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Staffroom confidential

Teachers’ tips

Last issue Joy asked if other schools had ways of giving staff a say on how they are managed by their head teacher.

The chosen few

At my primary school, each summer term the board of governors interviews three members of staff – two teachers and a teaching assistant – about the head teacher’s leadership over the past year. This information then feeds into the governors’ appraisal of the head.

The staff chosen change each year and the whole team is given notice of the interviews so we can raise any issues with the selected members if we want to. It seems to work pretty well.

Caroline, Devon

Read all about it

Your correspondent may be interested to know that Professor John MacBeath, who regularly works with the NUT, offers a model for bottom-up appraisal in schools in his book Schools Must Speak for Themselves: Arguments for School Self-evaluation (Routledge).

Malcolm, by email

Give us a break!

Does Joy genuinely believe that evaluation of the head is “left just to Ofsted”? Doesn’t she realise head teachers are also being evaluated, day-in, day-out, by their board of governors, school improvement partners and local authorities, not to mention being judged on SATs results and league table positions and having to answer to demanding parents?

Bottom-up evaluation may seem like a nice idea, but please could we remove one of the other layers of accountability first?!

An under-pressure head, by email

Next issue

I can’t help feeling that Inset days at my school are a waste of time. The last two ‘training’ days included two woolly sessions on thinking skills and learning outcomes, a presentation about some new ICT equipment that’s completely irrelevant to my work, and a talk by the head and deputy head about the school’s aims for the coming year, which didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already. No wonder most staff were dozing off by the end of it all!

Does anybody have any ideas for genuinely interesting and worthwhile Inset?

Name and address supplied

Reader's rant

Time to revise revision

I meet some 15-year-olds on so-called ‘study leave’ and ask them how it’s going. “Not bad,” they say. “I might do some revision the week before the GCSEs.”

As usual I am horrified, but who is to blame?

I’m afraid that, after 18 years of teaching, I don’t think much has changed since the eighties where exam preparation is concerned. There is too much focus on ploughing through the syllabus and not enough on how to pass exams, retain information and practise what pupils know consistently in a fun and engaging way.

As a teacher of modern foreign languages, I have the chance to run many workshops on this subject for staff in my own school and others. I always suggest binning the syllabus in January of Year 11 and going on a marathon of ‘revision revision revision’, showing pupils how to learn through visual techniques – using posters in their homes, how to highlight their work using colours, red for difficult, green for easy – I don’t need to relearn this bit, and so on. We also invite parents and share with them many ‘secrets’ on how to assist pupils at home with good quality revision.

We, as a staff, are very clued up, but not all schools are the same. There is too much reliance placed on the teenagers themselves to simply ‘go home and revise’. We have all been teenagers and should really remember just how hard this is. So why not get the bulk of it done in school before they leave?

Lay on extra sessions wherever possible. Organise one-off booster classes and maybe an Easter revision school. Bombarding pupils in assemblies with tips on how to revise, using all the obvious and tried and tested strategies, can be very effective. Model the ideas in class so youngsters understand what works best for them.

Don’t just talk to Year 11 pupils, but to Year 7 upwards, as all pupils face exams every year, don’t they? It is part of our school system and there is no escaping it.

Some parents have said how helpful they have found the tips with their own studies as trainee nurses or even cramming for their driving test!

Wake up, smell those exam papers and remove the cloak surrounding revision. It’s not someone else’s job – it’s ours!

Sara Sullivan, by email

Send your contributions for A funny thing happened, The things pupils say, Teachers’ tips and Reader’s rant to: The Teacher, NUT, Hamilton House, Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9BD or email them to teacher@nut.org.uk. Deadline for next issue: 11 October. Please include your contact details.