Category: Schools

The OfSTED inspection: how to be in your very own Truman Show

The Truman Show is a film is set in a hypothetical town called Seahaven built in an enormous dome, and is dedicated to a continually running television show, The Truman Show. Only the central character, Truman Burbank, is unaware that he lives in an almost solipsistic constructed reality for the entertainment of those outside. The film follows his discovery of his situation and his attempts to escape. Central characters fake friendship to Truman, and in the case of his “wife”, bury their real feelings of disgust.

The OfSTED inspection is an example of a solipsistic epistemological position in that one’s own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world – schools — , the source of one’s perceptions — can not be conclusively known; they may not even exist at all. Truman himself can be viewed as an equivalent fictional school ofsted inspector who when visiting schools, tends to witness flowers decorating school corridors and toilet paper in the school toilets.

Inspection day can be presented as a lovely sunny day with bright blue skies; there’s not a care in the world, the children are well behaved and courteous, teachers well dressed and courteous, and its like this every day with pupils dutifully drinking water to enhance their learning and no-one objects to the Jamie Oliver inspired New School Dinner which has caused much wringing of hands and emptying of budgets.

But as in the Truman Show, the inspector is surrounded by central characters in the school who have to fake friendship and find methods to bury their real feelings of disgust in order to maintain the solipsistic constructed reality of the Government Inspector.

Are confidence and self esteem over-rated attributes?

The two great buzz words of human development orthodoxies – confidence and self esteem – pepper pretty much any justification for any kind of activity which has the purpose of improving humans at the heart of it.

Schools, life long learning programmes, job interviews, excuses to go to the bar can all be justified if the beneficiary’s confidence and self esteem takes a boost in the process. But is this really a useful indicator of human development? Some might say that unless the child has confidence in themselves, then no-one else will; that if we are not confident in our products and services, then no customers will be either.

This is a seductive argument but ignores the myriad of examples of artists, teachers, engineers and other human beings who are huge achievers but who spend their life time, fraught in crisis of confidence and with their self esteem at a permanent rock bottom low.  Perhaps their achievement is connected to their lack of confidence? Perhaps it’s their driving force towards achievement or a wider contribution to society as a whole?

Either way, whenever ‘confidence and self esteem’ as examples of how well a development programme is operating, we really should look harder at what that entails and what its consequences might be.

There won’t be any shouting in the new school!

So said one principal of a new centre for learning recently. Unfortunately, some new schools, new centres for learning even, seem to ignore some uncomfortable realities about what it is to be a young person, teacher or indeed even human being.

Whatever the rhetoric of dialogue and conversation, there will be staff meetings where announcements are made followed by the brusque shouting out of names, machine gun rat-a-tat of information and further name shouting.

Whatever the architectural demands, there will still be a desire of young women and young men to occupy different spaces when it comes to their ablutions, picking off of acne scabs and throwing of ciggies down the latrines.

Whatever the politics of corridor decoration, posters will become magnets for other posters and there will always a school wag who has to make their mark on the pristine wall hanging.

Whatever the urge for academic rigour and attainment, the fibs will continue to flow cheerfully. The only school ever to have received this national award? The best performance of Grease I’ve ever seen in any school? Mr. Jones was one of the best appointments I ever made? Thank goodness we’re all one big happy community!

Sometimes, we have to give thanks to the portacabins, the empty fields and unassuming concrete of the sixties. They’ve seen many rhetorical times live and fade away and have at least left fond memories of those who once prowled the school perimeters, eating crisps and tearing their school blazers on the boundary barbed wire.

8 pieces of advice to teachers: how to get the best out of artists

There’s plenty of advice around to artists about how to engage with schools, comply with their cultures and generally cope with the myriad of policies, initiatives and behaviours which swarm through school classrooms. But where’s the advice to schools which will help them get the best out of their visiting artists? This is a start and it looks initially at the employment process. Employing artists in schools is frequently couched in terms of preparing the workforce of the 21st century (ie children).  It’s a pity then that its the employment practices of the 19th century which are used to bring about this transformation. In order to bring schools’ employment practices into the 21st century, please try and take note of the following.

1. Provide a focused project specification in advance to the interview with the artist which is realistic and doesn’t expect aforesaid artist to deal with all your school’s long term intractable cultural problems. Don’t try and attempt to raise your SATS levels in the core curriculum on the basis of 2 hours a week.

2. When artists apply for a role in your school, however short-term, do the decent thing and reply to their application and give them an idea of when they are likely to hear the results of their application. A short email is all it takes.

