Contents
The Philippa Blog
Another Skein Success
Halifax School is Buzzing!
Coaching and Learning – An Effective Partnership
Vocational Maths Research – A Route Map
Out and About
Learning From the World about Self Sustaining Improvement
The Philippa Blog
What is the common thread linking a “roundtable” (which was square) of Teaching School Leaders; head teachers developing their peer review skills in Lincolnshire; academic and teachers at Harvard University; teacher alumni of a Doctoral programme in Gothenburg and, finally, the review of ITE for maths teachers launched at the Royal Society (where I was one of the panel speakers)? In their different ways each one of these opportunities has pushed me to think hard about what being systematic can contribute to realising ambition.
The Harvard Transforming Teachers project has issued its first paper “From Quicksand to Solid Ground”; it’s a great paper and also a brilliant title that evokes for me the journey we are trying to make towards a self improving system in England. In the US the ‘quicksand’ represents missing pieces of the jig saw; in particular the missing R&D system. For me, as an outside observer, there was another piece missing – the contribution of strong school leadership since the role of school Administrator or Principal doesn’t seem to carry the same weight as it does here.
For the colleagues at the round table, the ‘quicksand’ represented the absence of trust which they felt was sucking energy out of the system; we spent a lot of time trying to understand to what an effective relationship between trust, challenge and accountability might look like. No-one was arguing for a “trust me I’m a teacher or even a headteacher and that’s it” model. We all care too much about pupils’ learning and life chances for that. But we were looking for forms of leadership and accountability that create virtuous rather than vicious cycles of development and recognising the contribution of evidence to such cycles
At the launch of the excellent ACME Maths report the ‘quicksand’ was the tragic British willingness to be “bad at maths”. Getting a pathway to ‘solid ground’ means securing an accurate overview of the knowledge, skills and capacity of our teaching force so we can focus scarce resources within a long term plan to expand and deepen it.
In Gothenburg, PhD alumni are plentiful because of state sponsorship of doctoral level CPD for teachers! There the ‘quicksand’ seemed to be lack of progress and fragmentation, driven by fiercely independent local districts and the expansion, in recent years, of private competitive companies running state schools whose work seems to be less visible to the system as a whole. In every case, progress towards solid ground depended on good intelligence, professional relationships and a structure and rhythm for accountability that makes a formative as well as a summative contribution to improvement.
Interestingly, CUREE’s review of research reviews about CPD published in the summer highlighted, for the first time, the importance of embedding assessment for learning for teachers into CPDL. So perhaps part of what we need, and what the current enthusiasm for peer review is indicating, is to conceptualise the self sustaining school improvement system as a learning system - so we can use what we know about enhancing learning to gain momentum? Right now the concept of ‘self sustaining’ seems, curiously, to include not collecting or sharing evidence about some key things, such as the actual number of teachers with maths qualifications, or any analysis of work of the Teaching Schools programme – presumably for fear of implying a lack of trust. But, however self improving this might or might not be, it can’t be a system if there is no information about if and how it joins up.
If the undoubted strengths of new sources of energy and expertise are to be harnessed to create a virtuous school improvement cycle there is an urgent need for better evidence about what is and isn’t happening across regions, across teaching school alliances and for key areas of the curriculum. Doing this across the whole piece is self evidently too big a job, given where we are now and the resources required to do it. But doing it in a focussed way to address a particular and urgent need probably is in the system’s current zone of proximal development. Getting systematic evidence and analysis about exactly what capacities we do and don’t have in priority areas, like educating stunning maths teachers, and using that to shape next steps sounds like a pretty good place to start.
Another Skein Success
CUREE have been delighted to work with St Wilfrid’s Catholic Academy in Stoke-on-Trent, a Teaching and National Support school with a close partnership with St Peter’s. The school place a high priority on CPD and wanted to use the Skein process to inform both its own development and that of the schools it supports. The Skein visit identified impressive practice including:
- Multilayered opportunities for collaboration to support professional learning within school, and with other schools. For example middle and senior leaders link with colleagues in a similar role at St Peter’s as well as attending specific meetings within the network, and all teachers carried out peer observation at the partner school. The observation tool that colleagues used can be accessed by Skein members here.
- The range of personalised CPD opportunities available and the attention to individual progression provided. The school fully utilises support within the Teaching School Alliance, along with other local and national opportunities to provide a comprehensive CPD menu. This has enabled St Wilfrid’s to ‘grow’ many of its leaders.
- Use of a range of forms of evidence to support professional learning relating to specific teaching and learning priorities. For example research papers are discussed at literacy and SENCO meetings and colleagues use videos of practice and pupil voice to support their professional learning.
The school is building on these strengths and as part of this is running a middle leadership programme with CUREE which will focus on developing colleagues knowledge of the characteristics of effective CPD and support them in carrying out their own action research projects. For more information about Skein, visit the website
Halifax School is Buzzing!
