What does ‘being brave’ mean to you in education?
On Thursday 16th February 2017, I attended the inaugural conference which introduced the Chartered College of Teaching to hear more about its vision. For open discussion and interaction with the audience, I took part in a question and answer session on a variety of teaching matters.
I was delighted to sit on a teacher panel during the event chaired by Dr Tim O’Brien, Visiting Fellow in Psychology and Human Development – UCL Institute of Education. The panelists included:
- Cherish Bere – Social Sciences Teacher – Beths Grammar School
- Ross Morrison McGill – Deputy Head Teacher
- Kathryn Morgan – Deputy Head Teacher – North Solihull Primary School
- Tony Meehan – Head of School – Latimer AP Academy
- Maria Ramsey – Teacher, Staff Governor and SLE – Carwarden House Community School
The title of the question and answer panel was ‘why being brave is important?’ I have included the questions and my answers in note form in below, including a simple sketchnote.
Being Brave:
Q1. How can the college of teaching effect change across the profession?
- Collective voice
- Evidence driven profession, raising awareness of evidence and certainly not stipulating
- Confidence
- Inspection reliability
- Well-being/workload
- Challenged the DfE / OfSTED
- Hubs/network.
Q2. What barriers do you encounter in your role/sector? How do you overcome them?
- Recruitment and retention
- Funding
- Curriculum and assessment reform
- OfSTED reform from September 2017.
Q3. What does being brave mean to you?
- Lifting head about the parapet
- Taking back control e.g. workload
- Ignoring government guff.
Q4. What do you think that teachers need to be braver about (stand up for)?
- Verbal feedback being the main driver of feedback in the classroom
- School inspection
- Ignoring the EBacc
- Performance Related Pay – let’s stop it now
- Fake news from opaque Think Tanks that dictate or inform school policy
- Using action research in schools – teachers informing their school leaders.
Q5. How can you create a culture to support development of new creative practice?
- Listen and provide time for change
- Transparency and trust
- Differentiated CPD.
Q6. What are your best hope for 2017?
- Delete email application from personal devices.
- Protect 1% of school budgets for CPD
- Send students home on Wednesday PM and create space for staff CPD
- Remove OfSTED banners from all school gates.
You can view my notes in full below.
I missed the morning because I was at Bloomsbury Books (HQ) finalising my new book; thankfully I missed the singing! However, on arrival I did sign up to become a ‘founding member’ of the College, live on Periscope. Congratulations to the College – and to Allison Peacock – on a very successful event …
It just makes sense to me; sign up to become a member today.
Fully endorse your comments, the general theme of the profession taking more control and debunking the so called “think tanks” and their disproportionate influence is crucial. I was amazed, when I did my MA (Ed) how much information was available that teachers do not have information to. I worked in a school that had alternate Wednesday afternoons for CPD. The success of this waned over time, l think to poor management. To add to your excellent recommendations I would add that each member of staff be given an action research project relevant to the school as a part of CPD, findings to be shared with other staff.
Sorry, should read “have access to”.