What does the new Ofsted framework mean for heads of science and science leaders.

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Shortly before the summer holiday I went on a briefing session on the new Ofsted framework for school leaders.  I’ve tried to tease out some of the most important issues for heads of department – as you read below remember that I’m not an Ofsted inspection and that I’m commenting on notes that I made during the briefing session.

The Ofsted Framework is changing early next year (subject to Royal Assent) so what does that mean for teachers and school leaders.

What is changing?

Ofsted is trying to make the framework more manageable, simplifying and streamlining the inspection process.  The number of key judgements will be reduced to four, plus an overall judgement.  The new judgements will be:

  • Achievement
  • Quality of teaching
  • Leadership and management
  • Behaviour and safety

The overall judgement will take account of the four judgements above and also how well the school promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

What does this mean for the classroom teacher?

I’m told that the classroom teacher won’t notice a huge difference over previous inspections.  There may be more lesson observations as inspectors try to get a handle on achievement, teaching and behaviour, and there could still be part-lesson observations.  There may even be bespoke observations, for example if there is belief that there is insufficient challenge in maths, starts of lessons/activities could be sampled instead.  Teachers will still receive feedback at the end of an observation.  Joint observations will still be conducted (to help moderate judgements about teaching and learning made by the school as part of the self-evaluation process).

There will also be a greater focus on the teaching of literacy across the school, and inspectors will be looking to gather information about the impact that teaching has on learning over time.  Progress (as well as raw attainment) will be important as well.

What does this mean to subject leaders?

With the culling of key judgements and abolition of the compulsory SEF, it may be time to look again at your own self-evaluation procedures, perhaps focussing more attention to the four key judgements (as listed above).

There will be a greater focus on reading and literacy so if you haven’t already embraced literacy across the curriculum, now might be a good time to start putting this into effect.  Whilst there is no separate judgement for literacy, it will be looked at as part of the key judgements.  Pilot schools recommend that there is a literacy component to lesson planning pro forma.

There will no longer be judgements for special educational needs (SEN) and school specialisms but they will be looked at as part of the new key judgements.

Behaviour is more important than ever, with the message coming both from government and from Ofsted.  The inspection team will try to collect evidence to show what behaviour is typically like rather than just the behaviour they see during the inspection.  This could include pupil or parental feedback and exclusion records.

There will no longer be reference to contextual value added (CVA) figures, and inspectors will revert to using value added measures as in the past.  Tracking information and baseline data will be very important to help demonstrate progress and justify the school’s approach.  Make sure as a department you have a good handle on progress and can demonstrate this if asked.

Inspectors will also be looking to see more of focus on formative assessment and it may be worth revisiting this in departmental meetings.  Inspectors will want to see the impact teaching has on learning over time, and may look at student work and corresponding data.

School leaders will be focussed on improving outcomes and narrowing the gap.  Self-evaluation, monitoring and teaching, capacity for improvement and compliance with statutory requirements will form part of the leadership and management judgement.  Departmental leaders will be expected to have in place strategies, structures and approaches which are bringing about improvement, and to show how barriers to learning are overcome.

It is also worth mentioning that inspection teams will only have Raiseonline data and the last inspection report, any other information will be provided by the school (and in a format of the school’s own choice).

That’s the crux of it! I’m no expert but I’m happy to try and answer any comments or respond to feedback below. 

Image © Blue Square Thing on Flickr

Writing lesson plans–do YOU have to?

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Planning "Best Practices" Video for DOE

I work in a school where we don’t have to write formal lesson plans, and staff are treated as trusted professionals.  We have always written lesson observations for observed lessons, and I’ve filled in many lesson plans at other schools while doing outreach there, but planning  in my own school has been left to the discretion of the individual.  I’ve also been into other schools that are in an Ofsted category and the completion of written lesson plans is usually mandatory for those in this position (with noble intentions).  That’s not to say we don’t have detailed planning documents, but teachers are left to decide the format and content for themselves.