3.After the interview, give some constructive feedback as to why the artist was unsuccessful. Yes, this can be difficult if you can’t articulate the reason why you haven’t employed them – but there must have been some reason, however tenuous. Also, please try and do that before the end of the month. Leaving it upto 6 months is neither use nor ornament to anyone.

4. If you have a preferred supplier, don’t waste everybody else’s time in establishing long, fake procedures which you know you won’t honour.

5. Once you do employ someone, please be aware that this is likely to be part of their freelance portfolio and that their daily fee cannot be translated into the equivalent of an annual salary. They do not get paid holiday pay, do not get paid a pension and cannot claim sickness benefit. What might look like a large fee to you has, more than likely to last a few days – and the planning and evaluation time that will also be necessary to work with your school.

6. Please try and stick to the timetable you have agreed with your artist. There is nothing more frustrating than agreeing a ten weekly project only to be informed in week seven that the class has a sponsored bouncy castle event to attend that week, so putting paid to your carefully co-constructed schedule. If your school has to fit too many activities into a limited timetable, there is something wrong with your timetable, not the artist.

7. Please try and engage with the sessions the artist is running. This means not sitting back doing your marking; not using it as an excuse to leave the room; and not being passive-agressive when asked to join in.

8. If you would like the project to include a training component for your permanent staff, warn the artist, allocate extra time or specific sessions for such training, and pay accordingly! Simply allowing teachers to sporadically sit in on/“observe” and interrupt the children’s workshop time, without allowing the artist to plan for and integrate their presence, is counterproductive for all concerned.  (Thanks to rhshelley for this fab addition!)

There will no doubt be lots more advice to follow from other colleagues; they’ll be added as and when.

Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning

Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning shows teachers of key stages 2 and 3 how to introduce creativity into what is often seen as a prescriptive and stifling curriculum, and addresses the tensions that can exist between the requirement to follow the curriculum and the desire to employ innovative pedagogies. It offers readers a range of practical and realistic ways that curriculum changing ideas can be applied to individual projects, classrooms and even entire schools.

This book tracks the imaginative initiatives undertaken by six schools as they have worked to change their curriculum and teaching in order to put student experiences at the core of the learning process. Stating its observations and suggestions in a refreshingly straightforward and practicable manner, this book explores:

  • Why a new creative curriculum is needed for the 21st century
  • How to encourage teachers and pupils to ‘own’ the curriculum
  • The role that pupil voice plays in a creative curriculum
  • The environment needed to creatively manipulate the curriculum
  • How to introduce innovation to teaching practice
  • What actually works – considering the limits and possibilities of creative pedagogy

Providing case studies and examples of the ways in which teachers have delivered the curriculum in a creative way, Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning is an invaluably beneficial guide for all those involved in engaging and teaching young people in key stages 2 and 3.

5 steps to getting your research paper published – in a London theatre

Closing Schools for the Future is being published / performed at a top London venue this week, the Riverside Studios, as part of the Tete a Tete Opera Fstival. But how did it get there and what does this process tell us about the connection between research and performance?

1. Start at a micro-local level. The first manifestation of CSF was in Seacombe Library, a small local library in Wallasey. It was presented in the form of a photographic exhibition to families, teachers and local residents.

2. Pitch to a discipline specific conference – in this case, the Oxford Ethnography conference which does exactly what it says on the tin. Talk, share and argue for ethnography. This supplied a friendly ‘on-board’ audience who were not averse to offering some important critical feedback.

3. Pitch to an international audience overseas who start off not having a clue what you’re talking about. The intelligent but ignorant audience really helps you to interrogate your own hard earned findings (in this case at the 1st Educational Research conference at the University of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia). At this point the paper had been extended to take into account not just local, but regional and national perspectives too.

4. Take the leap and present to an international audience, at home: but in the format you’ve been aiming at all along – ie a performed reading with sympathetic, intelligent and friendly-critical artists. In this case, at the BERA conference at the University of Warwick with composer Gary Carpenter and vocalist, Jen Heyes.

5. Put it out there with the support and advocacy of aforesaid artists. Get invited to leading innovative opera festival, in this case the Tete a Tete Opera Festival at Riverside Studios.

The next steps…? Wait and see but this story isn’t finished yet.
What else have we learnt about this process? More to follow, tomorrow.

The death of Powerpoint?

Closing Schools for the Future is an operatic performance which is unique because it draws its subject material not from Greek tragedy, ancient European myths or Italian romances – but from research into the day to day lives of ordinary people who are facing a critical event in their local community; that of the closure of their local primary school.  Our research project has taken two years to look at the effects of school closure in schools across England and has focused particularly on schools in Wirral and Knowsley.

