No wonder HTs and Principals are outraged, really. To add insult to injury, it’s now the schools’ and teachers’ fault for chasing grade “C”s for their students. The comments by Glenys Stacey of Ofqual could have been spoken by michael Gove.
Talk for Teaching leads to improved quality of teaching.
QA South-West has helped many schools to improve the quality of their teaching. It’s a notoriously difficult thing to do, but through teachers and TAs reflecting together and pooling their collective intelligence, it can be done. ‘Talk for Teaching’ involves staff watching other teacher’s lessons together with colleagues.
We can be there at the start to demonstrate prompts, advise on positive language and to set school protocols, but the process is easily sustainable. Staff soon begin to take ownership of both the process and their own Professional Development. Teachers improve their own teaching and TAs improve their own work. In Dylan William’s words; ‘they get ‘better’ at what they do by seeing the work of others and talking about it, as it happens’. The improvements over a year are clearly measurable and the comments from schools and teachers who have participated in this process are just terrific. The impact of the process can be measured by hard edged outcomes: the quality of teaching, learning and assessment being judged to be secure, or strong, in your school.
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