In his first speech as Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wishaw laid down the gauntlet to headteachers, setting a new and higher expectation and clearly establishing that no school should be judged better than the quality of the teaching found within it:
'We need clear and demanding criteria for a school to be judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. A good school should have at least good teaching, and an outstanding school should have outstanding teaching. Good and outstanding leadership of teaching and learning drives improvement and knows that the culture of the school and the progress of pupils depend on it.'
Sir Michael Wishaw
The question, then, is: how can schools improve the quality of teaching and learning so that it meets the new expectation that teaching is consistently good or outstanding?
'Unconscious competence'
This is a question that schools have been wrestling with ever since the introduction of regular inspections. In my role as a school improvement adviser and in particular my work with a cluster of schools in special measures, one of my key tasks was to work with school leaders to improve the quality of teaching and learning. What struck me was how little teachers knew about themselves as teachers. If asked about the effectiveness of lessons, they would frequently describe what happened – the activities. They might describe what they said if pressed, but most frequently they would talk about what went wrong, couched in terms of what pupils did or did not do.