaries. I am sure that most 11-18 year olds would like to say that they do not want boundaries to be put in place, but it is those boundaries that help to develop a safe secure environment and a sense of respect when they are consistently applied. It is also important to help allow teenagers to understand the responsibility they have for their behaviour and subsequent consequences.

Behaviour

The need to have parity of consequences for both positive and negative behaviour, and to have the behaviour of the individual as the focus rather than the teacher’s response to this. This has an impact on staff wellbeing as well, rather than having to chase pupils for detentions or dealing with differing expectations between members of staff the behaviour can be dealt with more objectively at a later point.

By having a behaviour system we are much more able to log patterns of behaviour and help us to build a better picture of the students we teach, as well as having more informed discussions with them and, if necessary, with their parents. This could help us discover when there are issues for pupils faster and allow us to put strategies in place to help them quicker. Whether positive or negative, a behaviour system can allow staff to focus on the behaviour of the pupil rather than potentially making it personal.

Linking back to the initial question of why do this (as the students are not, on the whole, badly behaved), we want to reward the girls more, particularly those who might normally go unnoticed. We wanted to see if we could find a way to recognise a range of girls – those who excel academically and those who publicly achieve – but also those who come to school and work to the best of their ability day in day out, who hold doors open or do small things to try and improve the lives of those around them. Both are of equal importance.

How?

When creating a system from scratch it became apparent very quickly that having buy-in from staff, SMT and pupils were going to be the biggest challenge from the outset.

I have been lucky enough to work in a range of schools with varying behaviour policies, so I took the broad idea of a three strikes rule and a diamond. One side of the diamond would be positive and the other negative, as you move to the tip of the diamond on either side this should represent either more serious consequences or rarer and more sought-after rewards.

After presenting the idea to SMT with the positives that I have outlined above we formed a strategy group that was available to all members of staff. I seem to remember that we ran 5 after-school sessions, each reviewing suggestions of the last subject and how the ideas would work for each different subject.

We also met with the student counsel as well to have their views on the broad idea and what areas of behaviour needed to be recognised and reprimanded. It would have to be said that of the three interest groups that were approached the students were by far the keenest and have always been happy to see those of their peers not representing their community positively dealt with accordingly.

We rolled the system out to a single year group in the final term of the year and were able to iron out any issues with the system ready to launch to all staff and pupils in the following September. This has been reviewed periodically to allow staff and pupils a voice on how the behaviour system is working, allowing for changes and improvements to be made.

What is our system?

We use a system that works on house points and negative behaviour points. The pupils receive house points (this was to try and raise the profile of the house system when we first launched our behaviour system) for model behaviour, class and homework effort, great contributions, excellent achievement and postcards home. We have a range of rewards from half-termly breakfasts put on for those who receive the most model behaviour points in each house and in each year group, which is led on by the House Captains and attempts to further inter-year bonding in the school. We have trips to a local coffee shop, different levels of certificates for accumulative achievement, a cinema trip for the winning house, a range of prizes in the end of term assemblies and in our end of year speech day we have a host of awards that recognise student’s achievements of an academic and personal nature.

The negative behaviour is precisely focused on with detentions being issued when 3 points are collated in a specific category in any 2-week period. Pupils will be told when they are receiving points, but there is not a requirement for staff to get involved in prolonged discussions there and then. The cumulative behaviour is dealt with by the year team, and if they decide detention is warranted then one is issued after a discussion with the pupil regarding their behaviour that led them there.

Every form tutor has a screen that allows them to see when their tutees have two points in any given category so that they can be involved in discussions with their tutees before their behaviour escalates into detention. This allows for the tutor team to step in before the situation has become an established pattern of behaviour.

Depending on the seriousness of offence this can then escalate into further consequences. The intent is to stop this though, particularly if behaviour is recurrent, and after 2 detentions in the same term for the same behaviour type the student would be placed on a report, not as a further punishment but to try and help them alter the negative pattern of behaviour and give them a greater sense of ownership of this. It also allows for more immediate praise when things go well which can have a far bigger impact than repeatedly punishing pupils.

Problems?

As has been alluded to above having buy-in from all interest groups is the biggest challenge. Staff training, in particular, has been particularly important, and we are very lucky that we have a staff body that has embraced the system. That isn’t to say that there weren’t teething problems, particularly when staff had for so long had their own independent systems for dealing with their pupils. However, with regular training initially and with training new staff in how the system works as part of their induction training sessions has helped it become a part of daily life at school.

