In September 2011 our self-evaluation judgement – that we were an outstanding school with outstanding teaching and learning – was confirmed by Ofsted. It was a great endorsement of the work of the school, but was pretty quickly followed by the question, “what now?” We were facing the same problem that John Tomsett has so eloquently blogged about in “the tricky issue of planning the development of an outstanding school.”
Our priority – as at Huntingdon – is to keep the main thing the main thing and continue to develop our outstanding teaching and learning. I believe it is essential that every teacher in every school should aim to be outstanding – what David Didau calls perfection. The approach we have taken is partly born out of the “grace period” that the outstanding judgement has given us; we know that inspectors won’t be knocking on our door this academic year. We are able (to a certain extent) to disregard Ofsted’s definition of outstanding teaching and learning (though even Ofsted struggle to agree on that) and make our own minds up about what constitutes outstanding.
If there was no OfSTED, no league tables, no SLT… just you and your class..what would you choose to do to make it GREAT? Do that anyway…
— Tom Sherrington (@headguruteacher) February 28, 2013
This was the task we set each department back in October. Ignore what you’ve been told and define for yourselves what an outstanding lesson looks like in your subject. Nobody is going to tell you what it should or shouldn’t be. There is no set format. It’s up to you. Then plan and teach a lesson that deliberately sets out to meet that definition.
For this to work, teachers had to be empowered to take risks. We insisted that the “outstanding lesson” did not need to be observed by anyone. If teachers felt it would help to be observed, however, they could choose a colleague to observe them. If cover were required, a member of the senior team would provide it. The notes from the observation would remain confidential between the two colleagues, unless the observed teacher chose to share them. The only requirement was that a self-evaluation of the lesson was offered (verbally – no paperwork) in a department or faculty meeting. You can read the guidance we issued to staff here: Outstanding Lessons Introduction.
The great thing about this initiative was that teachers finally owned the definition of outstanding teaching. They weren’t being told that their lesson had to have four parts, that they have to have WALT and WILF on the board, that they had to start with brain gym, that their lesson objective had to be linked to an assessment focus and include a literacy, learning to learn, building learning power, citizenship, SEAL, and cross-curricular theme element. Instead, it was up to them. And when I collated the definitions, I found some really reassuring common threads across the school. Apparently, outstanding lessons are about:
- Enjoyment
- Challenge
- Pace
- Engagement
- Expertise
At the end of an outstanding lesson, students and teachers should leave the room feeling “proud of what they’ve achieved”, “energised, enthused and informed”; this is the intangible x-factor that makes an outstanding lesson outstanding.
The feedback from the process was overwhelmingly positive. Teachers engaged with it, and the discussions across the school in agreeing the definitions brought teaching and learning to the fore in a lamentably rare way. The self-evaluations offered in faculties were helpful and reflective. Did everyone teach an outstanding lesson? Of course not. But the honest dissection of why a lesson which was planned carefully to be outstanding ended up not being so was exceptionally helpful.
So, every teacher had a go at teaching one outstanding lesson. We still have the same question: “what now?” James Heale hit the nail on the head in a recent #SLTchat:
#sltchat ensure staff know there is a difference between teaching an outstanding lesson and being an outstanding teacher. Not the same thing
— James Heale (@Heale2011) February 24, 2013
Here, the Heads of Faculty really took the reins. Energised by the professional discussions of what made an outstanding Art, English, or Science lesson, they were keen to generalise it. If we can decide what makes an outstanding PE lesson, can we go on to define what makes an outstanding PE teacher? Or Technology teacher? Or Drama teacher? Inspired again by John Tomsett’s blog, this time his post on becoming a “truly great school”, and by Tom Sherrington’s post “what makes a great teacher”, we ditched the “outstanding” tag and replaced it with “great”.
Over the coming terms, faculty teams will be discussing what makes a truly great teacher in their subject. And then, critically, each teacher will be self-evaluating and trying to develop their own practice to meet the definition they’ve agreed on. There won’t be a paper trail, it won’t be part of performance management, their line manager won’t be following them around with a checklist to see how they’re doing. It is every teacher’s professional responsibility to continue to improve their teaching and the learning in their classroom. This approach puts the emphasis firmly on that professionalism in the spirit of building a trust culture, and, hopefully empowers teachers to aspire to greatness day by day by day. I am certainly looking forward to discussing and collating the definitions, which will almost certainly be the subject of a future post!
UPDATE: read the results of this INSET programme here in part 2 of this blog, and see the summary presented at #TLT13 and adapted for #TMNSL here.
I thought this was a great blog, Chris, and felt inspired by it. I’m doing some work with Middle Leaders and the IoE at the moment and am keen to think about how we can perhaps integrate the thinking here into our programme. Thank you.
That’s very kind Jill. Glad you think it may be of wider use – it’s an approach designed to empower middle leaders and teachers but it needs senior teams with enough confidence to be “hands-off”, which we are lucky to have!
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Great post! Have been thinking about how to define a great English or Geography lesson rather than the generic Ofsted criteria. What do we need to do to make our students ‘masters’ of a particular subject? This post, coupled with @headguruteacher’s presentation at #SLTeachMeet earlier this week, is giving me a lot of food for thought. Thanks.
You’re welcome! I’ll post the definitions we came up with this week.
Brilliant. Love the emphasis on no paper trail.
I am so lucky that CV is my local secondary school.
Do you think it’s easier to do this at somewhere like CV because of the kind of students you have? Or could this approach also work in a very challenging urban context as well?
I don’t think this is student-specific. Ofsted graded teaching as outstanding at CVS in September 2011, and this initiative was a response to the “what now?” question which inevitably followed. We knew Ofsted would not be coming so we were free to innovate and be creative, and put teachers in charge of the definition of “outstanding” rather than the inspectorate. Any school can do this regardless of context but our particular circumstances (in terms of Ofsted) certainly made it easier to be be brave.
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