I was skimming through a document today from the DFE entitled “Reducing bureaucracy for schools – myths and facts” and it’s worth a read if you haven’t come across it.

Myth: A written lesson plan must be produced for every lesson.
Fact. There is no statutory obligation to produce a written lesson plan for every lesson. Ofsted inspectors do not routinely scrutinise teachers’ individual plans, although they will look at them when they are offered by teachers. Inspectors focus on the quality of the school’s planning process and link that to teaching in classrooms. Where the quality of teaching is weak, it is important that schools can provide documentary evidence to show that proper planning to address this is in place.

With more schools buying in commercial resources it seems to me more important than ever to show that the bought-in scheme has been adapted and personalised for the groups it is to be used for, but it may be that writing of individual lesson plans is not the best way to do this.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on lesson plans.  Do you write detailed individual lesson plans by choice?  Are you instructed to write them by your department? If you don’t write detailed lesson plans what form does your planning take? Have you come across a really good way of planning?

Image © Old Shoe Woman on Flickr

Using Facebook groups to allow parents to network with each other

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Facebook

 

We had an inset day at the end of term and one of our sessions revolved around improving communication with parents.  We have a huge catchment and students can come from a huge area so parents of students in the same class could potentially live ten to fifteen miles apart.  This means that parents find it hard to speak to each other, and to support each other.  We have a parent of one of our students on staff and she raised the issue that she doesn’t know what her child does on a day to day basis at school, so some kind of feedback and class based communication would be appreciated.  We brainstormed ideas and that was as far as we got.

 

My sister had a similar issue with pupils of her primary school (although on a smaller geographic scale) and has decided to pilot using Facebook groups to allow parents to talk to each other.  When people first hear the word ‘Facebook’ in connection with education alarm bells start to sound, and people who should know better start to think that inappropriate communications will happen.  So why did she decide to let common sense prevail and go with Facebook?  First of all a significant proportion of parents are already Facebook users, they have login details and passwords already and are familiar with the system.  Having something new to learn and remember is always a barrier to adoption.  Facebook groups are separate to being friends with someone – you can’t see personal details, photos or posts from others in the same group unless you are friends with them as well.  This means that parents can talk to each other (and even selected staff from school as well) without being able to see private photos or status information.  Facebook also gives to the ability to create private groups (hidden if required) that an administrator controls who can join.  This gives control to the school (who will have a member of staff overseeing admission to the new groups) and parents who overstep the agreed boundaries/rules of the group can either have their posts deleted or can be removed (or even banned) from the group.   Parents can choose to receive email updates from the group too if required.

 

The groups aren’t up and running yet but it will be interesting to see how the groups are used (one group per class) and if the levels of parental engagement are improved.  The system also leaves plenty of room for development such as piping in RSS and Twitter feeds, so who knows what the future will bring?

 

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or see any problems that we might have overlooked Smile

Fiendishlyclever Science resources available to a wider audience–now on TES resources too

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I’ve always shared resources in the hope that I save someone else reinventing the wheel.  I’ve been impressed with the traffic that this has brought into my website with several hundred visitors each day, hopefully each file downloaded has saved somebody some work.  To improve availability of my resources I’ve arranged with the TES to host a copy of my resources on my profile there.  The only difference is that resources downloaded from the TES carry a small © message at the bottom of the page.

 

Regular visitors will have noticed that I have moved my resources onto this site from their previous home, which gave me the chance to sort through my resources and discard any that are out of date.  I also have more detailed download information which revealed some interesting trends:

Most people find out about my site through Google search (although many search by fiendishlyclever suggesting they’ve been before!)

  • Most people arrive searching for BTEC Science resources
  • BTEC Chemistry resources are the most downloaded resources on my site (by a wide margin)
  • Literacy across the curriculum is a popular search term which is very encouraging
  • Year 7 topics are more popular than year 8