Mr Cullen cpd: 2016

Monday, 10 October 2016

The 30 second intervention

First published in the Times Educational Supplement (TESPro Magazine) in 2012.

Strip out all the ‘magic’ systems, reward catalogues, funky behaviour data tracking software and general frippery that now seems to accompany behaviour in many schools and you are left with what really matters – real conversations with angry young people at the point of crisis. It is these moments that lie at the heart of good behaviour and relationship management. It is these moments that are the difference between calm and chaos, confrontation and compliance, inclusion or exclusion. When students dig their heels in and tell you with passion that ‘it’s shit, I won’t do it and you can’t make me’, it is not just your behaviour management skills that are being tested. It is your values, your emotional resilience and your humanity that is under the microscope. Interrupt and disrupt thought patterns quickly and efficiently you become expert at diffusing behaviour bombs that others allow to explode.

The longer each negotiation around behaviour takes for the few, the less time you can give to the many. Students who behave badly in class will inevitably need more of your time outside of lessons. Don’t give it to them in class too.

Limit your formal one-to-one interventions for poor behaviour in class to 30 seconds each time. Get in, deliver the message, ‘anchor’ their behaviour with an example of the student’s previous good behaviour and get out. With your dignity intact and the student’s dignity intact. That is the ‘win, win’. The 30 second intervention demands careful often scripted language. The idea is simple. The performance takes practice. The 30 second intervention is not designed to force the student to play ‘good puppy’, beg for forgiveness and turn their life around before break time. It is carefully planned, utterly predictable and safe way to send a clear messages to the learner. ‘You own your behaviour, your poor behaviour does not deserve my time, you are better than the behaviour you are showing today (and I can prove it!).

The moment you deliver a sanction is the moment that confrontation/complaint/protest will emerge. Counter this defensive response in your 30 second intervention by immediately reminding the student of a previous example of their personal discipline, ‘Do you remember yesterday/last week when you: helped me tidy up/led the group/gave me that excellent homework? Remember Mum’s face when she got the note? That is the person I know, that is the Chelsea I need to see today’. Then use ‘Thank you for listening’ as an excuse to move away and leave the student to their choice. Walk away. Don’t be tempted to ‘loom’ over the student waiting for them to decide what to do. Walk away. Don’t turn back. Even if you have just perfectly performed the 30 second intervention the student may need time to make a choice, time to get back to work and yes time for other learners to turn their attention away.

As you walk away Chelsea will be busy baiting a hook to fish you back. Her bait box box is full of tasty teacher triggers, a loud sweary mutter, perhaps the classic ‘finger’ or the utterly disrespectful teeth kissing coupled with quietly insulting murmurs. Don’t be tempted to take the bait. Keep walking. The rest of the class will realise that you didn’t let it go soon enough. If you rush back in to confront the secondary behaviours you pass over control to the child. You have lost. A full blown confrontation is the ultimate reward for the learner who likes to provoke. All your hard work is soon undone as the emotion accelerates to sweary door slamming report writing segregation cell nastiness.

Of course as you walk away your first job is to write down, discreetly, what just happened so that you can you can speak to the student when everyone is calm. You might prefer to wait until the cold light of the morning to share the note you made with the student. In my experience a blurry faced teenager gives apology and shows regret with more ease. Fully awake and fuelled with sugar/caffeine/stimulant of choice can be trickier beasts. In time the certainty of your ‘follow up’ soon ripples through the rest of the class “He’ll get you, he won’t do anything now, but he’ll get you”. A pointy finger, looming presence or sarcastic tone will undermine the technique. Everything about your physical and tonal approach must scream “I HAVEN’T COME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT!” Pull up a chair or get on your knees. Take away every nuance of anger, every drop of anger fuel that some young people crave. Strip out the negative reinforces and leave the student feeling that they can have control of their behaviour themselves.

With a 30 second intervention you no longer need to improvise. The script is set, the pace predetermined and the arc of the intervention fine tuned. The brevity of the intervention affords no time for the gradual crescendo of the improvised castigation. Neither is driven by big sticks and heavy punishment. It leaves the student thinking about their actions, knowing that someone important believes they are better. At the pivotal point of behaviour management you can address difficult behaviour while leaving your relationship perfectly in tact.

Performing the 30 second intervention well is truly skilful behaviour and emotion management. It takes a great deal of self control to stop your emotion creeping out. Reminding students of their good behaviour in the middle of dealing with their poor behaviour takes practice. Matching humility and certainty takes some emotional resilience on your part. Yet when everyone sees that poor behaviour is no longer rewarded, that interventions are quick, efficient and predictable the classroom becomes safer and less explosive place to learn.