Many people have asked why school closure is a suitable subject for an opera, and whether opera is a suitable means of communicating research: and our answer is a qualified yes to both questions.  School closure is a huge issue these days.  Whilst there have been many initiatives to provide new schools (the government scheme Building Schools for the Future is one recent example), what gets lost in these initiatives are the hidden consequences to peoples communities, peoples jobs and the very fabric of their society.  This generates many poignant stories, larger than life characters and real life drama which often does not find an audience either in the media, in the arts or in education.

Even when research about those events are communicated within educational circles, the way those stories are communicated are often arid texts, written and communicated in academic terms and the results frequently ignored.  This leads to a real disconnect between those whose stories were being communciated and the audiences who are listening to those stories.  However, using music and drama to tell those stories – through the discipline of Arts Based Educational Research – communicates that research more effectively, with more emotional vibrancy and it has the chance for a greater impact – and for the lessons learnt in the research to be acted upon.

Closing Schools for the Future has already been presented in 3 educational conferences in Oxford, Ethiopia and Warwick.  At its last presentation, the audience left asking, Is this the Death of Powerpoint?  And whilst this might be an over ambitious outcome for the project, we certainly hope that by using opera as the means to communicate research findings, that these performance provide new opportunities for the results of our research into school closure to be acted upon.

Production team credits

Nick Owen, Director of the Aspire Trust, is a producer, director and artist educator who has worked across the UK and internationally. Recent publications include Placing Students at the Heart of Creative Learning (Routledge) and Outsider | Insiders: becoming a creative partner with schools (International Handbook of Creative Learning) and the film, My Life as an American (Latent Productions).

Gary Carpenter, Composer, has written operas, musicals and a radio music-drama (with Iris Murdoch) as well as film, dance and concert music. He was Musical Director on ‘The Wicker Man’ (1973) and won a British Composer Award in 2006. His portrait CD Die Flimmerkiste is released on NMC. Gary teaches at the Royal Academy of Music and the RNCM (Manchester).

Jen Heyes, Vocalist, is a director, producer, performer, educator and artistic director of the Liverpool based company Cut to the Chase Productions. As a theatre maker Jen has worked regionally and nationally (touring and individual works) and internationally (Berlin, Porto, Lisbon, Luxembourg, and Hong Kong) working on small, medium and large scale productions. She specialises in multi-media site specific theatre and always strives to use live music within her work.

Brian Hanlon, designer, is an Arts practitioner with specialist skills in design. He works in a range of settings from Youth Theatre to the West End. He recently worked on the Manchester Day Parade, for the second year with Walk the Plank. And with the Aspire Trust Scouse Wedding: The Opera.

Tiny Stories, Noisy Histories

Tiny stories is a  technique used within the practice of creative writing workshops. Nanofiction or microfiction are terms given to writing exercises in which the length of a story is arbitrarily determined to perhaps absurd lengths: Stern’s microfiction model for example states that micro-stories should be no more than 250 words. The World’s Shortest Stories (Moss, 1998) is more stringent: stories should contain no more than 55 words (excluding the title which must be no more than 7 words long) and each story must contain the following four elements: 1) a setting, 2) one or more characters, 3) conflict, and 4) resolution.   Snellings Clark (2008) refers directly to the term tiny stories and whilst offering another set of limits on length (100 words) also directs the writer not to use the same word twice (albeit making an exception for contractions).  She also offers a set of aesthetic criteria which describe how the tiny story might most effectively function:

Little stories that are larger on the inside than they appear on the outside.

Stories that leave an aftertaste, that linger.

Special nod to stories that include elements of the fantastic.

Little things with big effects: lost keys, a scrap of paper, a chink in the armour, a missing screw.

The inexplicable in the definable, the fantasy in the reality, the uncommon in the everyday, that something under the surface.

The secret little things….

The results of  the Closing Schools for the Future project are written as a series of tiny stories which conform to the Snellings Clark model: no more than 100 words in length, in commemoration of the age of the school at its closure.  78 tiny stories were written, each one representing a child who would have been on the school role had it been kept open in September 2008.

Whilst this constitutes a small ethnographic project where n=1 and where the characters, narrative, dialogue and critical actions appeared to inhabit a microworld with microscopic movements, cataclysmic change was felt widely, resonating out across the landscape in which the school is based in ways not fully understood or predicted.

The soundscape of the territory was a microcosm of silence. Resistance had been purposeless, directionless if not completely futile. Questions remained unanswered, under investigated, under challenged: the assumption of logic, incontestability was all pervasive.  In this world of tiny stories, teachers identities were sometimes subtly, sometimes seismically challenged: John, a class teacher of some 15 years in the school had decided he just wanted to continue to teach in any school, despite being offered extra pay for taking on enhanced management duties.  But he just wanted to teach; and unable to play the job interview game refers in an observed class to the on-looking new head in a throwaway aside as an old witch  which didn’t enamour him with her – so he failed to win the job in the new school and had to revisit his cv, his approach, his understanding of how he did what he did.  No longer a respected teacher for 15 years who had taught at the school classes across the range – he was now back in the market place with a label of as being a bit of a trouble maker.

