Diary of an NQT And so it ends...


THE ACADEMIC year is a bit like watching England at Euro 2012. It starts with a huge fanfare amid a sea of expectation and hope; gradually that hope subsides as they hit difficulties or miss the odd penalty; then it comes to the tense, crunch match (or exam) followed by an abrupt halt. Once that is done and dusted,


there is nothing left to do but relax, watch from a distance and wait until next time when it starts all over again. The last few weeks have been tricky


for me, I am quite a high energy person – someone who needs pressure – and with all my exam classes leaving I am down to a third of my timetable and I feel like I am in the staffroom more than the pigeon holes. Now I know I am not supposed to


say that out-loud – we are supposed to teach to the very last second – but it is true. However, I am enjoying finding a


new creative side, without the pressure of exams and assessments I have had my classes running around the woods search- ing for Jack the Ripper, creating a vibrant presentation board on Olympic history, and producing unnecessarily beautiful Cold War timelines. This time of the year allows you to experi-


ment and the extra time I have I am putting in to making my lessons a little different. This slow trudge towards the finishing line also,


very sadly, means this is to be my last column for SecEd and I must admit that leaves me a little emo- tional. I have come to rely on this column, knowing that


my revenge can be served best with a sharp line or intelligent quip. It has felt like a crutch in times of panic, such as the Ofsted visit. But mostly, I am grateful for the


Teach it like Torno! All change


“Change brings opportunity.” Sir Winston Churchill. HERE WE are again at the end of another cycle – well almost! It is always a sobering time of the year when we start to think about the progress we have made and to wonder how much of an impact we have really had on our students. The other consideration that always


enters my mind is what I will need to change about my teaching and other aspects of my job if I am to be suc- cessful next year. And that thought of change, if I am honest with myself, is sometimes a little frightening. The prospect of going beyond


our comfort zones and entering into pastures new, whether they be within or outside our current schools, is one that causes deep reflection, or at least it should. We are now in a state of change like never before and must tackle it head on. Teachers are naturally self-reflecting


creatures, always looking for ways to move forwards, so it was with surprise that I heard Michael Gove recently announce that he would like to see a return to O levels, thus creating a two-tier education system. It might not happen of course,


and it appears that Mr Gove has upset the Liberals with his latest brainwave, but whatever the out- come you can bet your bottom dollar that there will continue to be sweeping changes on the education horizon within the next five years. The government has the view that


there was once a “Golden Age” in which British education led the world and that the the previous administration came along and dismantled it all. In addition to this, the way in which teachers will


be trained is also going through a radical overhaul. It is proposed that by 2015, 50 per cent of teachers will be trained in schools and a programme called Schools Direct will be the driving force for this happening, replacing the Graduate Teaching Programme. We can either feel threatened by these changes


or we can rise to the challenges before us. I have absolutely no faith in Mr Gove and his government when it comes to education. He has consistently belit- tled teachers and hid behind Ofsted chief Sir Michael


Wilshaw, who has deliberately sought to spread a climate of fear throughout the profession. But I do have faith in our youngsters – absolute


faith! And that does not just mean our young students, but our young teachers too. Whatever the motives behind the constant abuse of schools by politicians, the future presents us with opportunities in which to grow. Moreover, there never has been such a time as now in which the youth of this country needed us. Over the next decade there is a real chance that students from less advantaged back- grounds will go back to the low expectations culture. The massive rise


in tuition fees has sig- nalled an end to equal opportunities and the closing of the gap at the higher end of education. Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg can spout all the arguments he wants about the system being fairer, but the fact remains that he attended Westminster School, not an inner city com- prehensive, and though this does not automatically exclude him from decision-making, it does mean he is less likely to understand the issues faced by those who have struggled to make


ends meet. The students of tomorrow are going to need teachers who are not just visionaries and who are not just passionate, but who are particularly clued up about the challenges


faced within our society. This means that rather than looking at the


well deserved break coming up as a time to retreat and switch off, we need to reflect on what we can do to improve things even further.


Often people wince or feel uncomfortable when


someone provides a cheesy quote, but the fact is that if that quote touches a nerve it will be worth the slight embarrassment. It is with this in mind that I leave you to reflect on the words of John F Kennedy: “Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”


• David Torn is a professional tutor at St Edward’s School in Essex. He is a former Teacher of the Year for London and co-author of Brilliant Secondary School Teacher. He returns in September.


opportunity to record one of the fastest and most intense years of my life. So like all good educators I should briefly look at what I have achieved and what I would like to do next. I have survived, against all the


odds and the huge pressure. I have shown myself equal to the task and I have come out almost unscathed. What I like best is that I feel


further from the finished article than I did when I started. A year ago I would have told you I was sure of the teacher I was going to be, my views on


education, and what needs to be done to sort it all out. I can now honestly say I am


fuzzy on all three. The deeper the rabbit hole goes, the more con- fused I get, but also the more interested and compelled I find myself to learn. Education can feel a bit like the CIA or the Masons, there seem to be endless levels of understand- ing and discussion and it takes you a while to realise that, and just how


peripheral your NQT role is. So what hope shall I leave you with? I would like to become a better teacher; I would like to fully understand learning;


I would like to work with difficult kids whereas I previously thought I wanted only the easiest and best.


