When I first qualified as an English teacher in 2001, research carried out by the NUT warned that teaching was in danger of becoming an “unsustainable profession” with too few high-quality graduates being attracted into the job. Think-tanks warned that the shortage of teachers was a long-term problem, as opposed to a dip, and that it would only worsen. Alongside this, much has recently been made of education of England lagging behind our international cousins. The most recent PISA report has been used to argue that our test results are “at best stagnant, at worst declining” compared to places such as Poland and Shanghai.
But, back in 2001, there were more optimistic words from BBC journalist Matthew Horne, who said, “If teachers become more involved in the task of transforming schools, standards in the schools themselves are more likely to improve, while teaching will begin to be seen as a sustainable career with more opportunity for professional development … Most of the teachers surveyed felt they had no constructive part in new initiatives and yet were not opposed to change, but acknowledged its importance.” More recently, Chris Keates, leader of the NASUWT, has also given voice to the fact that high performing countries were those which promoted the professionalism of teachers.
We should all recognise the truth in the words from the PISA report in 2012 that “The quality of a school cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals. Countries that have improved their performance like Brazil, Japan and Poland, for example, have established policies to improve the quality of their teaching staff by (among other things) offering incentives for teachers to engage in in-service teacher-training programmes.”
And this is the raison d’etre of teaching schools, game-changers working together to give schools more control to reward, recognise and train their staff, in harmony with their vision and capacity.
The Magnificent 7: Collaboration
As the Astra Alliance (www.astra-alliance.com), we put the promotion of the professionalism and development of teachers at the heart of everything we do because we believe this has the biggest impact on pupil progress. This is done through the so-called “Big 6”: Continuing Professional Development (CPD), Research and Development, School to School Support, Succession Planning and Talent Management, Special Leaders of Education (SLEs) and Initial Teacher Training (ITT). However, to the Big 6 list, I would like to add a Magnificent 7th, which is often the key to our success: Collaboration.
It is clear that this is at the heart of the government’s current educational agenda; the number of maintained schools is declining as the number of academies and free schools grow. In her first major announcement after being reappointed as Education Secretary after the 2015 election, Nicky Morgan said, “Our big priority will be to speed up the process for tackling ‘coasting’ schools”, outlining a three-point plan to intervene in failing schools and the requirement for hundreds of “coasting” schools to be produce urgent improvement plans setting how they will change their methods to help pupils progress further and raise their standards. The mechanism for doing so will be to bring in new leadership and support from other excellent schools, including Teaching Schools.