Micro-script model Key messages about intervention scripts:

Key messages about intervention scripts:

No judgement is ever made about the students identity during interventions.
The relationship between teacher and student is paramount and must be protected.
People are not their behaviour.
Students must take responsibility for their behaviour and not have the opportunity to blame their adults for it.
In 20 years your students will not remember much of what you taught them but they will remember how you treated them.
Behaviours should be shifted to the past tense as soon as possible.We are not interested in dwelling on poor choices but on creating positive expectations for the rest of the lesson. Conversations are heavily weighted to what is going to happen next rather than what has just happened.
Presupposition is used to influence limiting self belief.When unspoken positive assumptions lie behind your language they can affect the student’s expectations of their own behaviour. ‘I know that you can…’ beats ‘Why oh why!’ every time.
It is essential that scripts are complemented with skilled use of physical language and a tone that is calm, kind and nurturing. Any script can be undermined by careless physical language or tone that mixes the message.

Examples of micro scripts used by experienced teachers working with challenging students

(Drop tone) I’m limited with what I can do here. You have left me no choice in the matter. We have to follow procedure, this is the situation.
I am happy to discuss this later but at the moment I have to get on with the lesson.
I’ve noticed that it’s not working. Come out of the classroom to give you a chance to have some time away from the group. I shall come out in a few minutes.
Jack you are not focusing on your work. The consequence of this is that I need you to move to the front so that you can work better.
You need to make the right decision now. You normally work well in this lesson.
I’ve seen how well you can work, that’s not happening today. I am going to give you the opportunity to achieve the work you can do.
That may well be the case but I still need you to follow the instructions.
I have noticed that you have chosen not to make good choices. We have now reached the point where if you continue to behave like this you can spend the rest of the day/lesson with a senior member of staff.
You can make the right decision and a senior member of staff can take you to the hotspot where you can complete the work and return to me at the end of the lesson.
Altaf, do you understand why the situation has reached this point? Mr Turner is going to take you to the hotspot. I would like you to come and see me later as I know that you are a nice lad and I don’t know why you are behaving like this.

Thursday, 6 October 2016

The importance of importance

This article by Chris Sweeney was first published on the Pivotal Education blog in 2010.

The deepest desire in human nature is the desire to feel important. That’s why we praise and reward work. Of course it’s not always the size of reward that matters it’s how you give it. I can give you a star and make you feel like a king. I can give you 20 quid and make you feel utterly worthless. So we should focus on how we give rewards and praise.

Read the article below written by Pivotal Education Trainer, Chris Sweeney. He talks about someone he worked with who had mastered the art of making people feel important and the knock on effect that had on everyone else. So while you read the article think about how you make your students feel important.

Giving Importance

Before I became a teacher I worked in a pub for a year. It was a “classic” country pub in an old building with a head barman who’d been there longer than the foundations. Peter was to me the perfect barman, he had a knack of working with people and putting them at their ease.

Whether it was the regulars who came in every day or once a week. Or whether it was a new customer who had just found the pub, Peter would make them feel that he was privileged that they had come into the pub.

With the regulars he would know those who liked to have a particular drink in a particular glass and that would be poured and on the bar ready for them before they asked; he’d know those who had something different each time and so would wait to check what they wanted; he’d know those who always had the same drink but were worried about being predictable or boring. He would patiently wait whilst they went through the charade of deciding what they were going to have before choosing the same drink they had every day. He would keep up to speed with their lives, their interests asking after weekends, spouses and families. But he would also know the difference between those who wanted to discuss their lives in great detail and those who wanted to keep “distance”.

When new people walked into the bar he would adjust his greeting according to what he felt would suit them best. He would get the balance right between welcoming them in without being overpowering.

He could see when trouble was brewing and would intervene early with a subtle comment, diversion or a joke to defuse the situation.

In short Peter had the skill of making every person who came into that pub feel important.

Giving importance is an essential skill in the classroom as well. Ask yourself the question how do you make your students feel important? I’m not talking here about the whole class, I’m talking about individuals. Take the time to make each student feel that you’re glad they came, you’re pleased they’re here, they’re important.

This doesn’t take a lot of time or effort but it has a huge impact. Greeting students as they come in at the start of the session - with a smile; a brief comment / question about something you know they’re interested in; marking moments with genuine, meaningful praise. Giving importance is different for everyone - we all value different approaches and have different interests.

Sadly Peter died a few years ago. I remember going to his funeral - it was standing room only. There were family and friends there but there were also large numbers of people who had known Peter as the barman of their local. They came because they wanted to pay their respects to Peter but also because he had an impact on their lives - he had made a difference.

In schools and colleges we are immensely privileged to be in the position where we can have a huge impact on the lives of children and young people - every day.

Ask yourself the question at the end of each day: Have I made my students feel important today?