Another issue has been age bias. I hold my hands up as a guilty party here. As the pupils get older we often assume that they care less about getting positive points, but as my Year 11s recently showed me when they took me to the task of my tardiness at given them points, they do still care; of course, they do! When they work as hard as our students do they want, and deserve recognition for their efforts.

Technical training and reporting was also initially an issue, and ensuring that there is parity between year groups in approach and staff more generally will always be something the school needs to be mindful of. As with any system that relies on people things will always be subjective, and therefore never without its problems.

Impact?

We often see that the younger year groups have issues with organisation and homework at first, but we also see these behaviour patterns change. These behaviours were not confined younger year groups at first, but are much more so now. When boundaries are consistently enforced, and discussions centre around the behaviour and what can be done to change it they have appeared to have had a much bigger impact.

Behaviour is not perfect, and in a school, I do not believe it ever will be. However, our pupils learn to be more responsible for their behaviour and we are able to have much more informed conversations with them and their parents about both the positive and negative behaviour we see in school.

 

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Learning: Back to the Future

‘Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit’ - a virtual reality film combining traditional Shakespeare with modern VR technology

Mrs Jane Lunnon, Head of WHS, looks at the impact of digital learning on education, linking this to recent examination reforms at GCSE and A Level.

Imagine this: you are watching a production of Hamlet online. Gertrude is betraying her son, Ophelia is going mad. Claudius is hiding things and Hamlet is doing (or rather, not doing) his thing.  And you, the viewer, are not only watching this on your computer, you are also, right there, in the show, a reflection in a gilded mirror – daubed with blood and looking pretty ropey. (Your part is the ghost of Old Hamlet.)

And so, you are there and not there. You can see yourself – as watched and watcher.  How brilliant, how extraordinary, how game-changing is that? This is happening, right now. In the US, the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company have teamed up with Google: so VR tech teamed with great creativity, enabling viewers to inhabit the text – to literally become part of it.  That’s what’s happening in learning today.[1]

 

‘Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit’ - a virtual reality film combining traditional Shakespeare with modern VR technology
‘Hamlet 360: Thy Father’s Spirit’ – a virtual reality film combining traditional Shakespeare with modern VR technology

 

[1] See https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/theater/hamlet-virtual-reality-google.html

And it’s not just some exotic, transatlantic experiment.  The impact of technology on the way we learn is seminal and astonishing. In our last staff meeting, our Director of Innovation and e-learning (imagine even having such a job title in a school ten years ago), was heralding the arrival of a brand new set of VR Headsets. As a school, we adopted BYOD (bring your own device) several years ago and this, when combined with the headsets and Google Expeditions, means that our pupils can journey to Africa, to Jerusalem, to Tudor England, to the inside of a black hole, to the inside of their own bodies… The impact on our students, when they do, is immediate and palpable. It’s not just gimmicks and game-playing; this is sentient, dynamic, visual learning in ways those of us who became excited by the potential of power-point in the late 1990s, could barely have imagined.

But the technological revolution in education is not just about the flashy, painting with coloured light sort of stuff (although it’s very hard not to get terribly excited by all of that). As a Microsoft Showcase school, we have adopted wholesale software like Microsoft Teams (useful baskets to keep all our meeting/lesson/admin resources), Onenote – seamless collaborative working/library spaces, and Onedrive – shared document folders. Like many schools, we have found that the truly revolutionary and transformative development in education IT was the Cloud and the way it has made accessing and sharing learning seamless and straightforward. The learning environment is no longer just in the classroom or the library. It is now, quite simply, everywhere: in the playground, on the bus, at your mate’s house, in the kitchen…and this has made a real difference to the way children learn and the way we all teach. My Year 7 English students, for example, work online – using their class TEAM. They do their homework in their own folders stored in that TEAM basket and I can then mark it (using the clever pen that writes on the screen) as soon as they do it. That means, that I can see at once if they are not quite getting the point about enjambment or the impact of verse form on the meaning of a poem – and I can adapt my next lesson plan accordingly.  No more waiting around for a week for the work to be done, the books to come in and the homework to be marked. So nothing radical there; just more efficiency, more pace, more targeted planning. Which of course leads to more opportunity for stretch and fun and better outcomes all round.

We are not simply operating as advertisers for Microsoft products here, although earlier this term we were thrilled to find ourselves acting as a SW London outpost for the BETT Conference, with 40 or so delightful Swedish educators, joining us, keen to find out what we were doing and how we were doing it. I suspect that’s the largest number of Swedes we have entertained in this building at any one time in the 140-year history of the school!  It was a real pleasure to share our experiences, to learn what they are doing and to celebrate together the range, power and versatility which technology has brought into the classroom and beyond it.

