Enser How Do They Do It?

What can we learn from amazing schools, leaders and teachers?
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-78583-767-8
Verlag: Crown House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 176 Seiten

With so many schools doing amazing work, How Do They Do It? What can we learn from amazing schools, leaders and teachers? by Mark and Zoe Enser is a much-needed celebration of successful teachers and school leaders. Drawing on their combined experience as teachers, school leaders and former HMIs and members of Ofsted's Curriculum Unit, they answer one central question: how do amazing schools do it? Using the Ofsted Education Inspection Framework (EIF), they break aspects of school life down into their component parts and identify the best practice of highly successful schools and the not so great practice of less successful ones. Together, Mark and Zoe unpick what we mean by a high quality of education, what matters when it comes to pupil attitudes and the importance of education going beyond the academic and including personal development. Along the way, they bust some common myths about inspections and offer thought-provoking reflective questions which will help school leaders and teachers improve their practice. Ideal for busy teachers and school leaders, this book is broken up into bite-size sections for readers to dip in and out and read the advice they need most. Suitable for teachers of all levels, head teachers, Ofsted inspectors and anyone interested in education today.

Zoe Enser was a classroom teacher for 20 years, during which time she was also a head of English and a senior leader with a responsibility for staff development and school improvement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Enser, Zoe

Enser, Mark

Leseproben

Chapter Two

Behaviour and Attitudes

Behaviour and attitudes and, alongside them, attendance are particularly wicked problems. Wicked problems are intractable problems due to their complexity and the fact that they exist within a dynamic environment. The number of moving parts makes it almost impossible to identify the cause of the problem and to put solutions in place. Schools do not exist in a vacuum and a myriad of things can cause a shift in how pupils behave, how they view school and if they decide to attend, even when everything seems to be going well. However, those schools that have had the most success in these areas share the common themes of clarity of purpose, knowing what their best bets may be and a process of ongoing evaluation and reflection.

Attendance is a hot topic in the world of education, with national figures indicating that post-pandemic there have been significant issues with pupils not attending school as regularly as they did. The reasons for this are as multifaceted as the reasons why pupils behave in certain ways in any other context. However, there is a wealth of data which tells us that unless pupils are receiving high-quality education elsewhere, their attendance in school matters. It is particularly concerning that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds or those with SEND are the pupils who are not attending school as regularly as their peers. These pupils are more likely to be those who are less successful academically. They will also miss out on other opportunities provided by school if they are not there. Recent figures show that despite the sector’s best efforts, the attainment gap between those pupils identified as being in receipt of free school meals, or identified as being pupil premium remains:

Over the past 5 years, students eligible for free school meals have had lower outcomes compared to those not eligible. In line with the DfE’s statistics on the disadvantage gap, our analysis shows that in 2023 the gap had widened slightly compared to previous years, by 0.12 of a grade (GCSE) compared to 2019.1

Attendance, behaviour and the value placed on learning all have the potential to intersect to a point where pupils who experience a range of social and economic disadvantages are less likely to be successful academically than their peers.

A positive culture of behaviour and attitudes may benefit the most vulnerable pupils the most, but everyone should be able to enjoy a calm and productive working environment. Children spend a significant amount of time in school and it is important that they are places that feel safe, where they are free to form friendships, to express themselves free from the threat of bullying or intimidation, and to thrive.

What is remarkable is how many schools are wonderfully positive places where pupils are happy. It is remarkable because the world is often not a happy place. We have seen years of underinvestment in public services, a growing divide between rich and poor, and increasing environmental concerns. Add to that schools having to work where disparate communities and individuals are thrown together, with their own values, norms and hopes for the future, along with a good dose of teenage angst, and it is surprising that so many schools have such joyful atmospheres.

These positive things do not happen by accident. They happen because schools, and those who work in them, spend an inordinate amount of time creating this environment. In this chapter we will look at how this is done.

Pupils’ behaviour

What is it?

Schools are places where dozens, often hundreds, of people come together. These people cannot behave however they wish. This would be at worst unsafe and at best unpleasant. It would also mean that the core function of the school would not be able to operate. Pupils would not be able to learn, wider opportunities couldn’t be offered and pupils would not be well prepared for the future.