Tuesday, 4 October 2016

Recognition not reward

This article was first published by Teach Primary Magazine in 2010.

You can’t buy students off with material rewards and expect them to sustain good behaviour. Young people like money, toys, stationary and stuff; but they like pride, self-esteem and a sense of belonging much, much more. The people who are best placed to reward your students are their parents. Let parents know that things are going well and encourage them to connect rewards at home with effort in class. End your message on a positive postcard or note with, ‘If you would like to follow up with a reward at home it would be well deserved’. Make it clear what you expect from the parents, what their role is and precisely how they can reinforce what you are doing. Give them an excuse to make the weekend special. Encourage them to echo the success to the family. Allow them to reward in the way they feel is appropriate. After all. We know how to reward our own children perfectly. It often doesn’t even cost us money. But we are just guessing with other people’s children. As a teacher, your responsibility is to send a clear message and let the parents do their part.

In classrooms students’ poor behaviour is recognised all the time. It is easy to reward poor behaviour with instant attention, fuelling it with emotion and encouraging it with low expectations. The thrill of an angry adult, with a ‘naughty’ badge and no responsibility can be an attractive package to some students. The benefits include admiration from friends and a reputation in the staff room: recognition, essentially. The forgotten majority who behave beautifully, work diligently and never demand attention deserve more. It is time to radically change our focus. Obviously notice those pupils who keep themselves under the radar and go unrecognised. They deserve our attention, our encouragement and our energy. Spend all of your time chasing the sheep who are trying to escape over the fence and it is easy to lose sight of the flock. Parents, children and teachers have been complaining for years that the children engaged in challenging behaviour get all the rewards. They are right. Perhaps it is time to redress the balance. Time to take away the rewards from poor behaviour.

Do a quick audit. How many students in your class come in every day, keep within the rules and work hard? 80%, 90%? How many positive notes have you given in the last three weeks? How many positive phone calls? What about those students who have had contact with parents because of their poor behaviour. Do you contact home when things are going well? Do you make sure that parents are constantly in the loop or is contact with home just an emergency measure. If I am not informed as a parent I find it difficult to truly connect reward at home with effort at school. If my child comes home with a prize I don’t feel that I need to reinforce any further.

The best recognition is when reinforcement is written down. Recognition that can be held, re-read, shown to others and displayed at home. A note, certificate, postcard or your written comments at the end of a piece of work. For many the pride of having their work on display has a similar effect. Remember, the moment is marked, the routine confirmed and self-esteem lifted. The student is consistently reminded of the behaviour that best represents them. Reminded of the behaviour that they can be most proud of. Money, stuff and material rewards are not the responsibility of the teacher. They are better delivered at home. In the classroom they can be divisive and perceived as unfair ‘Altaf, I am extremely impressed that you managed to stop throwing missiles at Colette, have some golden time, gift tokens and an all expenses paid trip for your trouble’. The line between reward and bribery is blurred in some teaching spaces. Teachers have no need to encourage material desires in young people. We have a duty to develop an understanding of what truly motivates for the long term. Pride, ambition and a sense of belonging pervade the best classrooms and laboratories. You can see it on the walls, on the faces of the students and in the relationships that develop.

Young people thrive on recognition from more than one source. The student’s recognition of the efforts of their peers can be a powerful driver of self-esteem and positive self-image. Young people who cannot recognise their own positive attributes, learn by identifying the good in others. In fact all human beings value recognition. Your colleagues respond well to the same strategies. At the end of a training session I ran, a teacher thanked me for the day and put a sticker on my jumper. A doggy sticker with ’terrific’ written underneath. I smiled. I brimmed with pleasure and pride. I kept the sticker, took it home and stuck in on the wall next to my desk. I tell people about it. I am telling you now! I am 44 years old and still a small sticker boosts my confidence and tweaks my pride. Now, either I am a uniquely sad individual for whom a doggy sticker means more than anything. Or it is not what you give but the way that you give it. This applies to your colleagues as much as your class. A note, a kind word, a positive reference are irresistible.

In the end it is not what you give but the way that you give it. Prizes gleam and then fade in moments. Positive recognition lasts for a lifetime. It’s the reward that keeps giving.

Ladder of recognition

Positive behaviour can be recognised and celebrated in numerous ways. Try following these simple steps…

Positive reinforcement
Sincere, private verbal praise
Addition comments on written work
Peer congratulations
Work on display in the classroom
Work on display in public areas/website
Positive referral to another teacher
Positive text home
Positive note home
Positive phone call home
‘Mentioned in dispatches’ in assembly and in staff meetings
Extra class responsibility
Class award certificate
Year award certificate
Extra school responsibility School Honours

Thursday, 14 July 2016

5 ways to engage students in real coding this summer (hint: it’s not by playing Minecraft)

source

A coding expert shares how to get students truly invested in computer science that goes beyond drag and drop

Teaching students how to code software is one of the most valuable skills you can give them, and will virtually guarantee them employment once they’re in the workforce. According to the US Department of Labor, the median pay for a software developer in 2015 was $100,690, and the growth in available positions is expected to be 17 percent during the period 2014-2024 (more than twice the average growth rate across all occupations).

