The impact on a primary school community in England of failed inspection and subsequent academisation

This research reports upon the impact of two concurrent processes of Special Measures and academisation applied to a primary school in the north of England as a result of an unsatisfactory inspection by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). The aim of the study is to describe how the process of being placed in special measures, coupled with subsequent academisation, affected key ‘school facing’ stakeholders. Data collection commenced from when the school received the judgement about its performance from Ofsted. This paper will examine the emerging themes during the first phase of the process of school transformation.     

Re‐engineering the Horizontally Challenged Pastoral System

The writers, as Section Manager and head of an inner‐city school under Special Measures, describe the school’s approach to the re‐engineering of its pastoral system from a horizontal, year‐based system, to a semi‐vertical ‘family’ system. The article explores the reasons for the change, the planning process and the outcomes and suggests ways of implementing successful change over a short time‐frame.     

Inspection and emotion

In this paper I explore the emotional impact of inspection on the staff of a school in the two years between Ofsted1 1. Office for Standards in Education, the school inspection service in England. View all notes inspections. Using data from one school undergoing inspection, I argue that the negative emotional impact of inspection of teachers goes beyond the oft‐reported issues of stress and overwork. Teachers experience a loss of power and control, and the sense of being permanently under a disciplinary regime can lead to fear, anger and disaffection. This perhaps calls into question the whole issue of seeking school improvement by way of a system which creates such a negative emotional impact.     

Supporting a School in Special Measures: Implications for the potential contribution of educational psychology

This article describes the experiences of an Educational Psychologist (EP) attached to a school placed in Special Measures following its OFSTED Inspection in October 1997. Requests for increased EP time were met with a specific piece of project work looking at the ethos of the school and relationships within it. The article draws out the strengths that EPs can bring to working with schools in Special Measures. These include a psychological knowledge base, skills in systems analysis and project evaluation, the delivery of training and working within a multi-agency setting. The article suggests that this is an important area of work to which EPs can make a contribution.     

After Higgins and Dunne: Imagining School Teaching as a Multi‐Practice Activity

There remains a concern in philosophy of education circles to assert that teaching is a social practice. Its initiation occurs in a conversation between Alasdair MacIntyre and Joe Dunne which inspired a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education. This has been recently utilised in a further Special Issue by Chris Higgins. In this article I consider two points of conflict between MacIntyre and Dunne and seek to resolve both with a more nuanced understanding of the implications of applying the concept ‘social practice’ to teaching. I critique both Dunne's and Higgins' focus on schools and school teaching. It is their focus on school teaching, rather than a broader account of teaching, that leads them astray. The result is that Dunne and Higgins have not shown that teaching is a social practice. School teaching is not a complex activity, but a complex set of different activities co‐located in one place and engaged in by the same agents. In a final section I offer an account of ‘school teaching’ as a multi‐practice activity which is consistent with MacIntyre's approach, and argue that schoolteachers have both an institutional and an educative role.     

Re‐engineering the Horizontally Challenged Pastoral System

The writers, as Section Manager and head of an inner‐city school under Special Measures, describe the school's approach to the re‐engineering of its pastoral system from a horizontal, year‐based system, to a semi‐vertical 'family' system. The article explores the reasons for the change, the planning process and the outcomes and suggests ways of implementing successful change over a short time‐frame.     

Do OFSTED Inspections of Secondary Schools Make a Difference to GCSE Results?

The Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) aims to improve school performance through inspection. A government indicator of a secondary school's performance in England and Wales is the students' success in examinations. The examination results of over 3000 OFSTED inspected secondary schools offering students for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination during the 1992 to 1997 inspection cycle were modelled statistically. For kinds of schools where achievement was already much higher or lower than the average (e.g. selective schools), inspection was associated with slight improvements in achievement. For county, local education authority maintained, comprehensive schools (the largest single group), inspection did not improve examination achievement. Some implications for school improvement are discussed.     

The return of the native: the blurred boundaries of insider/outsider research in an English secondary school

This paper outlines the methodological issues I faced during my research as a ‘returning native’ in an English secondary school. The empirical research took the form of a three‐year case study and used some ethnographic methods, as it comprised interviews carried out over a period of three academic years in the school in which I was once employed as a teacher. I was also given the opportunity to work in the school as a consultant in the lead‐up to and during its Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (OfSTED) inspection. This enabled me to conduct interviews, observe, interact in informal conversations and participate in the inspection week. In this paper I explore the unique role of the insider‐researcher, or returning native. Not only was this a school in which I had previously worked, but actually participating in the inspection added new layers of complex loyalty.     

