Diary of an NQT Here come the trainee teachers


LAST YEAR when I did my training I didn’t really feel like a proper teacher. I felt like an impostor who had come in off the street and accidentally got asked to tells kids some random stories about famous battles. I hadn’t really moved on from this


feeling until very recently, and I think this is because I am no longer bottom of the pile – here come the trainee teachers. When I first started as


a trainee I wanted to know everything, question everything and talk at length about everything. Now I just want to make it to


Friday alive. I reminisce as I hear the same


enthusiastic conversations about teaching standards coming from the new cohort but, now, I am rolling my eyes rather than nodding my head. Now, I am a part of the


establishment. I know what pigeon-hole things


go into. I know how to set cover without getting a complaint. I know when to pick my battles with classes. I have become a teacher. That is not to say I have got it


right, or that I have got any better. The time I was allowed to pour into a single lesson in my training year seems like a luxury I cannot even remember. Did I really design, cut-out and laminate card-sorts? Now I have some days where I genuinely


forget to eat, let alone find the time to plan a stimulating starter. Our staffroom is currently no longer a place


of solitude, it used to be somewhere a stressed teacher could go for a peaceful, if disgusting, coffee, a therapeutic whinge and to find a corner to mark year 10 drivel. At the moment it is a hive of activity packed full of beaming PGCE and GTP students. They


are laminating everything in sight and the poor old photocopier is coughing and spluttering over each differentiated writing frame it is forced to spit out. I even saw one the other day labelling lollipop


sticks with their students’ names. Unless that is for a game of detention roulette, I am not interested. Let me be clear, there is nothing


wrong with the new PGCE students that have occupied our staffroom and I am sure they are wonderful people. The only thing that shocks me is that I feel closer to the 20 year veterans than I do to them. This bunch are full of opinions and convinced they are at the cutting edge of data/differentiation/ activities. Maybe they are, but merely


a year down the line it sounds like nothing more than youthful bravado, rhetoric and bluster. I heard one the other day


insisting she “doesn’t have to worry about behavioural problems”. She was crying within a week. Now don’t get me wrong, I have helped and offered advice whenever possible but what has astonished me is quite how much I have learnt in what feels like a small


space of time. I don’t blame them for entering with unwavering confidence and dedication (I am sure I did exactly the same thing). In fact, if they didn’t exhibit this unwavering


confidence that would be more of a worry – but it is my own growth from playful puppy


to “wise” old hound that has thrown me. So, am I becoming a bitter, miserable old git? The answer, is no, but perhaps I have just become a real teacher.


• Tomas Duckling is a history NQT at Queens’ School in Hertfordshire. He returns next week.


If I had a magic wand Once a teacher...


A FEW weeks ago, I met four 6th year students at one of Edinburgh’s most prestigious private schools, one which, despite my reservations about private schooling, I admire enormously. The purpose was an evaluation of their course choice experience. We were told they were representative of their year group and reflected the ability spread. They were delightful, courteous,


articulate and confident young women (it was a single-sex school). They handled their interviewers with skill. They had a fair knowledge


of the careers they hoped to follow, had applied for university and were clear about the courses they wished to pursue and the universities they sought to enter. As well as enjoying the


interaction, I had a brief dream. Had I a magic wand, I would have redistributed five per cent of the confidence and articulacy of each of these young women among nine or 10 of their equivalents in my former school, which serves one of Edinburgh’s poorest areas. The four young women would barely miss five per cent of their social and intellectual capital. It would make a world of difference to my former charges. It was of course only a dream.


Magic wands do not exist. The school’s head suggested that


part of the confidence was attributable to the school’s single-sex nature. She may well be right. Certainly girls need time working in all-girl groups to avoid the brash arrogance of the male adolescent. Paradoxically perhaps, the experience


reinforced my commitment to comprehensive education. Over a year ago, six girls from my former school and six from this particular independent school took part in a joint leadership development course, supposedly culminating in a week on Skye, where, under the leadership of staff from Columba 1400, they met major challenges and developed as individual human beings. They recognised the strengths of each other and,


perhaps most importantly, abandoned stereotypes, recognising that the strengths were not all in one group, nor the weaknesses in another.