Many schools are offering coding courses over the summer. I’ve spent the last two years building a platform that makes learning to code software as easy as playing a game so I’ve learned a thing or two about how to engage students in coding. Here’s some advice for choosing the right learning platform for your community:

Make sure it’s age-appropriate and will engage children and teens.

Many of these courses were designed for adults, and even if a child is off-the-charts intelligent, he/she might be bored if the course is all coding and no fun. Courses for kids should incorporate some element of gamification to keep them engaged. Look for courses that were designed specifically for children and teens.

Students should be writing actual code, not just dragging and dropping.

Programs like Scratch are a good method for very young children (K-2), but within a few hours becomes boring for older children, who won’t learn very much. To keep kids engaged, they need to start writing real code very quickly.

Get them started on a ‘beginner’ programming language.

Javascript and Python are two great beginner languages. Java and Swift are much more complex and may intimidate a beginner, ruining the experience for them

Don’t get stuck in the Minecraft trap.

Many people think playing Minecraft helps children learn to code. It doesn’t. It’s engaging, and it teaches children binary logic, but they aren’t learning to code. Don’t get tricked into letting children or teens play Minecraft all day and think they are learning programming.

Make sure there is some collaboration involved.

Single-player is fun for a child for a while, but they quickly want to show off what they’ve done, and that’s easier with multi-player coding – especially when the course involves gamification.

There are also some good options for children who may not be ready for a course yet, but who want to do some light learning as a first step. Check out board games such as Robot Turtles, and programmable robot building kits (such as Dash & Dot or a Sphero), which are great activities to work into a summer camp program. But teachers shouldn’t just hand their students a game and step back — these activities are more valuable when teachers and students do them together.

This advice and these tools can easily be carried back into the classroom in September. Happy summer, and happy coding!

5 ways to gamify writing in the classroom

Believe it or not, writing is a natural fit for gamification techniques

You’ve surely noticed how your class gets engaged as soon as you introduce a game into the teaching process. The students get competitive, but that’s a healthy competition you want to nurture.

Have you ever thought about teaching writing through games? It’s a great strategy that helps students overcome the lack of motivation they have regarding writing assignments. Robert Monroe, a writer for EduGeeksClub and a father of a 10-year-old, explains how he made writing attractive for his son: “I realized he was bored whenever he had to write something for school. I know how fun writing can be, so I found a way to turn it into a game. I set up a private online diary and gave him brief prompts every day. He received points for each ‘level’ he passed and a prize for every big achievement. I noticed great improvements in his grammar and style in a really short period of time.”

Needless to say, you’ll need an effective strategy that will help you introduce writing games in the classroom. Read on; we have the tips you need.

Understand the problem

Before you can make your students like writing, you need to understand why they don’t. One of the biggest problems with the assignments is the fact that they are boring. Plus, teachers tend to make them more challenging than necessary, so the students lose motivation even before they start working on them.

The entire process of research, outlining, writing, and editing takes a lot of commitment. When you turn it into a game, you need to make it less challenging and more flexible. For example, you can create teams and allow your students to work together on the research stage for a day. Then, they can all focus on storytelling according to the principles you provide, and you can publish all stories on a blog.

Give them a competitive edge to motivate them to achieve better results, and try to create some graphics to accompany each story. That will be

your reward for them.

Set precise goals

Every game needs a goal. If, for example, the point of the game is to write a story, you need to make it very specific. You may ask your students to show how the main character overcomes a personal flaw, such as shyness or laziness.

Once you set the main goal, break it up in stages. You know that each game has levels, don’t you? For example, the team can write a paragraph to pass the first level. Each member should contribute with their own sentence for the paragraph, and the content has to be coherent. Once they pass level one, they can continue to a higher level, and you ask them to add another element to the story (such as a new character or a challenge).

Set some rules

A game has to be founded on rules; otherwise it would quickly get out of hand. Just as you have a grading system for their papers, you should have a point system for the games. If, for example, you create blogging quests, your students should know exactly how many points they need to get onto the next level, and how they can earn those points.

You can start with a maximum of 30 points and reduce 2 points for every mistake in grammar and spelling, and 5 points for each mistake in logic. Make these guidelines clear before the games begin.