I would like to work abroad too. I would like to


direct myself towards teaching and learning rather than pastoral issues. I would like to get promoted but not look as stressed as my senior leadership team col- leagues. And lastly, I would like England to win the World Cup in Brazil in 2014 (when all else is gone, all that is left is hope). Have a great summer.


• Tomas Duckling is a history teacher at Queens’ School in Hertfordshire.


PROJECTS Give your stu


The need for assessment can often restrict the scope of


students’ work. Kester Brewin reports on a statistics project that is wide-ranging, student-led, ethical, challenging – all because it is not going to be marked


T


has been a good thing. However, rather than fill the time we gained by its removal on syllabus-focused


work, why not give students some good experiences of open-ended investigation?


‘ We are very keen to tell children when they ask


what school is “for” that learning is its own reward, and here, I feel, is an opportunity for them to actually experience that. There is something delicious about setting out on


a piece of work that will not be formally assessed. Of course, assessment has its rightful place, but are we not constantly complaining that our students are assessed too much? Why not practise what we preach and set a task that


is simply not going to be marked? Why not wager with them that if they put something into it, then they will actually enjoy it? Any why, if we have set the task up appropriately, shouldn’t they? So this is precisely what I did. With a group of year


10 students, I presented them with a challenge to do a piece of statistical exploration, and allowed them to have pretty much a free reign in their work. First, they had to think of some area of life that they


8 Other discussions centred around what was sensibly


measurable, and how to collect valid data. One student, whose mother was a psychologist, wanted to explore how happiness among staff changed over the course of the working week. Having encouraged him to research some existing


’


methods for measuring something like this, he did pursue this project successfully, though had to admit in his evaluation that a much longer time than two weeks would have been needed to finally conclude that Friday afternoon was the happiest moment of the collective staff’s lives. It was these sort of moments of genuine interest


that I had hoped to find now that the shackles had been thrown off and the opportunity for proper exploratory work was available. Importantly, the success of the investigations was,


I believe, in no small part due to the relaxed manner in which they felt able to approach the task. Once


SecEd • July 5 2012


he other day I surprised myself by actually feeling a pang of nostalgia for GCSE maths coursework. It is a few years now since it was


dropped, but I couldn’t help a wry smile thinking through the opening lines of the first lesson each time it


was started: “Sign your name on this piece of blank paper and hand it back to me. Thank you – if you fail to hand your coursework in on time, this is what I’ll be submitting for you.” It always worked a treat. Getting rid of it was a huge relief, partly because of


the constant hassle that was needed to retrieve work, blood-from-stone-like, from students who suddenly became slippery and devious. Once it was in, the marking of it was never much


fun, but not that horrific. And the moderation, while a total bind, at least gifted the department a chance to drink tea and argue for a few hours. But the worst part of it was this: the nagging sense


that what was meant to be an open-ended exploration was anything but. No matter how much we liked to dress it up or


pretend otherwise, every student always, miraculously, appeared to drift, in a manner not unlike being dragged by the scruff of the neck, down the road set out in the assessment criteria. Of course, we all did it for good reason: it was a


flawed system, and we weren’t about to let our group’s grades suffer for a point of principle. The pressures of league tables and mark accumulation were triply felt by parents and staff and students, so we did what we could within the bounds of what felt right and allowed them to regurgitate near-identical “explorations”, closed “Open Box” problems, and very fenced in “Fencing Problems” too. Why, then, the nostalgia? Because, without the


marking, without the cycles of moderation, without the pressures of assessments and scores, allowing students time to explore a problem in depth over time really is a wonderful thing.


would like to explore through data collection. The only rules were that a) they had to find it interesting, b) I had to find it interesting (which was a euphemism for valid and sufficiently challenging!), and c) it was ethical. The ethical point provided some excellent


opportunities for discussion. We considered various statistical experiments and debated their ethics. One boy wanted to explore the effect electric shocks


had on short-term memory. His hypothesis that greater shocks would be detrimental to recall of objects on a tray was based on his personal experience of having had a large shock himself, and he was genuinely excited about setting his experiments up, but had to be guided into other lines of enquiry!


The removal of the coursework component


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