In fact the experience has yet to “culminate”. The


girls still meet socially and they recently made an inspiring presentation at an educational conference on their joint experiences. That leadership course was not a world-changing


event. Its implications were largely personal, for the girls and staff, but their perceptions of themselves, each other and the city in which they reside were changed irrevocably as they recognised that they had far more in common than they had ever believed could be the case. I want students to develop


confidence and self-belief through education which challenges them. I want all young people to mix with each other, irrespective of wealth or background (I know that one aspect of the attraction of private education is precisely that it


avoids such mixing). I want to pull young people from


their own, often fairly limited social settings; for them to see how other young people live, to share their confidence, strengths and skills and to recognise these in others. The sad thing is that, especially in a city such as Edinburgh, the social divide, exacerbated by parental choice, has created chasms between schools in the comprehensive sector, let alone between the comprehensive


and private sectors. I remain committed however to the concept of a kinder, less divided, more co-operative world; to a less grasping


and materialistic society. I believe that if young people do not start with preconceptions and stereotypes such improvements would be more likely; if


even some of the confidence and articulacy of those I met were shared among their peers across the social spectrum, we would inhabit a more decent and kindly world. I want to wave my magic wand.


• Alex Wood has been a teacher for 38 years. Prior to his recent retirement he was headteacher of Wester Hailes Education Centre in Edinburgh. He is currently an associate with the Scottish Centre for Studies in School Administration at Edinburgh University. He returns in April.


White boy on FSM


Of those groups eligible for free school meals in schools, one of the worst performing is White, British boys. Tom Welch has been involved in a project to discover what factors can help


these students to buck the trend at GCSE and beyond


least well of any group of students eligible for free school meals, or indeed, of any group of students at all. This is true from key stage 1 onwards. In February


W Systematic tracking


We were surprised that not all schools tracked these students individually from entry. This meant that many drifted through compulsory education and left as soon as possible. Some heads we talked to had not noticed


8


2011, the Department for Educarion (DfE) reported that 23 per cent of these students gained five GCSEs at A* to C, including English and maths, compared to 55 per cent of all pupils in the same year. Very little is heard about the higher education


destination of these boys except for some concern about their absence from the most selective universities. In fact, in 2010, only six per cent had entered any form of higher education by the age of 19. Unless we believe that these students are of lower


ability, we are presented with a moral issue – how do we ensure that the education system does not let down unacceptably large numbers of this group? Supported by The Schools Network, we worked


with 50 students, across the country, who were part of the 23 per cent who had achieved academic success. We conducted 75 hours of free-ranging discussions with each, which when transcribed, yielded an invaluable source of student-led insight. Recurring themes from the interviews were refined


in small focus groups of boys from this cohort. These were translated into recommendations, written and validated by practitioners, for practitioners. What follows is a brief outline of those recommendations, recognising that many schools are implementing some, if not all of these on a daily basis.


hite boys eligible for free school meals form a group of students which has been hidden in the statistics for too long. With the exception of travellers, they perform the


this, expecting to find representatives of this group in their 6th forms – and being shocked to find none.


Work colleagues not mates


All the boys had selected, explicitly or not, school friends with a shared work ethic. This meant that mates, sometimes of long standing, who were less interested in learning, were either compartmentalised to weekends and holidays or rejected altogether. Some boys worried about this, exhibiting feelings


of not belonging anywhere, despite stating that this selection was vital if they wanted to succeed. Some schools were aware of these divided loyalties and supported the boys through their choices and the implications of them.


The hook


Early success united the interviewees. The particulars varied and occurred inside and outside school, but gave the boys the confidence to tackle difficult school work. Teachers who knew the boys well enough to show


interest in what they were good at outside school, and those who provided extra-curricular experiences inside school, offering further opportunities for success, were praised by the interviewees.


Celebration of genuine achievement


The boys saw praise as a validation of work done well and as an encouragement to further effort. They needed to know they were on the right track and to signal the same to family and friends. Informal conversations, smiley face stickers, letters home, special assemblies and awards evenings were all seen as vital justification for the educational journey they were on.


A culture of learning


This should be the norm in schools with zero tolerance of deviations from it. The school was a place of work for all.


High aspirations for all Interviewees wanted teachers to have high expectations for all, not just the few, with no excuses for a lack of ambition.


SecEd • March 15 2012


RAISING ACHIEVEMENT


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