These tiny stories were not part of the building schools for the future meganarrative of secondary schools; no bright new shining vision of educational pods for sophisticated young people who are able to opt for down loading content from their mobile phones over the attendance of a master class by an overperforrming uberteacher who would be performing ballet steps one minute an entertaining the visiting private sector funders the next.

These stories had no shine, no brighter picture of a future but were stories of a quiet, seeping desperation which was prevented from turning into a collective madness by the efforts of teachers and children who continue from day to day as if nothing was about to happen. This was not a indignant narrative about the alleged lack of consultation of the authorities, an ironic parable about administrative dysfunction or a moralistic tale of performative brutalism – although each of those narrative genres emerged in the fabric of this story of school closure as it unravelled in its last few months.  It’s  a collection of tiny stories of a tiny school told by tiny narrators.

Behind these tiny stories, more complex narrative compete for attention and recognition as sources of authoritative voice.  The  bigger narratives pull at the microscopic texture of school and community and family relations and the unravelling of that texture pulls on deep seated threads which pull elsewhere in our civil fabric: echoes and rumours of closure and melt down permeate the rest of the community.  The loss of a name is mirrored close by with the demolition of  a local church and the  slow seepage away of local sights, knowledge and identity:  the local Centenary Vic Working Men’s Club has to announce it’snot closing in a letter to the press, perhaps indicative of  a microscopic flaking away of community of which the school is part of.  These microscopic actions have macro effects which are unpredictable, chaotic, complex and still only partially understood.

Closing Schools for the Future is to be performed at  Tête à Tête Opera Festival, Riverside Studios, London, 4 – 5 August. 

The Blind Date Experience: Writers in Schools revisited

A  Blind Date pre-date encounter

Questioner       If you were a crisp flavour, which one would you be?

Contestant     Curry flavoured, because I like to be hot AND spicy!

Audience        Whooooooooo!
Subtext          Pick me and we’ll have sex.

Contestant 2    Beef flavour, because I like a man with some meat!
Audience         Whooooooooooooooo!
Subtext          Pick me and we’ll have sex.

Contestant 3      Obvious really, tomato sauce flavour because when you pick me I’ll be getting saucy with you!
Audience          WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Subtext            Pick me and we’ll go on holiday. And have sex.

A real world, lived experience of a writer visiting a school encounter

The protagonists: Carol, (writer), Jean(teacher), Jeff (head teacher)

What they said (1)

Carol      I think there’s much fertile ground in the class for more of the same, and hope that what we began together can be a first stage for others — including their lovely class teacher — to develop further. The time felt so short, but the nurture of the imagination wont be hurried. So, with the little time we did have I was delighted, often amused, and frequently moved by all that happened. The children clearly respect and like you Jean. I know you were modest enough to say it was because they were such a nice class — they are — but your cheerful, authoritative and sensitive approach must also set a standard for them to behave as well as they did. It was a pleasure working with you I’m still chuckling at the head stands and cartwheels and ‘sausage rolls’!

Jean      We all got on well and the children like Carol. Our aims were to develop writing skills of children and help children understand some of the different processes involved in producing a finished piece of writing. Also to have fun….We worked to a bigger scale than usual – 3 stories was a challenge…. A day of writing is hard going but we were all able to mix in different activities…. We worked together on a story…. We have finished and edited the work to produce books…. Writing in the past was an area where they lacked knowledge….We spent time discussing what they had done both with the writer and later in class….. Many increased confidence by achieving a finished book….We produced bound books.

Jeff   Our residencies to date have varied considerably, but all have added huge impact. Carol helped develop pupils extended fictional diary writing which had huge benefits of off-site research and writing – highly recommended for both adults and children. The atmosphere of writing in a local museum had considerable impact on the final piece.

What Happened Next: writers in schools conference, 6 months later

What they said (2)

Jeff      I have huge concerns about what I heard from Carol at this mornings conference. I am not sure if she was being deliberatly contentious, but felt too uncomfortable to challenge her comments or indeed present what I wanted to. I just hope that none of her bitterness filters back to my school community. If our work is all that wrong, I see no point in continuing with the project.

A Blind Date post-date encounter: on the sofa with Cilla

Questioner            I think I really love her and I hope we keep in touch.

Lucky Contestant    I thought he was a bit of a tosser really.