Collaborative CPD: maximise your learning by working together

Context – what’s the school like?

• Kirkley High, on the coast in Suffolk, is a 13–18 community school with 1400 students including 250 in the sixth form.
• The sixth form is part of a consortium created by three high schools, giving a combined sixth form of 600.
• The school has specialist status for sports and is a lead school for ICT and PE.
• GCSE A-C results: about 50%
• Free school meals: 25%
• Special Educational Needs (SEN) register: 192 students, of whom 45 have statements.
• The number of students from ethnic minorities is low, but has increased considerable in recent years. About 15 (sic) students have English as an Additional Language (EAL), the biggest single language being Portuguese.

Leadership of learning

The SLT is made up of the head teacher, with two deputies – one for personnel (including CPD) and one for ‘ethos’. Ethos includes monitoring schemes to ensure that they are developed in keeping with the aims of the mission statement and that students’ learning has primacy. 

All the SLT’s responsibilities are linked to one of the strands of the Every Child Matters agenda.

There are also:

• three assistant head teachers (AHTs)
• two directors of learning, who attend SLT meetings but are not members of SLT
• six heads of house (HoHs) who are pastoral/academic leaders.

Ethos of CPD and Training

Training programme

Currently, as workforce reforms are introduced, two thirds of the training budget goes on support staff. The school emphasises staff development, with training if appropriate. The ICT teacher is the area SCITT co-ordinator for ICT.

Ten days are spent on this work, as well as other days for his own training in role. This is made possible as the school believes that it is essential to support initial teacher education.

Mentoring

The school aims to have between fifteen and twenty teachers who are trained as mentors. The mentoring role is seen as useful not just for the mentee, but also the mentor – it represents ongoing CPD as a reminder of what it is to be a teacher and of up-to-date teaching methods.

Routes into teaching

Alternative routes into teaching are supported – The Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP), and the Overseas Trained Teacher Programme (OTTP). Teaching assistants are supported in their own development with NVQs and degrees courses. Personal CPD doesn’t lose out to whole school issues.

CPD framework

There is no CPD policy as such, but a framework made up of the school improvement plan; department plans; and personal development needs. The school self evaluation process, performance management, monitoring and observation allow leaders to know areas of strength and weakness. Heads of house (HoHs) are given more accountability for students’ progress and the budget for mechanical CPD such as exam board updates has been devolved to heads of department (HoDs) to manage.

Recognition

The school is investigating the GTC’s Teacher Learning Academy to recognise teacher development. Staff development needs as identified through performance management are to be given higher priority to encourage dialogue within the performance management cycle.

Investigating teaching and learning and developing your own solutions

SLT realised that they were telling the staff too much, and not listening enough. The ‘one size fits all’ training days weren’t having the effect they wanted on practice.

The school decided to concentrate on teaching and learning. Mike Hughes (Educational Consultant and Trainer who has written about improving learning)  was brought in to launch a four–part lesson on how to ‘tweak’ performance to get better student results.  (See: Tweak to Transform: Improving Teaching - A Practical Handbook for School Leaders (Leadership for Learning) by Mike Hughes with David Potter.)

What did they do?

• Introduced ‘house trails’.
• Introduced voluntary Working Groups such as ‘Good to Excellent’.
• Developed a school based ‘Quality Mark’ of teaching and learning.
• Developed leadership using national programmes (for example, Leading from the Middle; NPQH, Fast Track) but increasingly moving to in-house coaching and collaborative development.

House trails (Year 9 – Year 13)

These are undertaken by the HoHs. Discussions are held around the progress of the students in the house. The HoH asks ‘Is there an issue you’d like to explore in your own house?’ There is a negotiated brief and the HoH investigates it. Topics have included:

• student perceptions
• pupil groupings
• use of the morning tutorial
• tracking the pupil experience across the school.

The outcomes of these have shaped action plans for HoHs for this year and had influence on action planning elsewhere.

Working groups

Two groups came together, one based on the National Strategy ‘Leading in Learning’ and the other formed by members of staff who had been rated as ‘good’ on the Ofsted scale but who wanted to gain ‘outstanding’ status.

Both are voluntary groups, organic and self directing but share the following characteristics:

• Work in pairs or threes.
• Cross-curricular composition.
• Collaborative planning.
• Observation and feedback from peers.
• Coaching and mentoring – coaching loops have been used in the school for a few years.

