Throughout a career in education, one of the most fascinating—and challenging—phenomena to observe is the delicate nature of institutional culture. I have spent the majority of my career in environments where a "culture of respect" was the default setting. In those schools, the discipline of learning was ingrained; classrooms ran smoothly not because of iron-fisted rule, but because of a shared, quiet understanding of expectations.
However, the broader educational landscape is rarely uniform. At various points, most leaders will find themselves "retooling" to address environments where that default setting has been disrupted. I am currently reflecting on the specific challenges that arise when a culture begins to unravel, characterised by:
Boundary Testing: Defiance, aggression, and a casual approach to uniform standards.
Presence Issues: Endemic absenteeism and the internal "truancy" of wandering corridors.
The "Broken Windows" Effect: Where low-level disruption—phones, chatting, or lack of equipment—signals to students that the environment is no longer one of high expectations.
It is sobering to see how quickly a tipping point can be reached. As soon as students perceive a sense of impunity, the "quiet middle"—those children who want to do the right thing—can be swept along by the tide.
So, for any leader or teacher facing a cultural shift, how do we navigate this without losing our focus? Here are the pillars I rely on:
1. Radical Consistency over Severity
Impunity is the fuel for chaos. The solution isn't necessarily harsher punishments, but the certainty of a response. It is far more effective to be consistently persistent than occasionally explosive.
The Threshold: The battle for the classroom is often won or lost at the door. Correcting a small detail before a student enters the room establishes that they are entering a governed space.
2. Protect the "Quiet Middle"
In a disrupted environment, the 10% of students causing the trouble can demand 90% of our energy. We must consciously pivot back to the students who are meeting expectations. Narrating the positive behaviour you see reminds the disruptors that they are not the protagonists of the lesson.
3. Depersonalise the Defiance
When a student is rude, it is rarely a personal attack on the teacher; it is a performance for their peers or a reaction to a lack of structure. Viewing these outbursts through a clinical, "systems-failure" lens is essential for maintaining professional calm.
Final Thoughts
While it is tempting to meet poor behaviour with ever more serious consequences, the real power lies in the "slow drip" of unwavering expectations. Retooling isn't just about new sanctions; it’s about holding the line with a calm, professional smile until the students realise that the path of least resistance is, once again, the path of learning.
I stumbled across this last night; something I will be trying with my classes.
The FLMOP Framework
The goal is to provide the Means of Participation (MoP) before the Task/Question.
Front-Load (The "Signal")
Before you reveal the question, you tell the pupils exactly how they will be expected to participate. This settles their "behavioural" brain so their "cognitive" brain can focus on the content.
Example: "In a moment, I am going to ask you about the causes of the Cold War. You will have 30 seconds of Silent Solo thinking time, and then I will use Cold Call."
Means of Participation (The "How")
You explicitly name the mechanism. This eliminates the "grey area" where pupils aren't sure if they should put their hand up, shout out, or talk to a neighbour.
Common MoPs:
Cold Call: "I will pick a name from the jar."
Mini-Whiteboards: "Write your answer, then wait for the 'Show Me' signal."
Turn and Talk: "Turn to your partner and decide on one answer."
Hands Down: "I want to see no hands; I'm going to choose someone myself."
Why it’s effective
Reduces Anxiety: Pupils know exactly what is coming, which is particularly helpful for those who struggle with "on the spot" pressure.
Eliminates "Opt-Out": By front-loading a Cold Call or a Whiteboard check, you signal that everyone is accountable for the answer before they even hear the question.
Maintains Pace: It stops the "hands-up" culture where the same three pupils dominate the lesson, allowing you to sample the understanding of the whole room.
The "Bad" vs. "Good" Example
Standard Way: "What is the capital of France?... (shouting starts)... please put your hands up, guys!"
FLMOP Way: "In a moment, I'll ask for the capital of France. Front-load: No hands up, please. MoP: I'm going to wait 5 seconds and then Cold Call. [Pause] What is the capital of France?"
Over the past year or so, I've been luxuriating in the fact that once again I'm back working in the Google ecosystem. One thing I've been introduced to by my boss, who's somewhat of a Google nerd(!), is the ability to mess around with the suffixes at the end of the URLs.
Here are some examples:
Forced copies
The whole point of Google is generally to adopt the canonical principle, but there are use cases for forcing a recipient of a document you're sending to make a copy of it. If you want to do this, here's how.
Make sure you share the document and are using the share URL:
Change everything after edit... in the URL to copy as below:
Now, when you share the amended URL, the recipient will see something like this, forcing them to make a copy:
Forced English
This is particularly useful for Google Forms, which browsers have a habit of converting into the recipient's geo-located language unless you actively prevent this. Here's how:
Get your sharing permissions correct and view the live form in an incognito window:
After viewform append ?HL=EN where HL stands for Host Language and EN is the abbreviation for English, like so:
Share this link with your intended recipients, and they will see the form in English regardless of their location or browser settings.
Preview only
This is useful if you're sending a document or slideshow and you want to conceal that it has anything to do with Google. All recipients will be able to see is the content. Here's how:
Get the sharing permissions of your document/slideshow correct first:
Get rid of everything after the last forward slash and replace it with the word preview. Google will do the rest and the URL will look like this:
Share this link, and your recipients will see the document or slideshow in preview mode only.
Link to specific slide in Google Slides
Occasionally, you want eyeballs on a specific slide rather than the whole deck. You can do this as shown here:
Get the sharing permissions of the slideshow correct first and call up the URL:
Add the following text after the last forward slash: preview?rm=minimal&slide=
Add the slide number you want to link to after the equals sign (2 in the example above) and share that URL with your intended recipient.
It can be a daunting task for parents to guide their children through the process of preparing for public examinations. As the summer exams approach, I offer this advice to help parents navigate the complexities surrounding getting adolescents properly prepared for their exams:
The important stuff
Keep things in perspective. Yes examinations are important, but they are a long way from being the be-all and end-all. Make sure your child knows you love them for who they are whether or not they go on to get stellar results.
Create a happy and secure home. Somewhere they feel safe. Eat together as a family if you can, restrict screen time, and model respect and humility. It's far more important to be kind than clever.
The practicalities
Give your child a space where they can work independently and quietly. This is easier for some families than others, but do all you can to make it work. Serious study cannot be achieved with younger siblings running around, or with the TV on, or scrunched up on the sofa. A desk, a lamp and a comfortable chair in a private room is the ideal as a minimum.
Encourage your child to draw up a revision timetable and stick to it. Work back from the dates of the exams and make sure that there's time for everything. During the holidays children need time off, but they also need to study. I recommend four hours/day at GCSE and six hours/day at Sixth Form level. This may seem like a lot, but this is their one chance and it's competitive out there.
Show them how to break down these long periods of study into manageable chunks. The Pomodoro Technique is an excellent aid here. A Sixth Former might therefore do four Pomodoros and then have an hour off. Another four then have lunch and finish off with four in the afternoon or evening as fits in with their other commitments.
Encourage them to build in breaks for exercise (vital) and socialising. In the case of the latter, though, these holidays will be a little different. They can't expect to succeed if they are spending too much time with their friends. Focused study needs isolation. It will end soon...!
Make sure that they have what they need for their particular examination specification. Their school should be able to provide you with a list of specifications if you ask. Better schools should also provide revision materials and advice; they will have also drilled students on what they need to do over the holidays.
Emergency provision
I sometimes hear from parents whose children return home for the Spring Break completely lost as to what they need to do. Perhaps circumstance has meant they've missed a lot of school - illness, war, political uncertainty and economic misfortune have all affected children to a greater or lesser degree in the part of the world where I currently teach. Often pupils in this situation have very little in the way of written notes, they have no idea what will be in the exam, and they don't know what they need to learn.
In these situations, I often point parents to the CGP Guides. These are specification-specific and tell students exactly what they need to know in a clear and easily readable format. They are also available as digital versions for those who cannot get access to the printed version. Here for example is the link to the Edexcel Maths IGCSE Digital Revision Book. They exist for all other mainstream subjects too.
Reflecting on my experiences across international start-ups, I’ve seen that the relationship between Owner and Head is the single biggest predictor of a school's success. Here is my 'open letter' to those taking that leap.
Dear Owner,
Congratulations! You have decided to invest in a school. In order to have amassed enough capital to allow you to do so, you deserve a considerable amount of respect. As a lifelong teacher, with no great wealth to my name, I am in awe of people like you. Through enterprise and hard work, you have added so much value to the world. And now you are set to start a school—what a wonderful gift to give to future generations.
