Today the DfE have released their much vaunted teacher recruitment and retention strategy. The document covers four main areas for improvement and was compiled in consultation with some key partners including ASCL, the EEF, the CCoT, Ofsted, and the NAHT. I have to say it is welcome to see this kind of discussion happening, though I do think some quite partisan lines remain in the strategy.


Last January I published some key steps I thought the DfE might take to improve teacher recruitment and retention. Today I want to go back to these suggestions and consider them in light of the DfE's new strategy. First a quick reminder:

1. Reduce confusion around training routes
2. Ensure strong subject (or phase) specific training is in place
3. Fund and support ITE and NQT mentors
4. Reduce workload
5. Improve pay and pensions
6. Rethink bursaries
7. Improve professional freedoms
8. Leave supply models alone

 
A marked improvement?
Let’s start with the positives. It is certainly evident that the DfE has gone well beyond the measures we have seen in the last few years when considering their recommendations. There are welcome

Last week I published a number of blogs exploring the proposed Ofsted Framework for 2019, as well as some of the individual elements of that framework. Today I want to explore the proposals from the point of view of an ITE provider, rather than that of a school.
 
As you may have noted, I was reasonably upbeat about the revisions and opportunities for schools in the new framework. Although I am aware that there may be a lot of work for people to do to feel confident in meeting the criteria of the “Quality of Education” element. When it comes to ITE however, I am less encouraged. I have written about some of the struggles in ITE in the past (HERE and HERE). I know that Ofsted was never going to do much to reverse the tide of generic teacher training. However, there was one major area where I hoped a new framework might be of some use: improving the status of mentoring. 

You might have missed it in the flurry of dismay/excitement (delete as you see fit) around the government’s historic defeat on the Brexit plan yesterday, but today saw the publication of Ofsted’s new draft framework for school inspections. The cynical might argue this was a deliberate ploy, however a detailed read of the proposals does leave a lot of room to be optimistic.
 
Before I begin, I should also note that Leeds Trinity University will be launching a new network event called “Building a Powerful Curriculum” which aims to give curriculum leads input, time, and space to discuss the implications of potential framework changes for schools in Yorkshire. I have also created an in-depth analysis of the framework draft for anyone interested.
 
New Freedoms
In some ways the new inspection framework seems to have just two main goals: to place the focus of school provision firmly on the base of curriculum design and provision; and to reduce the role of Ofsted in mandating curricular and pedagogical approaches from the centre. 

Below is a brief summary of key similarities and differences between the proposed framework and the existing one. The rest of the post takes a more detailed look at some of the differences with potential implications for schools.

Over the next few days I will be publishing some in-depth analyses of some of the key differences, along with the potential implications for schools. Please note that I will be doing this within the bounds of my own expertise, which ranges upper Key Stage 2 to University. I appreciate that the framework may have very different implications for schools teaching Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and lower Key Stage 2.

• Analysis 1: Quality of Education
• Analysis 2: Behaviour & Personal Development
• Analysis 3: Leadership & Management

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I should also note that many of the changes are actually connected to issues of curriculum. Because curriculum is a core point of discussion amongst subject specialists already, the answers to many of the challenges of the new framework are already out there and accessible. The best thing senior leaders might do over the next few months is establish where their in-school, subject expertise already lies and draw on existing research and knowledge from subject associations, experts, and subject-led university education departments.

In my previous blog I discussed the potentially ahistorical nature of studies of the assassination of John F Kennedy. In today’s blog I am entering into more controversial territory and looking at some activity choices with relation to the teaching of the Holocaust.

The letter from Auschwitz
I have seen this type of lesson in all kinds of guises, but this is probably the version I have most issue with. The task itself if fairly straight forward: having learned about the Holocaust and concentration camps, students are asked to imagine they are in a concentration camp and to write about their experiences in some kind of letter or diary.

I completely understand where lessons like this come from. The letter/diary device is straightforward to students to access (they may even be familiar with Anne Frank’s diary), and on the surface it appears to give them a chance to really empathise with people in the past. In reality however, I fear it undermines this latter aim, and raises a host of other issues. For more on this, you may like to read Totten’s “Holocaust Education: Issues and Approaches”, especially chapter seven.
First, because of the placement of tasks such as these, they often end up being a stand-in for a factual recall, rather than a real...

Before Christmas, Ben Newmark posted a blog in which he outlined a range of things which he had found unsuccessful in teaching. This included things such as card sorts (#2), role play (#3), flipped learning (#17), group work (#20) and fifty others. At the time I replied to say that I felt some of the focus on methods was problematic, as things which don’t work in one place, may well in another.

However, I could not quite leave the idea alone. Since Ben published the post in October, I have had a range of discussions with colleagues where we considered whether we actually had our own red lines in terms of history teaching. It turns out that we do. The main difference I think is that they are mostly linked not so much to methods, but to whether or not core educational values, and nature of history as a discipline are being appropriately, and indeed rigorously, served (I went into this to some extent in my post HERE) . In the end we established five or six big problems we had come across in history lessons (not including broader issues of assessment). Of those we agreed pretty much unanimously on two, and partially on a third. I am to outline these in three separate blogs:

• The ahistorical question: who killed John F Kennedy? (below)
• Imagination based tasks: the "letter from Auschwitz"
• Empathy type roleplays: the “slave auction”

Now I am very keen not to make this too negative, so before I begin I’d like to highlight two key points: