Delivering High Value Training Through National Teaching

SchoolsPaul Haigh

Tweet me @paulhaigh

The landscape today• By now every school could (should?) be part of a teaching school

alliance

• There are 600 teaching schools with, if the new PM and SoS follow through on Nicky Morgan’s plan 300 more to come.

• Alliances of 30 schools could soon be alliances of 20

• Although worth bearing in mind when Hargreaves proposed the idea he said there would need to be 2000- alliances of 10

• My proposal is if the new Government sticks to the idea of all schools becoming academies and all academies being part of MATs there should be one teaching school inside each MAT

• For this to work MATs should be based on tight geographical areas and not be too large- what is the optimum size for a MAT?

So, what functions can a good teaching school provide to the system?

Hallam TSA, Sheffield

Hallam TSA

• Set up by me in 2011 by Notre Dame High School

• Now reaches around 250 schools across South Yorkshire (some deep some shallow)

• Has annual turn over in excess of £2 million

• Has a core team of 10 people at Notre Dame on leadership and administration

• Pays schools to release talented staff to deliver the alliance’s work

• Schools can all be ‘givers’ and ‘receivers’ of support

• No formal membership- loose alliance, no subscriptions, good strategic partnership with other local teaching schools

• Strong track record of impact on school results- not least at Notre Dame itself: has been externally evaluated by Nottingham University Prof Qing Gu et al

Early career training and support

Case study Hallam Teaching School Alliance, Sheffield: Training new entrants to the profession

• Works in partnership with University of Sheffield to give undergraduates work experience- using the paid internship scheme for maths and physics

• Operate the recently accredited Sheffield SCITT- the only way we felt we could design better ITT that produced more resilient NQTs and gave us the funding to do it properly was to open our own SCITT

• Operate as ‘Appropriate Body’ for the statutory induction of NQTs and provide a CPD service with a Master’s programme from Sheffield Hallam University that bridges over the ITT and NQT years

Serving teacher training and support

Case study Hallam Teaching School Alliance, Sheffield: Provide CPD to serving teachers

Examples include

• Generic T&L programmes such as good old OTP & ITP

• NPQs leadership programmes and targeted support on leadership of church schools, women into headship, talent spotting

• Have the contract for the South Yorkshire Maths Hub

• Have the contract for the South Yorkshire Science Learning Partnership

• Governor training commission with other local teaching schools

• Have a contract for NCTL ‘Teaching Schools Subject Training’ to enhance subject knowledge of serving non specialist maths and physics teachers

Educational research in partnership with HEIs

Case study Hallam Teaching School Alliance, Sheffield: Engage in educational research and development

• Have an R&D ethos to various activities such as Master’s element of SCITT course, R&D as CPD work of Maths Hub, action research element to T&L innovation that turns into new CPD

• Have a major fund from EEF/Wellcome Trust to do a landmark research into what neuroscience is telling us about better ways to teach- the Spaced Learning Research Project with external evaluation by Queen University, Belfast

• Hoping this project will turning in a national RCT with peer assessed academically published findings

All sounds good but there isn’t a teaching school near me that is offering me thatThe problem of growth by association not design• Uneven distribution of teaching schools, too few special and primary, too heavy

reliance on an outstanding ofsted grade without taking account of success in the context of the schools who need help locally

• Too many teaching school alliances are cliques, or appear to be from the outside-one is named after the restaurant the heads had dinner in when the made the agreement!

• This is to be expected: I will advise you later to make friends and collaborate so don’t be surprised if others are doing this for themselves

• Have you approached one? Have you contributed your capacity to an alliance-not what can my teaching school do for me but what can I do for my alliance?

• Have you bid to set one up if it’s not there (hints in white paper of moving on the restrictions for who can apply)

And how should teaching school and a MAT work?• Like hand in glove; inside every MAT is a teaching school that fits in there perfectly (even

when the term ‘teaching school’ is forgotten)

• MAT identifies the strategic needs of a group of schools and commissions the teaching school to address it from teacher supply upwards

• Teaching school uses the capacity and expertise of the alliance (schools inside and outside the MAT) to deliver the support

• If alliance bonds become, through choice, new MAT membership that’s a good thing-deeper and more formal strategic partnership in a world where all schools need to be in a MAT

• e.g. A very strong head of science department takes oversight of 2 struggling science departments across the MAT and is back filled by a young promising future leader which creates a succession planning feedback bonus

• e.g. A group of schools recruit their own NQTs from their own ITT programme and exports those they don’t have vacancies for to the job market- the programme enables the NQTs to hit the ground running in September in the context of those schools

What might the future look like? It’s here already in some places:• New career paths with serving outstanding teachers spending part of the

weeks teaching children and part of their week:• Training new teachers• Doing educational research as a visiting academic at a local HEI• Delivering school to school support• Working up new education policy

• MATs meeting their developmental needs by identifying and managing talent from ITT up and giving managed career paths taking posting across the MAT to build experience towards fast track Headship in late 20s and early 30s

• BUT please not: advertising vacancies at the ‘outstanding’ sponsor school then deploying a young teacher to the ‘failing’ sponsored school- they feel tricked and just leave- be transparent about a fast track career that suits their needs not your staffing headaches

Issues in today’s landscape and the future

• There are already plenty of MATs that contain teaching schools

• Those teaching school provide services like NQT programmes and leadership talent spotting to feed the MAT’s needs

• But to be viable they also reach beyond their own MAT schools to recruit onto their programmes, perhaps taking on a regional specialism like Maths Hub

• This doesn’t always work- some schools will refuse to join in as they feel they are at risk of being drawn into the MAT and school identity and job security of the Head (and others) will be at risk (unlikely to be the case as MATs don’t grow like that) or have their best staff poached

• In the future if all schools are in MATs there might be a healthier atmosphere of collaboration between them as the risk of being taken over will be gone…

• …or will it? MAT league tables and failing MATs having poor schools taken off them which mean the same tension of competition Vs collaboration will, if anything, intensify- especially with the divisive issue of Grammar schools around

Competition Vs collaboration• This is the problem that I feel is holding the education system back

• We should be collaborating but we are set up in competition with each other so collaboration seems like a risk because making others good makes us look relatively worse

• You might say its an intractable problem because it is designed into the system of accountability which is a policy issue beyond our control

• But at the end of the day collaboration between schools comes down to the personal relationships between Headteachers and a moral obligation to be a teacher for the common good of as many children as possible

• We need to get over our egos, make friends with the only other people in our city who do the same jobs as us; support each other, celebrate collective success together and pick up colleagues who stumble just as we’d like to be picked up if we stumbled

• So find your local teaching school alliance and make it work for you all or if it’s not there get onto the NCTL and tell them you are planning to set one up

Bartali and Coppi-rivals who shared bottles of water (or wine!)- why?

Paul Haigh

Currently Director of Hallam Teaching School Alliance, Notre Dame High School, Sheffield

and

Headteacher Designate, King Ecgbert School, Sheffield

Twitter @paulhaigh