Games come with immediate results

You know how students have to wait for days before they get a grade on their papers? That’s a stress they would all want to avoid. Games give immediate feedback, so they keep the enthusiasm levels high. Draw a chart on the whiteboard, so everyone can understand the point system.

When your students realize that they can do something right now to beat the other team, they will get more engaged to achieve better results

Rely on the right tools

Technology can make the gamification of the writing process much easier. There are different tools you can use, so don’t stop exploring what the Internet has to offer. You can start with these tools:

Rezzly – it enables you to design fun quests, which your students can access through their smartphones or tablets.
ClassBadges – a tool that helps you develop a reward system in the form of badges.
Edublogs – a safe blogging environment that you can use for publishing the challenges and results.

Educative games are a great addition to the teaching process because they make the classroom more dynamic while enabling the students to develop new skills. Even the most complex skills can be practiced through gamification. You can develop different games that will make writing attractive for you students, so don’t waste time and start experimenting. Your students will love the new approach.

10 apps that block mobile distractions

1. ClearLock for Android : a productivity app which allows users to block all distracting apps on their device in order to concentrate and focus on what matters to increase productivity. Users select which apps they wish to block, for how long and that’s it. [Price: Free]

2. Cold Turkey for OS for Android: users give a list of the most tempting websites they access and Cold Turkey will block access to them all for the time period specified. Whatever browser users are using, the results are the same – enter one of the forbidden URLs before the time is up and you’ll be told that the site is unavailable. [Price: Free]

3. Focus Lock for Android and Flipd for Apple: Focus Lock promises to help users stop being slaves to their phone by blocking notifications for 25 minutes from whichever apps most distract them, followed by a five-minute unlocked window. Flipd has more customizable settings and is a similar app [Price: Both free]

4. Isolator for OS X: can completely hide other windows, blur everything behind your active window, and do a variety of other things depending on your settings, such as hiding the dock when you want to concentrate. [Price: Free]

5. (OFFTIME) for Apple and for Android: lets you monitor your smartphone usage in real time and take dedicated timeouts from the digital. The app’s analytics aims to make it easy to identify habits and take action to change them. (OFFTIME) has three components that support digital balance and digital detox: 1) tracking and comparing device usage; 2) setting personal device usage goals and accessing tips & articles; and 3) pursuing alone or inviting others to OFFTIMEs (on iOS the flight/mute mode). The app lets the user understand his/her digital habits through graphs and visualizations of his/her smartphone usage, clustered by daily, weekly, monthly and total usage reports. Using “locations” the user can find his/her usage hotspots. With the badge icon the user can see his/her daily unlocks or collect time offs. [Price: $2.99; Free for new users]

6. Power Focus for Apple: This is a countdown timer that aims to help users work in manageable chunks of time to beat procrastination and addiction to distraction apps. Features include customization of work session timer length, customization of regular & long break length, the ability to view daily & all-time completed work session stats, and interactive notifications (Continue, Pause, or Stop current timer). Users can use the intervals to get tasks done and give themselves a break in between tasks. [Price: Free]

7. RescueTime for Mac, PC, Linux and Chrome and Android: This app gives users a readout at the end of the day (and year if you opt for the $6 a month Pro version) of their web activities. The Android version provides automatic time tracking of mobile apps, reports voice call time, knows where web site time is spent, sets user-selected alerts and goals to manage digital life, flags milestones and highlight achievements, provides historical productivity reports to see progress, and has privacy options to choose what the user cares about. The app aims to help individuals and teams propagate good processes and eliminate bad habits. [Price: Free]

8. StayFocusd for Chrome: This extension works in the reverse manner to Zero Willpower or Anti-Social. Rather than setting a period of time for which users can’t use the Internet, it allows them to set a period of time to indulge in time-wasting sites. Only want to give 60 minutes a day for Twitter, vanity Googling, and updating the Netflix queue? This is the app. [Price: Free]

9. WriteRoom for Mac: a full screen writing environment meant to give users time to write without typical software distractions. Unlike the cluttered word processors users are used to, WriteRoom lets them focus on writing by the fast handling of large documents; live word count, reading time, and more; shift line up, down, left, and right commands; selection of word, sentence, and paragraph commands; by automatically logging writing sessions to a spreadsheet, etc. [Price: $6.99]

10. Zero Willpower and Anti-Social for Apple: Zero Willpower is a simple native blocker for the web browser on iOS 9and lets the user block his/her own access to distracting websites of his/her choice. By default these are: 9gag.com, Facebook.com, Instagram.com, Reddit.com, Twitter.com, twitch.tv, vk.com, YouTube.com. Anti-Social is an app which blocks social media content from websites which includes widgets and popups to provides a clutter-free, fast browsing experience. The app works with Safari and blocks social widgets, with the added benefit of substantially decreasing web page loading time. Users can banish social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ from transmitting data about them after they leave those sites, even if the pages they visit has a social plugin. [Price: Both are $.99]

5 ways technology can be useful for autistic learners

A tech researcher shares pros and cons for using devices with autistic learners — and draws from her own experience

During the last few years, touch screen devices like the iPad have been a boon to special education. Apps such as Proloquo2Go can aid children with speech difficulties while a myriad of interactive games and activities engage and educate students with autism spectrum disorders, perhaps because theybreak learning down into small, digestible chunks.