Caregiving Practices of Low-Income Adolescent Mothers and the Academic Competence of Their First-Grade Children

Objective. This study examines the relation between the caregiving practices of teenage mothers and the academic performances of their children in first grade. Design. The teenage mothers were involved in a family support program, and data were collected on the sample for 7 years (the prenatal period through first grade). The sample included 89 children who participated in the first-grade follow-up and who resided with their biological mothers. Children's school performance was assessed with an achievement test in the fall semester of first grade and with teachers' ratings of academic performance at the end of the spring semester. Caregiving practices were assessed by both the research team and the family advocates who worked with the young mothers during the 5-year family support program; mothers also reported on home support for academic achievement during the first-grade interview. Results. Measures of home environment, advocates' ratings of parenting, and mothers' self-report of support for achievement were positively correlated with children's achievement in first grade. Conclusions. Results from multiple regression analyses were consistent with the view that differences in parenting prior to school entry and in maternal support for achievement once the child enters school are predictive of individual differences in first-grade achievement among children born to low-income adolescent mothers.     

Single-sex Classes and Equal Opportunities for Girls and Boys: Perspectives through time from a mixed comprehensive school in England

The recent concern with the apparent 'under-achievement' of boys in England's comprehensive schools has led schools to review the potential of single-sex classes as a means of improving performance. This paper reviews the arguments for such a strategy, in the context of one school where such an approach has underpinned the organisation of the school through the last three decades. We examine the rationale behind the original decision to implement single-sex teaching, consider the evolution of the curriculum through time, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this mode of organisation from the varying perspectives of parents, students and teachers. We consider whether the strategy has contributed to an improvement in the achievement levels of girls, and discuss the extent to which single-sex teaching has the potential to have a positive impact in raising boys' performance. In reviewing the evidence, we conclude that the single-sex mode of teaching in the school is effective in contributing to high achievement levels, in many contexts providing a conducive and supportive environment for students' learning. We suggest that such groupings may offer more advantages for girls than for boys; we argue that the potential of the system will only be fully realised when it is explicitly recognised that girls and boys do respond differently, in certain contexts, to different teaching-learning styles.     

Having Friends, Keeping Friends, Making Friends, and Being Liked by Peers in the Classroom: Predictors of Children''s Early School Adjustment?

The potential role that children's classroom peer relations play in their school adjustment was investigated during the first 2 months of kindergarten and the remainder of the school year. Measures of 125 children's classroom peer relationships were obtained on 3 occasions: at school entrance, after 2 months of school, and at the end of the school year. Measures of school adjustment, including children's school perceptions, anxiety, avoidance, and performance, were obtained during the second and third assessment occasions. After controlling mental age, sex, and preschool experience, measures of children's classroom peer relationships were used to forecast later school adjustment. Results indicated that children with a larger number of classroom friends during school entrance developed more favorable school perceptions by the second month, and those who maintained these relationships liked school better as the year progressed. Making new friends in the classroom was associated with gains in school performance, and early peer rejection forecasted less favorable school perceptions, higher levels of school avoidance, and lower performance levels over the school year.     

Challenging the Cinematic Construction of 'Literacy' with Preservice Teachers

As a practicum supervisor in the teacher education program at UW-Madison, I designed many projects and activities around "school films". I define a "school film" as a film that in some way, even incidentally, is about an educator or a student. Some well-known school films are Dead Poets Society , Stand and Deliver , and To Sir, With Love . Some lesser-known ones are Waterland, Welcome to the Doll House, Small Change, and Maedchen in Uniform . In this article, I discuss a project that involved taking up the film Teachers (1984) for the purpose of problematizing practicum students' traditional, "autonomous" views of literacy. The project's goal was to introduce students to a "Discourses" orientation toward literacy through a combination of "reading" both print and film texts, writing reactions to these texts, and discussing these reactions and the texts during seminars.     

Environmental Education in Mexican Schools: The Primary Level

Abstract

Schools–which play an important role in the formation of young children's positive attitudes toward the environment–can improve their environmental performance by working with all members of the school community. In this article, I discuss schools' relevance in developing environmental awareness in young children. This article also explains that the primary-level national curriculum and the Mexican educational system are working toward an environmental policy. A brief introduction describes some of the most significant educational changes in recent Mexican history, emphasizing the role of textbooks.     

The Chingford Hall School Screening Project: Can we have some more educational psychologist time please?

This paper describes the development of a tailor-made Special Educational Needs screening device developed between an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) and a large primary school. Soft systems methodology was used to structure and evaluate the work. The project began when school staff requested a significant increase in Educational Psychologist time to undertake 40 additional child assessments. What was required was a way of prioritising the school's concerns in line with local Special Educational Needs audit procedures. Working in partnership, the EPS and school devised a screening checklist. Of note is the unique scoring key, which factored in the school's level of concern and values about children's needs. As a consequence, some items were emphasised more than others were. An evaluation study by Kelly revealed that school staff found the screening checklist to be generally useful, not only in prioritising children for assessment, but also in assisting the construction of individual education plans.     

