The Paragon - NWET&D - Improving Performance

A whole-school approach
If you are going to improve teaching the changes you make have to affect what happens in the classroom. The bullet points in the last paragraph are directly related to this. But the wider ethos or culture of your school, which is usually an amalgamation of social, moral and academic values, will influence and determine how pupils and teachers work together. The right ethos will mean that what is taught, how it is taught, what needs to be taught and what needs to improve is agreed by everyone. Inversely, an inappropriate or badly thought out ethos will mean that even teaching that is well prepared and well structured will be more difficult to implement because there are no common boundaries. Because each of our schools has its own feelings and vibrations that make it unique it is important to find as many indicators of a ‘positive’ ethos as possible. These do not have to be complex educational issues. They can be short and simple ideas such as:
- pupils are happy
- pupils are treated fairly
- bullying is a rare occurrence
- there is a lively, creative atmosphere
- teachers motivate pupils.

Many of these factors will be relatively obvious, but part of the success of your school will be built on whether such a list actually suggests areas that might need to be improved and acted on by all teachers as whole-school issues.

But what happens in the classroom?
What about the actual teaching and the repertoire of skills that you will have to focus on? They will have to involve a range of whole class, group and individual teaching as well as involving the wide use of ICT. But your strategies will also help transmit knowledge and help key learning skills as well as accommodating children with different paces of learning. You might be saying at this stage, ‘I do that already and most good teachers have been doing it for years.’ A young teacher colleague suggested to me recently ‘My training and what I try to do in the classroom has always revolved round a mixture of teaching styles that cater for all levels of ability.’ In fact, what happens in the classroom will be the key to the discussions that will take place during performance management review meetings. Both the teacher and their reviewer should be asking themselves - What is good about my teaching and what needs improving? By recognising what needs to get better it will be possible to work out strategies to actually make the necessary improvements. In fact, if you don’t know what needs improving - how can you make any positive changes?