There are plenty that would disagree with that assessment, however. As technology researcher Alexandra Samuel recently noted in the WSJ, some researchers contend that autistic children are “particularly prone to videogame addiction.” Others think that the structure inherent in gaming can reinforce the rigidity of autistic-type brains.

For Samuel, who is the parent of an Autistic ten-year-old, technology has been both useful and harmful in her own experience, and she refrains from drawing any stark conclusions. According to Samuel:

[T]here is no simple answer to the question of whether technology helps or harms autistic children, any more than there is an easy answer to whether technology is good or bad for society as a whole. To make technology a constructive influence, we need to get past talking about “screen time” as if it were a single thing, and start looking at the impact that specific kinds of screen time have on specific people and behaviors.

In particular, she has used technology in five different ways:

As downtime, to avoid sensory overload; as targeted therapy to teach mindful techniques and emotional intelligence; to help monitor behavior (although the particular apps she tried ultimately proved too engaging for her son); to promote special interests, such as coding; and for online socializing, given that it may be easier for autistic children to communicate and learn about social interaction in a controlled (online) environment.

All of the approaches, Samuel notes, require adults, such as parents and educators, to keep a close eye on their kids, not only to help manage behavior but also to help tease out hidden interests and to learn more about what draws them in.

Tuesday, 5 July 2016

CPD paradox

Taken from https://thecpdparadox.wordpress.com/about-the-cpd-paradox/

What is ‘The CPD Paradox’?

One thing that all schools have in common is some sort of ‘Continual Professional Development’, or CPD. Over the country, hundreds of thousands of collective hours and an equal amount of money is spent on the task of improving teaching. But is all this training working as well as it should be?

I don’t think so. And I think that this is as a result of the CPD paradox:

The paradox (part 1)

The CPD paradox has two distinct strands, both of which contribute to the dilemma. The first relates to the aim of Professional Development programmes. It helps to try and be as clear as possible about what exactly this aim is: to turn teachers into effective and skilled practitioners as quickly as possible so that students in their classes get best teaching they can, leading to the best exam results and the best student outcomes. It is an aim that both teachers and schools are committed to; if the aim is achieved, everyone benefits. Given that both teachers and schools have numerous reasons to be committed to the efficacy of their CPD sessions, it would seem that in-school teacher training would, on the whole, be a resounding success.

But despite this, despite the time and energy that is spent by teachers and schools on training, it is often clear that very little, if anything, from school CPD sessions actually turns up in anyone’s day to day teaching practice. Why is this?

1) Teacher exhaustion

Teachers have stressful day-to-day jobs that can leave them feeling mentally exhausted and with little room for personal development. They can be left after a day spent taking part in literally hundreds of emotionally driven interactions with other humans feeling drained, a feeling that is not conducive to effective learning in after school teacher training sessions. Any CPD programme that wants to be really effective needs to take this into account in its design.

2) Workload

Even if teachers come to CPD sessions feeling engaged and ready to learn, there is another challenge. As soon as the session is finished they have to get on with the myriad tasks that are part of the job. This could be marking books or exam scripts, planning lessons or any other of a huge variety of jobs. By the time the teacher finally gets to the end of this mountain of work they go home, only to arrive back at work the following day to face a similar situation. They simply do not have the space to reflect on their learning and put this in practice. CPD sessions need to be designed to mitigate this issue if they are to be successful.

3) The Poorly Planned Session

Often, CPD sessions are planned and lead in school by middle or senior leaders with thousands of other things to do that come under the category of ‘more urgent’. As a result, CPD sessions can often feel poorly planned and with not enough opportunity for active learning rather than passive listening. This is further compounded by the above issues: if a tired and overworked teacher is forced to sit through a badly designed session when they could be working through their mountain of work, they can be left feeling completely turned-off from the very idea of CPD.

The paradox (part 2)

Of course, none of this would matter if teachers didn’t really need CPD to get better. If we could all engage effectively in our own private development, directing our own improvement and working to make changes to our teaching practice then the CPD paradox would cease to exist.

