Different strokes?

As Heath Monk’s piece in the Guardian yesterday, "The Mossbourne way is not the only way to be an 'outstanding' school" and the subsequent response on Twitter suggested, there seem to be some pieces missing from the collective education jigsaw.  It can’t be the case that there is only one way to achieving the best education for our children schools.

Putting aside context or 'theory x' vs 'theory y' or ‘command and control’ vs. ‘enabled models’ for the moment.  I think there is a more fundamental problem here as evinced in my daughter’s school’s motto,

“Excellence for all”

I think we ought to pause for a moment for that to sink in…

It is one of the those statements that at first glance appear to be very much what schools should be aiming for but then, like nails down a blackboard, should set your teeth on edge at the appalling sloppiness of the thinking.

In the bluntest terms; all cannot excel! Because if everyone is doing it, it is not ‘excellence’, it is ‘average’.  Now, there is nothing wrong with below average schools aiming to do tomorrow what those deemed to be ‘excellent’ do today, provided that it is applicable to the context of the school and children in question.  But it places an awful burden on those few deemed to be ‘excellent’ to continue to stride ahead and find the solutions for next year and the year after that.

 Better that schools set their sights on becoming their own sort of brilliant - educating radiant children, rather than trying to shoehorn themselves into someone else’s models. Doing this creates multiple future models from which we can all pick,  chose, amalgamate and improve upon.

Interviewing someone for a headship on the basis of a candidate “knowing what ‘outstanding’ looks like” is naive to the point of being almost funny, if it weren’t so tragic.

Brand and the suspension of disbelief

I have been thinking about brands and their impact on us.  I am an Apple fan.  My first ever computer was an Apple... well actually my first ever computer was a ZX Spectrum but you know what I mean.  Then, when I bought a laptop for work in the 90's I defected to Microsoft.  I stayed with Windows until the lunacy of waiting 5 minutes for your computer to start only to crash every hour or so drove me back to Mac.

I loved (and still love) my Mac mini.  I love my MacBook Pro.  But the full conversion, when last year I ditched my Blackberry and bought an iPhone 4 was a step too far.  My smart phone fails to meet even the most cursory definition of a 'phone' let alone being 'smart'.  I have looked in chat rooms on the internet and have learned about the 'death grip', I have switched off unnecessary applications, I have bought a case...  On average my "phone" drops 60% of calls at some point and fails to get through on 3 out of 4 dial attempts and the battery lasts for about 2/3rds of a day.  It is quite simply not a phone.  It is useless.

And yet I persist with it.  My 'love' for Apple has thus far enabled me to overlook the abject failure of the dreadful device.  My belief triumphs over the reality and keeps me going.  This belief exists simply as a result of the branding genius that is Apple.  The emotional commitment to a product that makes me feel special and ignore the set backs.

I wonder if instilling self-belief in children has a parallel with this.  The motto we devised for the Elliot Foundation is, "where children believe they can because teachers know they can".  If we can create a personal brand in children where this is strong enough to allow them to overlook the setbacks of life and keep going then we create better life chances for young people.

Having written down my half formed thought, I have a sneaking feeling that this is actually blindingly obvious...

Oh well.

Rentaclists, erraticlists and suicyclists

Returning to work after an Easter break in France, which was more like work than a break, I notice that spring is bringing the occasional cyclists back onto the roads.  And I can't quite decide whether they are worse than the hardened, semi-professional traffic light deniers who commute into London every day.

But it reminded me of some words I invented with Becci and some friends some time ago and think should be added to the lexicon, which I offer to you as some post holiday levity.

Rentaclist, n an individual who takes advantage of the Barclays Boris Bike scheme in London

Erraticlist, n an occasional cyclist who does not use hand signals, or look over their shoulder except on rare occasions and wanders erratically and without warning between traffic lanes, generally at slow speeds

Psyclist, n a committed and extreme cycling commuter who has become so self absorbed as to fail to notice any other authority than their own whether traffic signals, other road users or the highway code. Psyclists will only interact with other humans in the same way that they ride; aggressively, fast and with thinly disguised contempt.

Suicyclist, n an extreme form of any of the above who has taken their art to the brink of self-extinction

Hope you all had a good Easter break!

PS I should admit that I am a Vespa rider so invent others to contribute their own definitions of motorised cyclists

It’s a lovely idea but after you if you don’t mind…

Last Friday’s article in TES highlighting the small number of academies that had picked up the challenge to sponsor a ‘weaker’ school was written as a response to the latest publication from the National College by Robert Hill et al, “The growth of academy chains: implications for leaders and leadership” which is worth reading in full. 

