What are Ofsted’s expectations of my leadership role?

What are Ofsted’s expectations of my leadership role?

The importance of your leadership in all of this is a given, but it has recently been underlined by Ofsted in the documents the evaluation schedule for schools (January 2011) and the annual report of Her Majesty’s chief inspector 2009/10. The annual report, in paragraph 54, says that the new inspection framework has “deliberately raised expectations in relation to the quality of teaching and learning, pupils’ achievement, progress and attainment, and the leadership of teaching and learning”.

The evaluation schedule for schools is now very specific about the leadership and management of teaching and learning. Inspectors are required to evaluate:

— How effectively leaders and managers realise an ambitious vision for the school, have high expectations of pupils and secure support from others

— How well the school uses challenging targets to raise standards for all pupils and to eliminate any low attainment among particular pupils

— how well leaders and managers at all levels drive and secure improvement, ensuring high-quality teaching and learning by using relevant information about the school’s performance to devise, implement, monitor and adjust plans and policies

 

What practical steps can I take to evaluate the impact of my leadership on teaching and learning?

 

Innovation and leading change

Question 1: How well did the initial analysis and interpretation of performance data enable you to convince your colleagues of the need for change in teaching and learning?

Question 2: In what ways did your leadership result in agreement to change some approaches to teaching and learning for the target group?

Question 3: What evidence do you have to show that your leadership has resulted in positive changes in the classroom?

Motivating and influencing others

Question 4: To what extent has your leadership challenge resulted in effective team working, and what evidence do you have for this? For example, how much did you involve the relevant year or phase teams in devising the strategies that were used to close the gap?

Question 5: To what extent do your colleagues feel a sense of ownership of the changes in teaching and learning that you have introduced, and how do you know this?

Question 6: What have you done to support your colleagues and help to ensure that their commitment to the agreed changes is being sustained? What has been the impact?

Monitoring and evaluating progress and performance

Question 7: How effective have your systems been for tracking pupils’ progress against their targets, and how well have you and your colleagues used them? What evidence do you have that these systems have been effective?

Question 8: How well have the success criteria that were agreed at the start of the programme enabled you to monitor the progress of the target group of pupils and evaluate their attainment?

Question 9: To what extent were the changes to teaching and learning made clear enough to enable you to monitor and evaluate their implementation in the classroom?

Question 10: How effectively did you deal with differences in the quality of teaching and learning that emerged through your monitoring, and what evidence do you have to show that your interventions were effective?

Question 11: What evidence has there been so far that the target group of pupils have closed the gap with their peers in the subjects or aspects that you selected? (In the short term, this will depend heavily on the school’s own tracking and target setting data and the use of teacher assessment. In the longer term, the use of external performance data will provide you with further evidence of the impact of your leadership on closing the gap.)

what makes a good lesson?

what makes a good lesson?

• A teacher that is well prepared and repapered to engage with learners.
• Have engaged chid
• Good subject knowledge
• Clear planning
• Challenge
• Good subject knowledge and clear LO/SC
• Good use of resources
• Good use of adults
• Good delivery
• Good plenary so all know what the outcome should be

A good lesson on the one hand is incredibly simple. It’s well taught in which children learn. And on the other hand it’s incredibly complex because of all the variables that get in the way of that simplicity. For me a good lesson is first and foremost structured, coherent and clear. This is what we are going to learn, this is how we’re going to learn it.

It involves the teacher enabling learning. A good lesson is not about performance art by the teacher, a good lesson is about students being on task, working in a purposeful way. A good lesson is about challenge. A good lesson is about student activity. A good lesson is about clarity of outcomes.

The good lesson is essentially a social process in which people accept their mutual responsibility for everybody else’s learning. And finally crucially a good lesson is both assessed in terms of student learning but also reviewed in terms of the effectiveness of the teaching process.

A good lesson makes a difference.

Blogging 1 – Core unit: Leading and managing the organisation

Blogging 1 – Core unit: Leading and managing the organisation

• What have you learnt about leadership and management?
  • Management is an area that I know i am good at. I feel i am a good manage as i can think strategically to a task and i can go about it in a systematic way. I can gather the resources i nee research the area and then implement and deliver
  • The area that i know i need to work on is the leadership area. These are the soft skills that make people enthused to want to follow and the skills that is needed if change if to be successfully implemented into an organisation
  • In order to develop my leadership areas I know I need to be more out of the box
• What have you learnt about:
  • The implications for the gap you have identified and whether it needs to be modified?
    • This is a whole school issue and one that as PE leader I have been putting off addressing for a long time
  • The leadership strategies and behaviours you will be using to make sure the gap is closed and whether these need changing?
    • I know i have to be out of my comfort zone
    • I know i need to work on the softer side of my approach to this.
• Record any changes or decisions in relation to the gap you have identified and your leadership challenge and give the reasons why.
  • I will keep a informal blog of how things happen. Record it within a word document