Unfortunately, in-school training is a vital component in teacher development for reasons already discussed. Due to the mentally and physically demanding nature of the job, to the demands on the time of the average teacher, we just do not, on the whole, have the mental space required for really effective personal development. To wade through all the different teaching books, blogs and academic papers, building ourselves a private programme of study and then working reflectively and relentlessly through it is just not something that teachers have the time to do. I’m not saying that this never happens; clearly there are people who have the self-discipline to work in this way but for the vast majority of us, myself included, we need someone to provide us with the impetus and direction to get better quickly.

To summarise, the CPD paradox takes on a viciously circular form . School CPD is not effective because teacher exhaustion and workload means that the material covered does not ‘stick’, and is not actively embedded in practice. Yet these are the very reasons for why an effective training programme is important: it provides teachers with the direction, materials and support to make changes to that they would not otherwise have the time to make on their own.

Principles for a programme that avoids the CPD Paradox

Thankfully, however, I think that with a couple of fairly simple tweaks, these issues can be avoided.

•Participant led – I think that CPD sessions should be, as much as possible, driven by the participants themselves. This helps to avoid the issue of poorly planned sessions from busy senior leaders and puts the onus on the teachers themselves to deliver sessions that are effective for them, and designed to address the issues that they are interested in.

•Accountability for change – Because teachers have so little space for personal projects and reflection, CPD programmes need to be designed to ensure that they are forced to make changes to their practice. This need not be draconian but can simply be some measures such as peer-to-peer observation that ensure that participants in sessions are reminded to actually try out what they learn. Equally, devoting part of the planned session time to practicing skills then and there means that participants are held accountable for moving on.

•In-built uptake time – To avoid the ill-effects of teacher exhaustion and workload, sessions need to be designed so that teachers get an opportunity to put learning into place within the session itself. This can be through practicing skills in groups, or having some time to plan a lesson in the session, thus maximising the chances that things learnt in the abstract in a training session actually find their way into our daily practice as teachers.

What is the point of this website?

I am an English Teacher and Professional Mentor at a large academy school in London. For the last two years, my job within the school has been to plan and lead the CPD of all new staff, NQTs and untrained teachers. After completing the Teach First training programme and being a participant in quite literally hundreds of CPD sessions myself, as well as working as a full time teacher while attempting to improve my own practice, I hope that I designed my own training programme, as well as the individual sessions within it, in such a way that they avoid the most pernicious problems the paradox presents.

I will be posting my CPD programme and sessions on this site in the course of time, and hope that they will be of use to anyone leading their own in-school training programme.

Monday, 20 June 2016

A beginner's guide to planning and managing school budgets

At some point, every teacher will be responsible for part of their school’s finances – from handling petty cash for a trip to explaining why you’ve overspent the departmental budget for a second term running.

But, if you aspire to join your school’s senior leadership team (SLT), you’re likely to be asked to take on an even greater role in monitoring school finances. We’ve put together a beginner’s guide to budgeting, getting value for money, and explaining financial accountability.

1 Make your budget work for your school improvement plan

When taking over your school’s budget, it’s easy to get bogged down by the numbers, but don’t just be driven by how your school has budgeted in the past. Think about what you would like to do if you had unlimited money, then look at how much you’ve actually got to spend and what you can achieve with it.

Your school budget should reflect your school improvement plan – set on a five-year basis, showing two years in retrospect, the current year, and the next two years’ forecast.

Before setting up any new budget, you’ll want to have handy:

Old budgets to look at past performance, so you can learn from under- and over-spends.
Pupil numbers (census, local authority and feeder school lists). Be aware that neighbouring schools changing their admissions policies could also impact your numbers.
Exam results, so you can identify which parts of the curriculum could benefit from more money, and which have previously.
Staffing requirements, including updated pay scales.
Other resource requirements – money needed for insurance, maintenance etc.

2 Understand the basic principles of school budgeting

The first thing you need to understand is the different funding streams by which the school receives its resources.

Delegated funding (eg the dedicated schools grant) usually has no strings attached to it.
Devolved funding comes with conditions on how the money can be spent. For example, you must be able to demonstrate how pupil premium money is benefiting target students and that devolved formula capital funding is only being spent on long-term assets.
Capital funding can only be used to improve a long-term asset (eg upgrading buildings or the school’s technology network).
Revenue funding should be used within a year (on salaries, heating, stationery and routine repairs etc).

Look at what proportion of funding in last year’s budget came from delegated funding, pupil premium, devolved formula capital funding and other sources. You need an idea of how school funding is affecting your budgeting, particularly as certain funds (eg pupil premium) are vulnerable to change.

Accountability is also crucial in budgeting. You must be able to demonstrate how state funds have helped student attainment. Any private funding you get, however – such as charitable donations, renting out the school hall etc – can be kept in a separate account although it’s still good to be transparent with this.