The chances are that this line of business will be new to you and so I offer a little advice in the hope that you won't make the mistakes that I have seen others make in the past when starting up from scratch:
Don't underestimate the task. Everyone went to school, and most people, therefore, think they understand education. There is a world of difference though between having been to school/university yourself and actually running a school. Education is full of snake oil salesmen, myths and blind alleys. Choose your advisors carefully and focus rigorously on what can be proved to work, not what sounds good or looks good on a marketing brochure. Although it doesn't sell well the truth is that to do well in school, as in life, you have to work hard. There are no easy/quick fixes and you can't buy success.
Make sure you have a big war chest. Starting up is going to be painful and cost you a lot of money. If you can be profitable within the first five years you will be doing well. Most of the easy pickings are now gone. Expect some parents to be slow payers/no payers and have a watertight procedure on how to deal with this.
Pace yourself. You need at least two years from the moment you put up the website to the moment you welcome your first pupils. Sure, people will tell you it can be done faster than this, but they're likely blinded by excitement and over-optimism.
Focus on working on your business whilst others work in your business. This is an absolutely crucial distinction. There will be too much for you to do alone—you need to trust people and let them get on with their jobs. By all means, have regular meetings with them to hold them to account. But so long as you have appointed the right people you should otherwise let them alone to run your school for you.
Appoint a Director of Admissions early. The success or failure of your school will depend on the recruitment of pupils. This is why it is vital to appoint a knowledgeable Director of Admissions right from the very start and give him or her the budget and autonomy to begin recruiting. Together with the Head, they will start to populate your school and secure enrolments. Do not try to do this yourself and do not make the mistake of relying solely on (expensive) online advertising. When people are looking for a school for their children they need to speak to real people. Remember two years...
Do not over-egg the pudding. Promising parents rugby when you have no pitches, or ice-skating when you have no ice rink is dishonest. There is a certain type of family who are attracted to the pioneering spirit of joining a new school—these people are your core market. If you need to pull the wool over people's eyes in order to get them to sign up you're storing up problems for yourself.
Start small and plan to grow in a sequential way. If you try to open up to all year groups at once your small cohort of start-up staff will find themselves overstretched and/or you won't be able to afford to offer a reasonable diet of subjects in an economic way. Post-16 education is particularly expensive and difficult to run from a standing start with small numbers of pupils. If you're not sure why, educate yourself.
Be honest about your facilities and staff. When you start you will likely lack many of the facilities that more established schools enjoy. You may not have a special needs department, a counsellor, or music teachers. Be honest about this and listen to the professionals you have appointed when deciding what can or cannot be done. For every special case there is an opportunity cost. Listen to what you're being told to avoid breaking the camel's back.
Expect problems. Staff will leave, pupils will leave, and parents will get angry. If you are running a secondary school you'll need to be prepared to expel some pupils—startups attract pupils and parents who are refugees from more established schools and bring with them a lot of 'baggage'. If you cling onto these types too tightly for fear of losing revenue it will backfire. Build trust with those staff/parents/pupils who stay the course. Be kind.
Pay competitively and follow through. To attract good teachers you need to pay competitively, but most teachers are happy to work for a fair wage in a school where they feel they can make a difference. Once you've settled on a fair rate of pay do exactly what you said you were going to do. Moving the goalposts after appointment will immediately undermine trust at a time when you need it most.
Understand industry standards. It is industry standard to pay teachers an annual salary divided into 12 equal increments. Note that this involves paying them in the summer holidays—even if they have decided to leave your establishment. This may stick in the craw, but that's how it works. If you really can't stomach this way of operating, spell it out clearly from the outset.
Communicate, communicate, communicate. I understand that there are some aspects of ownership that must be pondered in lonely isolation. But you simply must be transparent with your appointed Head. He or she will be able to steady the ship for a while if credit is running dry. If you just stop paying bills with no explanation people will smell a rat.
I really hope it all goes well for you. I, for one, am rooting for you because the world needs more well-led schools with owners who have gone into the enterprise with the right motivation.
Congratulations on securing employment at Malvern College Egypt. MCE is one of a growing group of Malvern College International (MCI) Schools that exist around the world. In joining MCE, you are joining a family of schools which, although all very different, share a set of principles and values that inform their culture.