And this is important because technology doesn’t just allow us to do things in a more colourful or more efficient way. It also, clearly, changes the way that children approach learning. Much of their work in the classroom, for example, is collaborative. It is as much about team-building and communication, about effective listening, careful research and powerful articulation of ideas, as it is about the causes of the First World War, or how to integrate fractions. The skills our world now requires (as the Hamlet example above suggests) is not just technical expertise and versatility, not simply the acquisition and application of key facts, analytical thinking and problem solving but creative flair, the ability to connect and link ideas and fields of knowledge and curriculum areas often in surprising, unexpected ways. And then there’s the capacity to communicate all this persuasively and effectively both in person and on paper. These are the skills necessary for a dynamic, technological, connected and highly protean workplace and it matters that our young people are encouraged to develop them in school.

That’s why we are developing our STEAM programme so enthusiastically at WHS. Our Steam Room, staffed by scientists in residence (SiRs), is not just the base for our girls to engage in scientific research and inquiry (with external partners

as well as internally) it is also a symbol of our cross-curricular approach. The job of our SiRs, is to facilitate inter-disciplinary connections. (RS meets Science when Year 7s try to make the dyes in Joseph’s dream-coat, English meets Psychology when A Level English students engage in the psychological exploration of the characters in ‘To The Lighthouse’, Geography, Physics and Technology combine when Year 9s design wind turbines… the list goes on.)

Facility with all of this, the ability to think flexibly, imaginatively and with resilience and integrity when confronted with tough problems, this feels like the urgent pedagogical focus for us now and it feels like the best way to prepare our children for the future. I had the great good fortune of hearing Sophie Hackford speak at the GDST Summit last summer[2]. Sophie is a Futurist (which strikes me as one of the best job titles ever). Her job is to look at trends and projections and the dreams of techno-enthusiasts everywhere and work out what is likely to be coming next – and then to advise government and anyone else who will listen. She described a world in which fake and real blend imperceptibly, where the world becomes our screen and we become computers, where space is our playground and our new hang out. A world where asteroids could be bought and mined, Mars could be inhabited. All alarming and deliberately provocative perhaps, but also, exciting and reflective of the urge to think differently and to imagine the hitherto unimaginable. This again, is what the future requires of us.

What it doesn’t need, I feel sure, is for our children to show that they can sit in rows of desks and write, on paper, with a pen, regurgitating facts they have carefully learnt, for three hours at a time. And yet that, of course, is what our examination system currently requires our children to do. And indeed, has done, to a greater or lesser extent, for the last hundred years or so. Learn this, commit it to memory, show me you’ve done so by writing it out on paper. How absolutely extraordinary, that in a world which has made so much progress and right in the middle of a technological revolution, here we are, still fundamentally assessing our students’ talent and achievements at school, with a pen, paper and serried rows of desks.

We might, perhaps, take comfort from the fact that there has been significant reform in our exam system recently. More academic rigour has been brought in at A Level and at GCSE.  And yes,  A Levels and GCSEs are new(ish) – more rigorous, fatter – the modules you can endlessly resit are gone, so is the huge emphasis on coursework. They have, indeed, been reformed. But reform is not revolution. These specifications, these exams, this assessment system is not a radical re-think for a new(ish) century. It’s not even a radical re-think for the old century. These exams are not modern – as those of us who are old enough to remember the very old O Levels and A Levels can testify. Indeed, it’s all there, as it always was: little or no coursework, significant emphasis on learned material, assimilation of key facts and the ability to remember and apply those facts in writing, to time, in big exam halls with your entire cohort sitting around you, using (mostly) a pen. There’s not much there that we don’t recognise. Indeed, not much that we wouldn’t recognise if we went back to when our parents were young. Perhaps there’s more rigour, but in the context of Sophie Hackford and the Google school of innovation and reform, it feels more like rigor mortis than bracing, academic stretch and dynamic aspiration for our young people in a new century.

[2] See https://www.gdst.net/article/gdst-summit-new-frontiers-equipping-girls-future

So, let’s not wonder (along with Hamlet) “why yet [we] live, to say this thing’s to do”. The assessment of our children need not be a tragedy if we can find ways to prepare them for examinations that require them to think and act differently and which make as much use as possible of the amazing new technological tools at our disposal. There are, indeed, “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in [our] philosophy”. Time to embrace them, I think.

This article was first published in Independent Education Today