Philippa’s Blog
The longer days and snowdrops are telling me that we are on our way out of winter’s gloom –even if the colder weather feels more wintry.
I started the year alongside teachers and researchers from 50 countries across the world at the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) annual conference in Malmo. It was amazing to meet senior colleagues from schools in Northumberland and Bristol alongside researchers and school leaders from Chile and Malaysia! It was also exciting to learn that people from 5 different countries were so excited by my presentation about research route maps (www.curee.co.uk/products-and-services-overview/research-sat-nav) that they decided there and then to start to import them! I kept coming across people poring over them in coffee breaks and asking different questions about visuals, translation etc.
Those of you in Teaching School Alliances thinking about R&D and dissemination might like to have a look at the ICSEI web site www.icsei.net and consider whether this would be an environment for celebrating – and testing through peer review, your work.
The other “exciting” thing for me in January has been a detached retina, an emergency operation and some very strange visual side effects. It seems to be recovering well and I was fascinated by the specialist coaching from the consultant to my surgeon at various points in the operation! I am delighted to report that coaching worked as well in my personal experience as all the research suggests it should!
February and March are full of conferences and exciting work with lots of different groups of schools and colleges including, as you will see below, Teaching School Alliances and a number of Colleges who attended our workshop at the very positive Learning and Teaching AoC conference. I hope to see some of you in the process!
Philippa Cordingley
Chief Executive
Skein
We thought you might enjoy a couple of “golden eggs” that we came across during recent SKEIN visits to schools. Take for example:
Castle School’s very interesting approach to taking an overview of CPD. Each year the senior leadership team consider together over the course of a full day and in detail, not just the performance of every colleague, but also their confidence and capacity to learn. The resulting analysis is thus the springboard for the next year’s CPD offer.
Duchess School’s School Experience Teams (SETS) which meet every other week as cross departmental learning groups to explore together experiments with approaches to tackling School Improvement priorities and plan the next cycle of trying things out. SETs are led by volunteers who with their deputies are trained in depth in facilitating such work by the SLT member with responsibility for CPD. Visit www.skein.org.uk for more information.
Good CPD – a Buyer’s Guide
We all know how hard it is to commission professional development that a) is well done b) meets our needs and c) is worth the money. Too often we choose a person or organisation by luck or personal recommendation and then we stick with him/them out of comfort and the difficulty of assessing the alternatives. TDA tried to help by setting up a CPD providers’ database backed by a Code of Practice. A very good idea in principle, as parts of the Code were evidence based, CUREE worked with TDA to carry out quality assurance evaluations on a large sample of the provision. However, this is now being closed down as part of larger changes linked to TDA’s morphing into the Teacher Agency.
Happily a white knight is coming to the rescue in the form of the Good CPD Guide. A social enterprise developed by a dynamic young teacher named David Weston, this free service will bring you all the information you got from the TDA site and more. CUREE is pleased use its own expertise about what makes good professional development to help the Guide bring you the information you need to make sensible choices about effectiveness, relevance and, of course, value for money. The service enables both user reviews and research-based quality ratings. CUREE is using its extensive expertise in evaluating CPD provision to shape the service. We are very pleased to be a core partner of the Guide. The Quality Rating service (based on our existing Elevation review process) will launch later this term. Contact Paul Crisp for more information
And on this topic, our latest article for CPD Update concentrates on the thorny issue of evaluating the impact of CPD and connecting it with pupil learning. We think that research based benchmarks have a particularly important role to play here – because of the need to connect up not just pupil performance data but also a rich array of evidence about the process of learning for pupils and teachers. Click here to view the report.
Colleges and schools use Routemaps to power innovation
Routemap use is growing –and happening in increasingly innovative ways at
Birmingham Metropolitan College (BMET) and Gilberstone Primary School. Karen Manuel at BMET is passionate about staff professional learning and in particular using research and evidence to develop practice. She commissioned CUREE to create a routemap focused on the college’s 4 development priorities. Each of the stations on the map is hyperlinked to an engaging evidence-based resource which acts as a catalyst for staff professional learning. Lecturers at the collage will be using dedicated time to explore the evidence for a particular priority and use it to develop their practice. The launch event sparked some lively discussion about strategies lecturers would like to experiment with. Karen feels that “this is the best.. sum..I’ve ever spent on CPD”.