The 'Malvern Qualities' articulate what MCI stands and provide direction and purpose for all those who work in the schools. As you prepare for your new adventure in Egypt it is worth reflecting on them and what they might mean for you as you start teaching with us:
RESILIENCE
In coming to Egypt, you will be leaving behind the comfort of the familiar for a new adventure. The rewards will be great, but there are also likely to be moments of loneliness and disillusion. This is especially true if you are new to international teaching. On top of all the problems associated with your day job will be those associated with getting to grips with a new set of surroundings. Expect the unexpected, expect difficulties, and determine to face them down with humour and enthusiasm.
CURIOSITY
We expect our pupils to be curious, and to ask questions - we should be too. Take an interest in your colleagues (without being invasive, obviously!) Get out and about, meet people and join in with things. Treat your time in Egypt as an opportunity to grow personally and professionally. Be curious.
SELF-AWARENESS
Remember that in Egypt you are somewhat of a curiosity. You are highly paid, western and English-speaking. Be aware of the privileges these things afford and conscious of the potential for cultural misunderstanding. Go out of your way to be kind and polite. Becoming an entitled expatriate is not a good look.
KINDNESS
Kindness trumps everything. Check yourself regularly: am I being kind? That's all that needs to be said really.
INDEPENDENCE
You're an adult, behave like one. Of course people will help, but it's surprising how infantilising coming to a new country can be for some people. One of my favourite aphorisms is: 'Find solutions, not problems'. If you do this, everyone's life is made easier.
INTEGRITY
This is best defined as doing the right thing when nobody is looking. This means we should practice what we preach. Think about that.
AMBITION
Be ambitious for yourself and for your pupils. The school will support all reasonable requests for training and self-improvement. We practice what we preach (see above).
OPEN-MINDEDNESS
You're going to encounter some alien concepts and practices in your first few months in Egypt. Before rushing to condemn have some humility and try to discover why things are the way they are. Being able to see things from another perspective is exactly what an international education should be about. We practice what we preach...
RISK-TAKING
Seize the opportunities living and working in Egypt will give to you. Venture away from the familiar and do something that scares you from time to time. With discomfort comes growth.
COLLABORATION
Remember you're not doing this alone. Actively seek out the support of your colleagues both professionally and personally. In the early days you are likely to need to seek out personal friends from the pool of teachers at work to a greater degree than may have been the case at home. Embrace this opportunity to collaborate.
HUMILITY
You will make mistakes, things will go wrong. Be prepared to admit these mistakes yourself and be forgiving of those of others. Above all, don't take yourself too seriously - life's too short.
Interview panels are fond of questions about vision. I'm often stumped - even more so when it's asked over Zoom and I haven't yet visited the school in question. I usually end up muttering something vague and non-committal - cringing inwardly as I do so - and resolve to do better next time.
Having done some digging around I'm going to try responding in this manner next time I'm asked about vision:
It would be presumptuous of me to lay out a vision before having got to know the school properly
Jim Collins' 'First Who then What' mantra resonates with me
My early focus in a headship role would therefore be to focus on staff - getting 'the right people on the bus, in the right seats'
Using the bus metaphor, Collins explains the reason for this focus on people first as follows:
If people join the bus primarily because of where it is going, what happens if you get ten miles down the road and you need to change direction? You’ve got a problem. But if people are on the bus because of who else is on the bus, then it’s much easier to change direction: “Hey, I got on this bus because of who else is on it; if we need to change direction to be more successful, fine with me.” Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company.
In this vein, I was intrigued to see that the US Navy Seals evaluate their people on a two-by-two matrix which I have augmented slightly with Jim Collins' insights as below:
Clearly having people 'on the bus' with neither technical nor character strength is no good and they must be (humanely) removed or redirected. But the very worst people of all to have on the bus, those who will be most corrosive to the team dynamics, are those with a high level of technical competence, but a low level of character strength (shown in red on the diagram). Left to their own devices these dark actors will ruin the culture of a school whilst, in the wrong sort of school, enjoying the invulnerability that comes with having good metrics. These individuals need to be rooted out and removed leaving the top two quadrants to get on with their jobs.
Sarah was Deputy Head at Uppingham where we overlapped for a short spell. As a young teacher, I remember thinking she was superb; reading through her posts reminds me of why.
I hope Bryanston continue to leave up her posts up on their website as an archive. In case they don't, I'll be liberally cutting and pasting from them whilst I can. Here's an excerpt, for example, from her post about school rules:
Bryanston’s fundamental rules are, by contrast, ultra simple. There are just four of them.