These teachers want to create a ‘community of practice’ and want to encourage risk taking. Contrary to what usually happens in observations they try new strategies and approaches to get feedback from each other in a supportive way. Teachers try new approaches in all classes across the school, from Year 9 (when pupils join the school) to Year 12, not just those that are well behaved.

Quality mark (QM)

This was developed to give everyone a voice in terms of self evaluation, and whilst the QM can feed into the Self Evaluation Form (SEF), the SEF is not nuanced enough to be used as the QM. This is because it doesn’t model what you actually want to see in the classroom, and it is not based on the actual school with its particular set of staff and students.

It was developed so that everyone would know exactly what was expected of quality teaching and learning in the school. HoDs were given a list of statements which they debated and tweaked into their own. They established 10 headings – seven to do with teaching and learning, three to do with achievement.

Departments have to discuss and grade themselves 1 – 4, basing all their judgements on evidence. The final departmental judgment is then discussed with the departmental senior line management. It is reviewed each term.

There is no punitive reaction if a department judges itself as going down a grade, as it exists to aid reflection. If there has been a perceived downturn, then the important thing is to ask why and take steps to address it.

Each half term there is a different focus across the whole school taken from the QM. The QM is discussed at departmental meetings, which means that they have become less administrative affairs and much more focused on teaching and learning. It has created a momentum for change and is driving forward improvement strategies – ‘from good to excellent’.

The QM is part of the departmental planner file, so it is always part of the consciousness of the teachers – not a policy collecting dust. It is successful as it originated with, and is driven by, the staff.

Read Kirkley High’s Quality Mark (PDF, 40kb).

Impact

What teachers said:

• ‘I’ve learned most through observing and being observe. Being observed encourages risk. Feedback closes the loop.‘
• ‘The most refreshing thing has been the sharing and the doing.’
• ‘It doesn’t matter if things go wrong – it’s all part of the learning. You reflect on what went wrong and learn from it. It might just need a tweak, that’s all.’
• ‘It’s what you want from the pupils. You want them to take risks so they can learn. It needs to be about learning and developing, not just the outcome.’

The teachers have found that working in this way has led to greater creativity in teaching and the students respond well, showing greater interest and real engagement with their learning. This academic year has started more calmly and there is more emphasis on learning.

The teachers involved are more analytical and reflect on their practice more which creates a more conscious learning environment.

There have also been structural changes: cover supervisors are employed every Thursday afternoon so that teachers who want to observe each other can book someone to cover their class but the teachers also give up their own time as they see it as important for their own development and they have created a safe environment in which to do this.

The teachers like it as it is not being done to them, but they are able to direct their learning and greater responsibility is taken. It is about exploration, not being told what to do, with the focus being your own development on your terms, with your classes. Great trust is built up. When the group invited colleagues to join them this year, 20 additional members of staff chose to do so.

Benefits of the strategies put in place start with a positive professional dialogue having been created. Teachers are surrounded by positive people and they exchange successful practical ideas.

Other benefits include the following:

• Teachers say it is stimulating to be able to work with people outside own department.
• There is greater consistency in delivery and routines across the school.
• The investment in cover supervisors is paying off in terms of better teaching and learning, but also in calmer classes when teachers are absent.
• The school has a reputation for professional development and this aids recruitment and retention (apart from those going off to promoted posts!).
• This is particularly important in a town with four high schools.

The experimental approach was used also in Year 13 and results were consistently two grades up on expected results. The approaches seem to work on students’ achievement that ordinary teaching wouldn’t normally achieve.

The students noticed that the same approaches were being used across classes so they asked about what the teachers were doing and got involved in discussions about their own learning and what kind of teaching they would respond best to. They helped the teachers refine the approaches and became aware of transfer of skills across subjects.

What is the school going to do next?

• There will be further house trails with the aim of developing academic monitoring through the house system.
• They are considering the appointment of a third director of learning.
• There is some discussion taking place about the development of the middle managers, many of whom are fairly new to post.
• Further work to individualise the curriculum is underway.
• The Quality Mark will be developed to raise accountability in other areas such as levels of achievement.

The current middle school/high school structure for Suffolk is under review.  By 2011 we will be either an 11-18 school of about 1600 or an 11–16 school of that size with a separate sixth-form college. Planning strategies for a complete Key Stage 3 is seen as an exciting challenge and opportunity.  We are also very conscious of the need to provide for all students in the 14–19 range and are increasing efforts to work collaboratively with other institutions.

For further details please contact Jeremy Walden, Deputy Head waldenjj@kirkleyhigh.com

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