MLDP- Action plan

Action plan

•  Staff audit – focus on skills and teaching. (Impact and influence) (relating to others) (Developing others)
• Children audit – what do they want to cover in school.
• Look at the scheme of work and in link etc. (Impact and influence) 
• Contact Nicky Collett regarding TOPP cards or other resources. (Impact and influence) – training booked- April 2013
•  Contact Nicky Collett about PE monitoring in Leicester schools – specialist or school based
• Contact NC for examples of good or better training. (school or training based) (Impact and influence)
• Visiting a school or getting a trainer in who will be able to deliver the training to me. (Impact and influence)
• Evaluate all three together. Trial of systems. Context of school. (Trying before you deliver)
•  delivery of the changes – KS2 Staff meeting (addressing any problems that could occur) – Possible problems. (Focus on the areas of development identified at the beginning). Asking what they want/need next. (inspiring others) (relating to others) (holding others to account) (Developing others
• Staff questionnaire – constant evaluation (Impact and influence) (inspiring others) (relating to others) (holding others to account) (Developing others
• Where next? (Developing others) 

 

 

 

 

Middle Leaders Development Program (MLDP)

Who’s it for?

The National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services is developing a new approach to the delivery of leadership development for middle leaders in schools. National College have been piloting the Middle Leadership Development Programme (MLDP) within 175 clusters of schools.

 

Description

MLDP represents a new cluster-based model for middle leadership development and replaces the Leading from the Middle (LftM) programme. The new programme involves clusters of schools running their own middle leadership development programmes in-house with National College support and materials. The College trains two facilitators per cluster who will use their understanding of the middle leaders’ context and the programme materials to manage and organise delivery of the programme within schools.

Learning is focused on developing effective leadership of high quality teaching and learning in order to close the gaps in achievement and reduce the variation within schools. The learning journey for middle leaders is centred on addressing a leadership challenge to close an achievement gap within the school. Each cluster has the flexibility to adapt the programme to its own needs.

The aim is to enable experienced leaders to establish a collaborative learning culture within their schools, thus increasing leadership capacity and generate and sustain improved learning and teaching outcomes for all pupils. 

The MLDP offer entails: 

• Training and assessment for two facilitators for the cluster (six face-to-face days).
• One day of training for one learning colleague (a key support colleague within a school) per cluster.
• Access for the facilitators to the On-line Facilitation & Tutoring Course (OFAT) – a facilitation course delivered online and designed to develop facilitation skills such as managing online learning communities.
• Access to a range of high-quality up-to-date learning materials online in easily downloadable format.
• Access to a helpdesk for technical support and to a learning specialist/ regional school associate for facilitation and learning support.
• The quality assurance and dissemination of learning materials created locally by the clusters, so that other clusters can benefit from these.
• Access for facilitators to top-up training and refreshed resources beyond the third year of running MLDP.
• The opportunity for participants to obtain CAT (Credit Accumulation Transfer) points towards accreditation from a higher education institution.

The College’s regional team will coordinate the links with the Schools Associates. If you would like to seek further support in joining or forming a cluster locally, please contact - your regional National College contact in the first instance:

 

I was enrolled on this course from January 2013 

J.R.R. Tolkien- Author Of "The Lord Of The Rings" And "The Hobbit"Born This Day 1892

Reblogged from slicethelife:

J.R.R. Tolkien the author of "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit " was born on this day in 1892. As great as I think "The Lord of the Rings" movies are- and they are my favourite movies ever- the Tolkien books are better. "The Lord of the Rings" has over the years sold 300 million copies, "The Hobbit" 250 million copies sold.

Read more… 47 more words

Only just blogged about this

The Hobbit

I am a huge fan of JRR Tolkien.

His books are written really well and his style really allows you to escape and run away to a magic place. Not many authors have managed this and I am sure not many will in the future!!

JRR Tolkien books are a really good read. When the orginal Lord of The Ring Films were released I went to see all of them at the cinema. This is sort of a family tradition now!!

When I learnt that they were making a new film based on JRR Tolkien first book, The Hobbit, I knew it would be one I had to go and see.

I personally loved it, the plots was complicated but at the same time easy to follow. The characters were fully believable because you knew them and so could understand their struggle.

The effects were really good and really made the film.

I am no real film critic but for me

it was a really enjoyable evening!