I have been a teacher for 25 years, a Headteacher for 10 years and, at the age of 49, this much I know about my ambivalent response to Gove’s re-takes don’t count in schools’ accountability measures policy change. My strapline for this blog is taken from Hamlet – There is nothing either good or bad/ But thinking makes it so. It’s Shakespeare’s glass half full/half empty line for his Elizabethan audience. I have always been able to control my thinking and see my way through any challenge. But this week has been different. This week, with Gove’s announcement about re-takes and accountability measures, I have dithered over what to do in response to this policy change like never before. I even tweeted this, which ain’t like me at all…
The York Press has two photographs of me depending upon whether it is covering a positive story or a negative one. Well, this week, I haven’t known whether to laugh or cry. Let’s be principled and begin with my smiley pic…
What was good enough for our students last week is good enough for them this week. Throughout my career I’ve based my decision-making upon my core values. Don’t be a feather for each wind that blows. Professionally I live by Mike Hughes’ perceptive aphorism, The most effective leaders seem to have erected a sheet of polaroid across the school gate: all the confusing, paradoxical and frustrating initiatives hitting the school, as they pass through the polaroid, emerge as parallel lines, harmonious with our plans and processes. And right now, more than ever, we have to go back to our core values to ensure that the impact upon our students of inconstant DfE policy is mitigated. What’s the best for our students? This is the only question that matters and the answer is, surely, to leave them entered for the examinations in November; they can gain confidence from having experienced the examination for real and many can build upon what they learn from the experience in order to perform much better next June. Their start in life will only be enhanced by gaining the best grade they possibly can. Accountability measures are irrelevant – show leadership and do the right thing. Trouble is my serious face kept popping up this week, just when I thought I had decided to live by my core values...
I have never worked for a Secretary of State who seems to want to make life for Headteachers as difficult as possible. The policy change about retaking GCSEs is perfect politics. It leaves Headteachers in a lose-lose situation. If we withdraw students from examinations, in Gove’s eyes we are admitting it was gaming; if we leave them entered for English and mathematics GCSEs, and our headline accountability figures fall dramatically, it’s professional suicide. It also reduced the impact on schools of the industrial action – the strike was not at the forefront of my mind on Tuesday morning! BTW I had to smile at this quotation from Gove in the official DfE press release: I believe that this speaks more generally of a narrowed curriculum, focused not on sound subject teaching as a basis for successful progression, but on preparation to pass exams. We could lose all we have worked for during the past six years. In that time our 5 A*-C GCSE grades with English and mathematics figure has risen by 16% to 75%. Our levels of progress for English and mathematics are 10% higher than the floor standards. Worst case scenario: we leave the entries; in January our headline figures drop by 20 points, OFSTED turn up in February and inspect us based upon our November 2013 data, ignoring last August’s successes. We Require Improvement or worse... Unless you’ve led a school – and invested more than you would care to admit in leading it to be successful – I don’t think you can pass judgement upon a Headteacher’s decision about the November examination entries. Consider your whole school community before deciding what to do about this November’s entries. If you make a decision which badly affects your RAISE data but is the right decision for your current Year 11, you ignore the potential impact of that RAISE data on your teachers’ morale and consequently all your other students’ educations, especially if you are awaiting inspection. The line between being principled and being naïve is a thin one. There have been three changes to the English GCSE examination rules for this cohort of Year 11s, why not a fourth? (Up-date: The fourth change happened – see below – some time today, only 18 hours after I published this post.) I have deep concerns about the November series of examinations. The boards will surely raise the grade boundaries and supressed grades will badly affect our students. This policy change could lead to an increase in forced academisation. If your student in-take has an FFT D estimate below the floor standards, you now have very little chance of supporting your Year 11 students to a level of official examination success above the floor standards. Sponsored Academy status is your prize... The new policy has one huge loophole if multiple-entry gaming is what it is supposed to eliminate. At the moment you can still make double-entries for students next June and count the best grade. One of Gove’s best proposals was for a single national examination board. He lost his nerve pursuing that policy when threatened with European competition law. I imagine that banning double-entries would be a restraint of trade for AQA, OCR et al. (Up-date: at some point today [4 October 2013] the DfE changed the wording on the website. The original version read as follows: Where exams are taken at the same time, in the same series, the best results will continue to count. It now reads thus: Where exams are scheduled for the same day, the best result will continue to count. Schools will need to think carefully about whether this is in the best interests of their pupils. The Department for Education will continue to collect data on entry patterns, and will share that data at a school level with Ofsted. In cases where exams are scheduled for different days, even if they are in the same series, only the first entry will count in the tables. So, for a school to benefit from double-entry, students will have to take two full examinations in the same subject on the same day; entering students for English Language i-GCSE and a traditional English Language GCSE will not enhance a school's accountability measures as they are scheduled for different days. Such a strategy, however, could benefit students.) Support each other like never before. In York all secondaries have agreed to publish “final result” figures next August and in January 2015 when the DfE performance tables are released. As Headteacher the buck stops with you. My boss when I was a Deputy identified the gulf between being a Deputy and a Head; he said to me that, as a Deputy, I could always go home and sleep at night because, ultimately, the buck didn’t stop with me. I know many Headteacher colleagues who end this week feeling more tired than usual. What are we going to do about our November entries? You know what? We can’t quite decide…