Ceri Crosskey at Gilberstone Primary School is committed to giving every child in her school the best start on their lifelong learning journey. Gilbert the school’s learning bus demonstrates this in a highly visual way. But Ceri also wanted to give the best support she could to her staff’s learning journey. She asked CUREE to produce a route map that would help the school meet development plan targets. The stations on the map include a mixture of CUREE evidence-based resources and school resources. During the year staff will add data collected from their classrooms and case studies. Ceri thinks that the routemap will be extremely useful evidence if Ofsted inspectors pay a visit!
If you would like to speak to Rebecca Raybould about how CUREE can work with you to create a routemap to meet your school’s or college’s needs then please email rebecca.raybould@curee.co.uk
Spring term CPD opportunities - A menu for success!
We have had a busy start to the term providing a variety of CPD workshops around the country. We are enjoying the pronounced trend towards more bespoke CPD with a significant numbers of schools and colleges requesting in-house specialist support. This helps us focus on structuring and supporting professional learning in ways that are efficient and cost effective and that embed and sustain learning.
Understandably, the workshop focused on helping support staff “Read” classroom learning is one which schools and colleges particularly want delivered in-house – The Dearne ALC and Suffolk New College are both running sessions with us in the next couple of weeks.
The tricky question of evaluating the impact of CPD means our workshops offering support and tools attract interest in the FE as well as the school sector. Last week we ran a seminar at the AOC teaching and learning conference with standing room only!
Our effective mentoring and coaching programmes continue to be very popular. We are looking forward to introducing our materials to key teachers and SLC programme developers at a Dissemination of Innovation workshop at the London Science Learning Centre in half term.
Email lisa.bradbury@curee.co.uk if you would like to find out more about running sessions or using these tools in your school or college.
We are always considering how best to translate best evidence about effective teaching and learning into workshops and bespoke sets of learning resources. We attended a National College event for Teaching School Alliances last week and asked the schools we spoke to about their priorities. The top priorities were:
- Challenging all pupils
- Promoting pupil independence
- CPD that makes a difference for pupils as well as staff
- Effective use of TAs
- Securing a growth mindset
We have already addressed many of these and are adding resources re mindsets as we write. Why not visit our website and see how these issues are addressed through the tools, resources and workshops we provide or get in touch to see how we can be of assistance?
Sauce for goose at the Wroxham Teaching School Alliance
We had a wonderful day with the Wroxham Teaching School Alliance helping them:
- Identify a shared language about learning for pupils, for teachers and for leaders
- Building that on firm foundations of evidence about effectiveness – at every level
- Start to explore ways of evaluating the impact of professional learning in school and across the Alliance
Things people particularly valued and propose to feed into both school and Alliance action planning include:
- Thinking about bench marking CPD; exploring ‘evaluation’, ‘measuring impact’ and linking CPD and ‘pupil learning’.
- Practical approaches, tools and resources.
- The challenge from peers and facilitators.
Everyone made positive contribution and said they’d had, for example “A really stimulating and thought provoking day.” “The afternoon sessions were fantastic – SPOT ON!” . Most importantly of all Alison Peacock the head of Wroxham tells us that “as a result of that day the Alliance has exploded into action. The energy it released is fantastic”
Achievement for All
CUREE is always keen to support initiatives in education are based in sound evidence of what works so we are very happy to be associated with Achievement for All (AfA). The outcomes are extremely impressive with SEND pupils in schools involved in the programme making better progress than all pupils nationally. A particular success is the structured conversation. This has led to a fourfold improvement in excellent relationships with parents. The combination of an evidence-based framework, bespoke coaching and CPD support, access to specialist expertise and a community of practice is proving to be very popular with schools. A growing number of local authorities are recognising that supporting (financially and otherwise) their schools in implement AfA is the most effective way of using their limited school improvement resources.
If you would like an informal chat about how AfA could work for you contact rebecca.raybould@curee.co.uk
CUREE helps Opening Minds
CUREE is supporting Lead Practitioners in Opening Minds training schools explore the nature of outstanding lessons and the most effective ways of assessing OM competences. The action research project, while providing answers to these questions, is also building capacity in the training schools for practitioner enquiry as a tool for school development. You can find out more about Opening Minds at: www.rsaopeningminds.org.uk/
The Opening Minds conference takes place on 2 March, at the Institute of Education London, where we will also be reporting on the project to date. Click here to find out more: www.rsaopeningmindsconference2012.eventbrite.com/
CUREE Home and Away
In addition to the many conferences, meetings and other events in the UK, CUREE is to be found around the world. Between New Year and Easter, for instance, we can be found in Malmo, Doha and, with OECD, in Warsaw and Cambridge. Look at the Events section of our website for more information.