by Glenn Moodie
Earlier in my career, I remember sitting in Heads of Department meetings, or talking to fellow Heads of Department from other schools, and discovering they were doing things I wasn’t. No one had told me I should be doing them, but I immediately felt a powerful urge to add them to my own to-do list. That urgency – and a sense of shame that I was somehow not doing the job properly – stayed with me when I became a senior leader.
One moment etched in my memory comes from my time as a Director of Studies, sitting in a meeting with colleagues from other schools discussing the introduction of the A* grade at A Level. I had not given the change much thought; it was happening, and there was nothing I could do about it. But many of my colleagues had been busily calculating how many A* grades their schools could expect. I wondered why I had not thought to do the same. But in the days that followed, something dawned on me: what exactly was the point? It would not improve outcomes for pupils. It would not lead us to change anything. It was at that point that my view began to crystallise: schools do far too many things that are ultimately pointless.
At around the same time, the GB Olympic team had started talking about incremental gains – the small changes that might give their athletes an edge. One example was athletes travelling with their own pillows to improve their sleep. For the GB rowing team, every action or proposed change was tested against one question: ‘Will it make the boat go faster?’ I began to apply the same test to decisions in school: ‘Will this lead to better learning outcomes for pupils?’
Ultimately, schools have a simple purpose: learning. Everything else is secondary, however important we may persuade ourselves it is. It is important schools consider whether the things they do make a difference to learning. Too often, schools confuse activity with impact. We add, layer and preserve, but rarely stop to ask whether a task is worth the time it consumes. So, with this in mind, here are five simple things schools could consider.
1. Performative marking
Most teachers will recognise the question: ‘Who is the marking actually for?’ Too often, it is not really for the pupils at all. We need to stop marking for appearance, to reassure parents, or to satisfy senior leaders. Feedback is essential to progress, but marking, as it is often done, rarely provides feedback that is timely or meaningful. That is why, at KTJ, we have spent the past few years developing our approach to live feedback. The aim is to close the feedback loop as quickly as possible, with personalised feedback that actually makes a difference.
2. Fluffy reports
Read enough school reports and you quickly realise that much of what they contain is fluff – filler designed to reach an acceptable word count. Worse still, so much of it can be written in teacher-speak that, even when parents do read it, they may not properly understand it. There are far better ways to give feedback to pupils and parents. And any feedback worth giving should help to move learning forward. At KTJ, we have reviewed our reporting cycles and reduced the number of narrative reports. We are now experimenting with gathering more data points and using AI to identify strengths and areas for development which teachers, students and parents can easily understand.
3. Bloated meetings
Over the years, many colleagues have told me that meetings take up far too much of their time. I do not entirely agree. Meetings can achieve a great deal and are often vital in moving initiatives forward and in fostering strong relationships. But meetings with too many participants, or with people interested only in their own area rather than the wider picture, are a waste of time. Heads of Department meetings can be among the worst offenders, which is why both agenda and attendance need to be tightly managed. Not everyone needs to be in every meeting. And of course every meeting must consider whether its decisions will make the boat go faster.
4. Lazy emails
Over the years, I have received blanket emails from leaders, several paragraphs long, asking different members of staff to do different things in support of an initiative or event. I came to regard these emails as faintly rude, and I admit that I usually did not read them properly. They carried the unspoken assumption that the sender’s time was somehow more valuable than everyone else’s, and that a complicated set of instructions could simply be dumped into everyone else’s inbox. We should not expect busy colleagues to wade through five dense paragraphs in the middle of a working day. Most will not. At that point, you are simply wasting people’s time, including your own. If it cannot be said briefly in an email, it may be better said face to face. Remember, if learning is our only goal, the teachers are the stars of the show and they must be treated as such.
5. One-size-fits-all CPD
Far too much CPD in schools is still delivered wholesale to the entire teaching staff. Some teachers are already doing what is being presented and understandably resent the fact that their time is being wasted. Others may not yet be doing it, but are they really going to change their practice because of a single CPD session? Probably not; next week it will be something else, and many will remain content with their existing approach. At KTJ, we have devolved much more responsibility to middle leaders. As a result, in the Secondary School, much CPD is now led at department level. We are now developing professional learning communities, allowing teachers to focus on what they actually need over a sustained period of time to make the boat go faster.
This may sound provocative, but in the busy, pressurised environment of school life, too many things survive simply because no one stops to ask whether they are worth the time.
Ultimately, what impact will it have on learning?
Glenn Moodie, Principal, Kolej Tuanku Ja’afar
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