Now you know where your funding is coming from, create a budgeting calendar and plan ahead for all scenarios. In most cases, you’ll have to set a budget from April-March in line with your local authority’s (LA) financial year, rather than based on the academic year. Don’t be thrown by this, but be prepared to change in September as pupil and staff numbers change. What would you do if next year the school’s roll rose or fell by 10%?

It’s good practice to monitor and review your budget monthly. Put dates in your diary for when to file budget reports to different bodies (eg the governors, the LA, Ofsted and the Department for Education (DfE)) as formats and dates will vary.

An example of how to draw up a budget reporting spreadsheet to show month-by-month spending is below. For each item budgeted, you’ll want to show projected and actual expenditure to date, and to make rogue figures easier to spot it helps to show these as percentages too.

Teacher finance tips charts Google Sheets — While you don’t want to end up in the red and it’s good to plan contingency funding. Photograph: Rachel Banning-Lover/Guardian

Between January and March, you’ll want to start forecasting next year’s budget, while reviewing the current budget to identify areas where money could be moved to other resources in future.

The end goal? That proposed expenditure does not exceed proposed income. While you don’t want to end up in the red and it’s good to plan contingency funding, avoid having large surpluses at the end of the year as the LA can claw these back. Academies are allowed to retain unspent funds as operational reserves.

3 Get value for money when procuring resources

In the age of austerity, getting the best value for money (VfM) has never been so important. The DfE’s benchmarking system is a useful resource for school budgeters as you can see how much neighbouring schools spend on resources such as classroom assistants, catering, building maintenance and so on. It doesn’t show you why differences occur, however, so it’s important to read between the lines.

You can also benchmark costs on a smaller scale. Try carrying out your own comparisons on a pack of exercise books – what’s the cheapest you can get these on the internet, the high street, from a school supplies catalogue, or elsewhere?

You could also join other schools to have greater purchasing power, or see if there’s a local public sector buying organisation you can connect with.

Buying in bulk might sound like a good idea but calculate risk versus value; annual contracts mean you’re stuck with one price, whereas day-to-day purchasing allows you to shop around regularly. Leasing equipment is another option, but has risks.

It can be useful to identify whether past purchases provided VfM to guide future spending. Ask your colleagues about the best and worst things your school has purchased in the last few years and why. Was the extra classroom assistant a better investment than the interactive whiteboard?

For a more formal way of assessing VfM, consider economy, efficiency and effectiveness. Were you able to get the best quality for the lowest cost? Where you did spend more money, did you have improved results? The whole point of VfM is to free up money for other resources in your school improvement plan.

4 Be confident demonstrating VfM

Now you’ve got to break down the school budget for the governors. Come with easy-to-understand, clear budget reporting sheets and be prepared to explain any holes with recommendations for avoiding them in future. For example, if you overspent on building maintenance this year, you could suggest implementing more regular building checks to spot problem areas or negotiating better terms with your insurers and maintenance providers.

It’s also important to highlight the areas where you got the best VfM. Tell them how you spent less money than a neighbouring school on catering as you phoned up colleagues at another school, and agreed to partner with them and a third school for greater purchasing power.

Next, make a business case for the areas where you think the school should direct the money it has saved. Show how increasing the number of teaching assistants for year 9 has boosted results, so it would make sense to spend more money on them for year 7 to help students progress earlier and save money further up the school.

Perhaps you’re not the one who has to account for the school’s expenditures to the governors, but you’re the head of the English department, and want to ask for more funding for GCSE students. The same principles apply. Show the SLT how increasing/decreasing your budget has affected your students’ results in the last few years. Also, look to other schools – what changes did that neighbouring school, who turned their A*–C pass rate around from 58% to 82% in two years, make? Make the business case for your proposed changes (and bonus points if you can identify where the money will come from so the school’s business manager doesn’t have to).

5 Help other teachers understand financial accountability

Finally, it’s easy for most teachers to think they don’t need to worry about the school’s finances unless they’re in senior leadership, but sooner or later they’ll be coming to you for the petty cash.

The best way to explain the importance of financial accountability to your colleagues is by using real life scenarios. Get your colleagues together at the start of the year for a short Q&A session on the school finances. This will make you look approachable and the school finances transparent; it will also give you a chance to gauge their financial knowledge. Ask them what trips they want to plan this year and walk them through the steps they must take:

Have they costed the trip properly?
Included hidden costs and a small contingency fund?
How much will they need to charge parents?
Did they know they must bring back VAT receipts as these can be used to offset the school’s tax bill?

You could also ask teachers who’ve managed departmental, trip or event budgets to share their experiences and lessons learned. What did they find most challenging? Was there anything they would have liked more information on that you can now provide?