The TES piece illustrates the tension between government ambitions and factors that might be holding schools back.  It quotes ATL general secretary Mary Bousted,

““If you’re a converter academy, why would you sponsor another school if it meant that your Ofsted rating could slip as a result?” she added. “Schools are now working in an immensely competitive environment. Why would you want to threaten your Ofsted grade? Where is the incentive? It is the same as independent schools not wanting to sponsor academies.”

The issue, however is one of perspective.  If you look at it from an individual school’s point of view the comment above is unassailable.  If you are running a good or outstanding school, it is easy to see how you would jealously guard your own school’s performance.  Why would you risk a slip in your own performance if there is no adequate reward for helping someone else; other than the warm glow and the thanks of a grateful nation?  Financially you will be worse off and that’s before you take into account the distraction and drain on management time.

It is the prisoner’s dilemma all over again.  Viewed from an individual perspective, co-operation and collaboration can’t seem to triumph over self-interest.  But is there another vantage point from which to view the problem?

If you can help the individually strong school to understand how it could benefit from working with ‘weaker’ schools then you may be on to something.  Unsurprisingly, that is precisely what we are trying to do at the Elliot Foundation.  We aim to build an enduring, self-supporting, self-improving network of primary schools.

The difference between this and other models is that with us the Principal of a converter is not on his or her own in helping a sponsored academy.  The responsibility for helping improve schools is distributed across a network and no one school is solely a giver or solely a receiver.  We believe that there is good in all schools in the same way that they are things to improve in all schools.

We created the Elliot Foundation with the distinct belief that in education, one size does not fit all.  A top down model inhibits innovation in teaching, learning, school leadership and administration.  This is why we do not mandate any one particular curriculum or any one particular approach to school organisation. 

We believe that the only way to build an enduring and self-improving system is to promote variance and comparison within a framework of high expectations.  Encouraging diversity and creating a culture of exchange is the way to allow tomorrow’s solutions to emerge.  It allows schools to develop their own best practice based on their own context rather than having one imposed upon them from the outside that may not suit their needs.  Consequently, it encourages innovation at both a macro and micro level; in the classroom itself and across a network of schools.  Building performance within a network is a more resilient model for school improvement than the existing models of one-to-one support, outstanding academy to ‘failing’ academy or local authority school improvement partner to ‘failing’ school as expertise is distributed rather than concentrated.

If you would like to know more or would like to help us work together to improve primary schools, email info@ellitofoundation.co.uk

In memoriam

Yesterday morning my father died.  It is perhaps a little soon and a little raw to write about this now.  But I believe that is the nature of blogging... raw and immediate. So apologies if this is a little rough around the edges.

Of the people I have learned from in my life, he is pretty near the top of the list; as any good father should be. And he was an excellent father.  In fact, he was an excellent man.  He drove me to distraction over many things but on the things that mattered, he was generally right.

Indeed in the long run, over a life time, it is better to do the right thing than to chase success, comfort, contentment or any other fleeting goal.  This is perhaps the biggest thing I learned from him.

Other things include:

• If you're going to stand up in a small boat then try to be in the middle of it when you do
• Soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce make an excellent deglaze gravy for pan-fried duck breasts
• Grainy mustard and cream make an excellent sauce for pan-fried cod
• On the back of a motorbike, sit still!
• Don't cry, it's only pain
• A bowline is about the only knot you need to know how to tie...
• Being able to tie a bow tie, however, without a mirror is quite classy
• Don't fight the wind, work out where it is coming from and work with it
• When driving in snow, use at least one gear higher than you would normally and use the engine to brake where possible
• Brakes don't slow the car down, they slow the wheels down
• Always use a Stanley knife away from you
• If you're going to 'drink', then do it standing up; your sense of balance will tell you that you've had enough long before your head or your stomach will
• First write your document; format it when you have finished (I wish more people knew this!)
• If you want to understand something, try and put it in a spreadsheet; you might not succeed in getting it into the spreadsheet but the process of trying will greatly help your understanding
• The joy is not in the knowing it is in the finding out
• The real measure of a man is not the number of his friends but the nature of his friends

There are many other things that I learnt from him, these are just the first few that spring to mind.

The world is a lesser place without him in it.

Conference season

I really rather enjoyed BETT and Learning Technologies this year.

Was inspired by the presentation made by Dan Roberts (aka Chicken Saltash) at the Microsoft sponsored Partners in Learning piece.  First up I loved the word wide telescope, who knew that there was a google earth for the universe?  But even more, I loved the story of the primary teacher who got students to make telescopes out of card and paper in the morning, then asked them to lie on the floor and look up through their telescopes before switching the lights out and pointing the projector at the ceiling, then taking them on a tour of the solar system.