As a result, schools have rules. Most of these rules are similar to the rules that people are expected to follow in the rest of society, such as rules about not hurting or stealing from each other. Other rules are designed to allow the smooth running of the school, such as following instructions without question, or bringing in or getting hold of the equipment that is needed for the lessons.

Why does it matter?

Behaviour in schools is perhaps one of the most hotly contested areas of education. Whilst we are not going to get into the details of those debates (largely boiling down to the extent to which rules are needed to create desirable behaviours and/or the appropriateness of sanctions for those who don’t follow them), those involved in education, especially those at the chalk-face, know that getting 30, 100 or over 2,000 young people to behave in a way conducive to learning is a huge challenge. If the social contract about how to behave is not clear and if the majority don’t follow it, then pretty much everything else falls apart.

Agreed social behaviours matter both for learning and for later life and these are part of what school specifically teaches. Right from the start in early years they learn more about turn taking and sharing, through to how they manage increasingly complex relationships and emotions to prepare them for life beyond education. Some pupils need more support with this than others, just as they do in other aspects of their learning. Sometimes providing this, within the context of a classroom with all of the other pupils, each with their own needs, can be challenging.

Pupils’ behaviour also matters because poor behaviour is stressful. We have a teacher retention crisis in England’s schools and behaviour often tops the list of things that teachers worry about.2 Having pupils be rude to you day after day, threatening violence and making it impossible to do your job will create stress and leave teachers feeling that this isn’t the job for them. Visiting as many schools as we have over the years, one thing that strikes us is how closely teachers’ attitudes to their work and the behaviour of pupils in school are correlated. It is incredibly rare to find happy teachers in schools where pupils’ behaviour is poor. Conversely, in places where pupils behave well, teachers can put up with a lot else that might be wrong. 

Where does it go wrong?

Behaviour, and indeed creating the positive attitudes we want pupils to display, is not only within the remit of schools. Wider society plays a huge role in determining how people treat each other. However, this is a book about education and so it is important to reflect on what is within the gift of schools. As mentioned above, schools can often have different challenges around behaviour to contend with. Instilling positive behaviours is much harder where poor behaviours have become normalised and accepted, than it is to set up a school with fresh new faces and build from the ground up. We are not for a second saying that is easy for anyone, but turning a large ship around when a course is set is much more difficult than when everyone embarks at the same time and sets off in the same direction.

Behaviour, though, inevitably declines when conflicts exist between what leaders want to have happen and what actually occurs on the ground. Behaviour is perhaps the area that is most sensitive to this conflict and lack of consistency, be that in expectations or approach, can quickly lead to problems. This is not to say that staff or pupils should be automatons who just follow rules unthinkingly. But if pupils go into one lesson where they are allowed to flout the rules and then they go into another where this is not accepted, everyone ends up with a difficult job to do.

Therefore one of the ways that behaviour is most likely to go wrong is when too much is left up to individual teachers to decide, when there is no, or little, consistency in expectations over how pupils should behave.

Nobody sets out to be inconsistent and nobody working in schools wants the lives of their colleagues, or their pupils, to be more challenging. However, where clarity of purpose is lost, or systems become unwieldy or place too much emphasis on individuals to get the job done, they are less likely to be successful. This is especially so where those individuals are dealing with multiple different complex things all at the same time (a typical day for a teacher). Deciding which plate to keep spinning whilst trying to get through each day with your mental and physical health intact is a challenge that nobody can fully understand unless they spend a significant amount of time in a school.

It also goes wrong if pupils who need additional help do not receive it in a timely way. This is another challenge which often goes beyond the resources of schools. However, if schools do not quickly draw on the resources that are available, including early identification that things are not going well for that pupil, those behaviours and attitudes can be detrimental not only for that pupil, but for others they will encounter. Systems which allow identification of issues and quick interventions can address issues before that happens. If these systems are not in place, for example, tracking and recording of information, then, to return to the boat analogy, it is going to be much...