A school in Halifax has been chosen to pilot a brand new tailored Route map with 4 lines – Assessment, Coaching, 
KS4 Attainment and Learning Behaviours. Bart Crisp and Sam Back travelled to Halifax last month to present the draft to Zoya Mustafa from Teach First and two of the school’s leaders. While, earlier in November Philippa presented a webinar from Teach First’s offices in London to introduce the Route Map to the 40 schools involved in the Achieve Together programme.
CUREE have been working with Teach First to develop a Route Map with resources for their staff at different levels of the school. The aim of the Route Map is for it to be used to support action research projects by Achieve Together staff this year. Teach First were keen to tap into CUREE’s knowledge on teaching and learning to inform the actions in their priority areas, and have already given us some excellent feedback for the project!
‘I just wanted to say thank you so much for leading such a fantastic webinar. We had feedback from our viewers on how helpful and interesting it was and I very much enjoyed hosting it’. Zoya Mustafa, Teach First
Coaching and Literacy – An Effective Partnership
Beginning in September this year, CUREE have delivered a series of workshops across the country aligned with their Effective Mentoring and Coaching (EMAC) model and NLT’s Literacy for Life Impact Measures. These workshops for literacy and subject leads have been contracted as part of the Literacy for Life and Oxfordshire Gaining Momentum Programmes.
The programme has aimed to:
• Develop an understanding of the rationale and research evidence for coaching
• Develop the skills, knowledge and understanding of specialist coaching and
• Explore key tools and protocols for securing quality
Through robust, evidence-based CPD training and coaching, the subject and literacy leads are being provided with the skills and knowledge they need to inform their curriculum provision and classroom practice to drive whole school improvement. Participants have given us some great feedback, highlighting their points of learning:
• Forced me to view 
my practice from an external view
• Opportunities to put examples into practice and improve on them
• Enabled us to explore ideas on how to implement coaching of literacy in our school
• I believe that if more staff are open to the coaching process there would be consistent approaches to school policies and would lead to improvement in teaching and learning
• Everyone can benefit from the co-coaching process and everyone has something to share
This programme for NLT will finish in February next year and a similar programme for schools will be run from our offices in Coventry in the Spring term, so it’s not too late get involved! To register your interest, please contact Joe Askew
Vocational Maths Research - A Route Map
We’re excited to have to have launched a brand new Vocational Maths Research Route Map this month – a freely accessible CPD resource for vocational maths practitioners. The resource is a continuation of CUREE’s work in promoting evidence-informed learning practices, and is a significant boost to such practices in the Vocational Education sector.
We at CUREE work to support the use of research evidence in education practice to enhance student learning. Over the past few years we have been creating research route maps to help us achieve this, which provide users with access to a carefully selected suite of practical evidence-based resources based on a topic or set of topics, for colleges and schools and those who support them.
These route maps take a theme like Stretch & Challenge or Enhancing and Mobilising Literacy in Every Subject. They start with a distillation of the key strategies or approaches which the evidence base indicates are effective at improving outcomes in that area. They then take users through a series of bite sized and cumulative resources based on supporting those practices.
We are proud to have now teamed up with Tribal Group and the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM) to provide a Research Route Map aimed at supporting vocational mathematics teaching practice. It is hosted on NCETM’s Excellence Gateway, and can be accessed here. As a part of the NCETM Maths Pipeline, funded by the Education and Training Foundation, the Route Map will help practitioners best support post-16 students in developing their maths skills and is freely available for anyone to use – widening the availability of evidence-informed resources.
If you are interested in purchasing a pre-made Research Route Map or ordering a custom-made one for your organisation, visit the CUREE website here, or contact Gillian Spence.
Out and About
It’s been an exciting Autumn for CUREE, with major projects continuing both at home and internationally!
At the start of October Philippa travelled to Boston with the Pearson Academic Network and also had a follow up meeting at Harvard with the Leader of the Transforming Teaching Project prior to the launch of their exciting ‘From Quicksand to Solid Ground’ white paper (which you can find here). After a few weeks back in England Philippa also made a keynote presentation in Sweden at the annual conference of the Gothenburg University Centre for Educational Sciences and Teacher Research – see the slides here. In November Philippa attended the inaugural meeting of the Advisory group for Eton College’s Tony Little Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning.
The rest of us at CUREE offices are busy in the field too! We have been continuing our well received Peer Review programme with Lincolnshire schools funded by Lincolnshire County Council, completing a large scale verification project with the BFI, launching several new Route Maps and kick-starting a Response to Intervention; breakthroughs in literacy programme at Willenhall Community Primary School. In the coming months you’ll find us;
• continuing coaching and mentoring workshops in Oxfordshire with NLT;
• preparing a new wave of Route Maps for the new year;
• assisting Warwickshire County Council in evaluating the impact of their school improvement strategies, and;
• preparing for our upcoming programme of Spring workshops.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter or check out our website for more details about our ongoing projects.