We found love.................

..........................................in a hopeless place

Being right and being successful

Creative and compliant???????

A hopeless place?Michael Gove morphs into Dr Emmet “Doc” Brown - we are all going Back to the Future

A culture of exposure and threat based on Orwellian double speak

Where challenge is equated with extraneous difficulty rather than raising standards

and................

An obsession with governance

A compulsive relationship with knowledge

Assessment for categorisation and qualification

An assault on intermediate agencies

Centralisation masquerading as empowerment

Genuinely aiming to increase social mobility while failing to understand the complexity of modern poverty

Meet Jamie

Mental Health

Family Life

Peer Pressure

Drug Exposure

Behavioural Issues

Legal Problems

The Present

Getting it Right for Every Child

What makes a differenceThere are at least four important ingredients for

improving education. The first is the teacher’s professional skills.

Research has shown that factors like national or regional policies are less influential on pupils’ achievements than factors within each school

Of the school factors, the teaching skills of staff came top.

The most important of these was effective classroom management

The other factors• Third, teachers’ morale and attitude to their craft.

It is hard to improve what you do through clenched teeth.

• The second vital ingredient is the raising of aspirations and expectations.

• Fourth is the climate within the school..a positive attitude to improvement in which people look at what is happening in classrooms, reflect on it and implement judicious change

Effective QualitiesSharing the management of learning with pupils

Promoting the belief that attainment can improve

Using a wide range of sources of information

Identifying a range of needs

Responding to needs

Giving and receiving feedback

Using a range of sources of support

The 4 big questionsWhat are you going to do to improve your practice?

What help or support will you need to ake that improvement?

What outcomes will you expect your young people to achive as a result of the improvement?

What evidence will you look at to determine if the improvement has been made?

Professionalism

Reflection

Ambition

Courage

Tenacity

Idealism

Care

Energy

we have children who do not have a future, they have a destiny and that destiny is a bleak one. Our task, if we are educators, in whatever sense, or if we are simply committed citizens, is to rewrite the narrative of such lives. Ideally, it is to enable those who face a destiny to create a future.

Changes and Challenges

• Globalisation changes everything for us – we need to be competitive

• The massive challenges that we face require innovative responses

• Unpredictability demands creativity• Clear links between creativity and well-being

• We need to do better

What do employers want?

More workers with more education

Skills that allow movement between jobs

Broader competencies – numerical skills, problem-solving, communication skills, team working

Facility with ICT

Ability to learn

The potential to add to the business, not just fulfill a role

Eric Hoffer

In times of change, the learners shall inherit the earth while the learned will remain beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists

David Cameron

And the learners who can manage complexity, innovate and create will shape that inheritance and define the future

our ambition must not simply be to enable our learners to adapt to the circumstances that they find themselves in, it must be to enable them to change and improve those circumstances.

So, what do learners need?

Basic skills – literacy, numeracy

The specific skills required by disciplines or vocational choices

The skills to access knowledge including the skill of questioning

The capacity to think, learn and adapt

The ability to innovate and create

The commitment to sustained enquiry or task

The ability to choose, and use, the tools for learning, life and work

What sort of learning?

It has to be active

It has to involve the quest for meaning

It has to be varied

It needs motivation

It should respect disciplines but not be dominated by them

It must be assessed in terms of breadth, depth and application

What does this mean for planning?

Clarity of purposes

Common recognition of the elements – skills, concepts, knowledge, activities

Analysis of what we offer now

Identifying the gaps/shortcomings

Thinking about what we do and how we do it?

Discussing and agreeing standards

What are the learning pathways?

Knowledge and informationInvolves recognising or recalling information. When encountering a new piece of information, recalling existing knowledge and seeing how they fit together is often a vital step towards understanding. 

UnderstandingUnderstanding goes well beyond recall. It involves absorbing ideas and information in a way that makes them meaningful, memorable and usable. 

ApplicationIn many ways this is an extension of understanding where learners put what they understand into practice

AnalysisAnalysis builds on understanding. Sound procedures are used to examine knowledge critically. The outcome is new ideas  

SynthesisThe ability to put information and ideas together and reconcile contradictions

EvaluationEvaluation goes beyond analysis by subjecting whole processes and systems to objective examination. This often entails applying values and belief as well as cognitive skills. 

Systems thinkingBreadth of vision is combined with deep knowledge and understanding in order to appreciate the workings of complex real world systems and anticipate the impact on the whole of alterations in the parts.

CreationCreation is the stage beyond evaluation. The outcomes of evaluation are used to create new processes and systems.

Therefore..........

Be informed by the big pictureKeep the breadth

Understand the importance of what you do

Set the right standards and make sure that they are focussed on outcomes

Ask the important questions........

What does this mean for learning and young people’s lives

and............

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

And some questions for Mr Gove

What you need to think about

How do we best serve learners?

How do we build links and establish progression

Setting the bar for consistency in quality and then achieving it

Setting ambitions as well as providing care

Your choice of outcomes

Your processes

Your successes

Your plans for improvement

Your best advocates

Being assertive/controlling the agenda

Some thoughts“Smart kids pass tests”

It’s the last question that holds the key to high achievement

It is not our job to enable young people to fail, it is our task to give them the tools to succeed

Aspirations are the options young people can consider with some confidence

The LacunaTheir white dresses swirled like froth, with skirts so wide they could take the hems in their fingertips and raise them up to make sudden wings, like butterflies, fluttering as they turned…..

“Indian girls,” she spat……”A corn eater will never be more than she is”

The dancers were butterflies. From a hundred paces Salome could see the dirt under their fingernails, but not their wings

How do you want to be remembered?

She had a great inspection report

She gave something back

She was a brilliant teacher

She changed children’s lives

She was a key part of all that we achieved

The Real David Camerontherealdavidcameron@gmail.com

@realdcameron

07825654326