The genesis of school inspection in South East Wales 1839–1843: issues of social control and accountability

The article examines the genesis of school inspection in South East Wales during the period 1839–1843 through the writing of Hugh Seymour Tremenheere, one of the first school inspectors. It discusses the formation of the new inspectorate and provides a narrative analysis of educational provision and social, cultural and economic conditions prevailing at the time. It then critically assesses Tremenheere's 1839 Report paying particular attention to the question of bias and the evident lack of impartiality. The final section is concerned with the concepts of accountability and inspection as a means of social control and the extent to which education can control working class patterns of thought, sentiment and behaviour.     

Something More than Straws and Sticks and Bits of Coloured Paper: English at Hackney Downs (formerly The Grocers' Company's School), 1876–1881

Herbert Courthope Bowen was a progressive spirit in English teaching during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Ideas about the role of activity in the development of the child – ideas usually associated with progressive teaching in the 1960s and 1970s – may be found in Bowen's published papers. In connection with the time that Bowen was Head Master of a London secondary school, I explain what turned on the amount of Latin in the school curriculum, why Latin mattered so much at the time and why English teaching at Grocers' (Hackney Downs) where Bowen taught, was so controversial. Bowen published a series of remarkable papers on key themes. At the core of all these writings lies his passionate interest in the psychological development of the individual child. From Froebel Bowen gained a rich conception of the productivity of mind as well as a sense of children's individual worth and dignity. I argue the case that his writings deserve revisiting as pivotal contributions to a theory of English that has a strong psychological component. Bowen acted as a conduit for a rich legacy of largely German ideas about self‐cultivation (Bildung). His emphasis on ‘self‐activity’, ‘creativity’ and the ‘constructive imagination’ prefigures the working out of principles usually associated with progressive English Teaching in the post‐war period, such as ‘personal growth’. Indeed, many of the presuppositions, norms and assumptions of progressive educators were shaped by the ideas I discuss. By historicising them, and stripping them of their aura, I envisage opening up fresh possibilities for interrogation and critique.     

Comparing effects and side effects of different school inspection systems across Europe

In this article, different inspection models are compared in terms of their impact on school improvement and the mechanisms each of these models generates to have such an impact. Our theoretical framework was drawn from the programme theories of six countries’ school inspection systems (i.e. the Netherlands, England, Sweden, Ireland, the province of Styria in Austria and the Czech Republic). We describe how inspection models differ in the scheduling and frequency of visits (using a differentiated or cyclical approach), the evaluation of process and/or output standards, and the consequences of visits, and how these models lead to school improvement through the setting of expectations, the use of performance feedback and actions of the school's stakeholders. These assumptions were tested by means of a survey of principals in primary and secondary schools in these countries (n?=?2239). The data analysis followed a three-step approach: (1) confirmatory factor analyses, (2) path modelling and (3) fitting of multiple-indicator multiple-cause models. The results indicate that Inspectorates of Education that use a differentiated model (in addition to regular visits), in which they evaluate both educational practices and outcomes of schools and publicly report inspection findings of individual schools, are the most effective. These changes seem to be mediated by improvements in the schools’ self-evaluations and the schools' stakeholders’ awareness of the findings in the public inspection reports. However, differentiated inspections also lead to unintended consequences as principals report on narrowing the curriculum and on discouraging teachers from experimenting with new teaching methods.     

Fishing in Puddles: Place and Space in Performance Research

This article examines the significance of place and space from a Performance Studies and Social Studies perspective. In terms of the social sciences, I draw upon the formal, symbolic and marginal articulation of place. Hetherington suggests that certain places act as focal point for the establishment of social identities, citing city‐centre landmarks and shopping malls. Similarly, children attach all kinds of values to the formal spaces they occupy. As one example of this point, I examine the child's relationship to the school hall. From the perspective of performance, I examine a project under taken at a junior school in Stoke‐on‐Trent, inspired by the site work of Wrights & Sites. As a critical lens, I adopt Boal's understanding of the oneiric dimension. The oneiric dimension is particularly relevant in performance work as these are the moments when we (as performers and spectators) are pulled into the action. In these instances, the physical space simply disappears, imagination replaces actuality and the desire to believe outweighs the reality of the present.     

英国学校督导体系变革的特点及其启示

用历史的眼光审视20世纪90年代以来英国督导制度的演变过程,剖析英国督导框架历次修订中所进行的制度改进,可以发现英国督导体系变革呈现出如下主要新特点:强化督导的发展性功能,注重学校改进;把儿童青少年放在第一位,强调全体学生的全面发展;注重学校自我评估,将其作为反映学校管理水平的重要指标;提高督导效率,减轻学校负担。这些新的特点对于我国正在进行的学校督导评估改革具有积极的借鉴意义。