If ever you needed proof that it is not the technology that matter but the use to which the technology is put then there it is.

At learning technologies I was impressed by Jaron Lanier who made me think.  He challenged all the believers in social learning, collective commons etc. by pointing out that we might be living in a fools paradise.  It's all very well for those of us sharing and contributing for nothing to live in some form of socialist utopia when the companies that control the servers over which the traffic that our contributions generate continue to live in a firmly capitalist world.

Hmmm.

You have to try really hard to get it this wrong

One of the benefits of blogging is that every once in a while you can just have a rant. Get things off your chest. This is one of those posts so you can look away if you've already had enough bile for this Christmas.

About seven months ago when I left full time employment and began to freelance I had to let BT know that my employer was no longer going to pay for my broadband and could I please transfer it to a domestic account. At the same time I decided to investigate bundling my telephone, broadband and TV services and after talking to a delightful BT sales lady (funny how the nice, seemingly competent people always work in sales and never in service delivery...) I decided to give notice to Sky TV (I never really watched enough sport or movies to justify the price) and switched to BT vision.

At the same time I commented to the nice sales lady that the presentation of service to my house was a bit ratty (there seemed to be three telephone lines in to the property) but no live master socket. I asked if I could have an engineer visit my house and tidy up the mess and represent the service. She said that would be fine she would sort it all out and once my contract had transferred an engineer would visit. I never spoke to her again...

After hearing nothing for the best part of a month, I rang to check on the status of my order. Unsurprisingly BT had tripped over its own internal Chinese walls. BT can't talk to BT business and vice versa (it's not their fault it's OfCom trying to limit the risk of monopoly power by forcing BT to adopt the bureaucratic processes of the medieval Byzantine empire).

There was no record of my order. So I started again. Went through the whole rigmarole again and got a date for the engineers visit (the day before I was due to go on holiday). The day before the engineer's visit I rang BT to check he was still coming (notice the beginning of learned helplessness...) and guess what no record. So I rebooked and arranged for my fiancé's mother to be in to meet him/her but he never showed.

On my return from my holiday, I took up the cudgels again spent several hours on hold being passed from pillar to post before I decided that it was a pathological inability to take notes and post them on the CRM system (or just the inability to speak English) that was hampering my cause. So I looked up the contact details for BT's managing director of customer service and sent him a letter. To which I had no response. So I resent the letter in email form to the contact centre and I got a few phone calls from friendly but ineffectual people. Decided I would live with the poor service and gave up because it was just too soul destroying to actually get them to provide the service I was paying for.

I gave up because the system was just too oppressive... Anyone for Kafka?

Then a few days ago after three more months of my broadband dropping and crashing on a daily basis and a phone line which sounds like a mobile call from a fast train I decided to try again...

It was as if BT had been keeping their star player back for just this moment. I don't know from which swamp they dragged this barely sentient being but she was something special. She achieved olympic levels of incomprehension. And just kept reading her script. Even before I got to her I obeyed all the instructions on the automated phone service (check there are no electrical devices in the vicinity of the router, change the ADSL filter etc.) but she made me repeat them. She made me describe the phone socket (although I had told her it wasn't a master) she made me plug the router into a defunct socket (even though I told her it was dead).

I just kept asking her to book an engineers visit to represent the service.

So she told me she was going to perform a line check and hung up on me. Then she rang me back only to put me on hold for fifteen minutes. By this point in time I have probably spent about two days on the phone to this useless company. Still no apology by the way. I kept asking her if she would book an engineers visit she kept reading her script like some demented automaton. So I hung up.

Give her some credit, she rang me back... And I said if you can't book an engineer to audit and represent my service then I don't have anything more to say. She promised to arrange this and ring me back. Needless to say I heard nothing more from her.

So I rang again this morning and explained the whole story to another friendly and initially helpful person. She booked an engineer to visit today.I asked explicitly that she add the history to the notes for the job so that the engineer audits and represents the service of both voice and data.

The engineer showed up early, checked the line and told me that there were no notes on the job card about auditing the service and representing it. He was just there to check for a fault which he couldn't find. He was sympathetic but said it happens all the time.

So there you have it seven months of abject and pathetic failure to meet a simple request. How difficult is it to send a competent engineer to update and reinstall my voice and data service? How difficult would it have been to apologise and offer some form of compensation?

Clearly, too difficult.

Congratulations BT you have driven me into the arms of Virgin (which is no mean feat given that Virgin was once Ntl who were globally renowned for their crap customer service - I hope they've changed) whom I shall ring next week. I should stay and fight my corner, demand compensation for the days of work that I have lost, not to mention the will to live which I have also lost.

But I just haven't got the energy.

Merry bloody Christmas BT. What happened to you?