A breach of common sense or courtesy is a breach of school rules.
A breach of the law of the land is a serious breach of school rules.
We ban sex, drugs, alcohol and smoking and you are liable to be expelled for involvement in either of the first two.
Furthermore, the following are automatic suspension offences:
night wandering,
being on the roof of the main building,
smoking in a building.
I love that simplicity.
I suspect you can't do away completely with a more comprehensive set of rules somewhere - in fact the comprehensive set at the last three school's in which I've worked now bear an uncanny resemblance to Uppingham's as they stood in 2011. Those rules no doubt still bearing the hallmarks of Sarah's work earlier in the noughties.
But Sarah's simpler set are far better for sharing, better for ready reference in pupil planners and on noticeboards.
A gap between our trip from MCS to MCUK and our longer ride presented the opportunity for some supply teaching.
This has been a hugely valuable professional experience placing me firmly back in the classroom and offering an insight into a variety of different schools. I've picked up lessons in French, chemistry, maths, drama, geography and English.
Having been prepared for the worst, in the main I've been pleasantly surprised by the behaviour of the pupils - the vast majority have been polite, helpful and keen to learn.
I make no bones about it though: this is a tough way to earn a living. The call comes in at around 0730 and I could be off to anywhere within a radius of 50 miles or so. Sometimes the work set is best described as 'dry' and so maintaining the pupils' interest in it, whilst having neither the time nor authority to deviate from what's been set, can be a hard gig.
It pays to be well prepared:
lunch packed
work clothes on
bag packed with:
board pens
spare pens and paper
'emergency' ideas for generic lessons (in the rare instances where no work has been set)
laptop with an adaptor for VGI and HDMI cables
As soon as I arrive and sign in I've found it pays to make verbal contact with a senior member of staff to announce my presence and get a feel for the conventions. Then I'm into it - five hours straight usually with a short break for lunch...
We held a micro TeachMeet yesterday at Malvern College Switzerland. Of all the things you can do on a staff training day, I find these the most valuable.
Here's what I learnt:
PetchaKutcha is a way of organising a presentation that restricts you to twenty slides on which you spend a maximum of 20 seconds. Excellent for teachers and a useful scaffold for pupil presentations.
Whiteboard.fi is a useful digital alternative to physical whiteboards. Great for AfL.
Seneca learning is a great little tool for revision and homework. There seem to be tests on just about everything including A-level Economics :-)
Teacher introduction by numbers. Try putting up some numbers about yourself arranged on the board similar to this as a springboard to introducing yourself to a new class. Ask them what they think the numbers represent and watch the discussion unfold:
Answers: 2 children; 20, 21 ages of children; 1989 year of teacher training; 27 years in Switzerland; 10,887 money raised in recent charity event; 4, 5 number of house moves/cars.
Noughts and crosses. A good end-of-lesson exercise. Put a noughts and crosses grid up on the board. Add keywords words to each box. The game is played by asking teams to define the keywords in order to place their o or x.
Diana Laurillard has devised a 'learning designer' found here. It can be used to put together a scheme of work and then assess to what extent the course is balanced and varied with a pie chart like this:
Do Now Activities, as recommended by Doug Lemov are a great way to start a lesson. This is especially true if they involve revisiting materials from earlier in the course to reinforce the learning. Here's one I tried today for A-level History:
There are people, I know, who secure immediately every job they apply for. I am not one of those lucky people. I know as well as anybody the sting of disappointment that accompanies a rejection email. The sting gets worse, of course, the further along the process you get; the most painful rejections come when you've been to two or three interviews with a school, taught a lesson, done a presentation and even started to get to know some of the staff.
Right now we're in the process of recruiting for roles at Malvern College Switzerland and so I have found myself on the other side of the fence, having to disappoint people. If you're one of those people, I feel your pain; this little post is for you.
I've tried to list the reasons why people's applications failed to get through to the shortlist stage. This, I hope, will give a bit more insight into the process than the: 'It was a strong field' brush off that is rather too common in job application correspondence, but that helps nobody.
You may have failed to make the shortlist because your application displayed one or more of the problems listed below. Only a tiny handful of these mistakes are immediately 'fatal' but when placed in a pool of applications without them they place your application at a disadvantage; and that, in a large field, is all it takes not to make it to the shortlist. So here we go:
Things you can fix:
Not following the rubric. We said we didn't want CVs and yet you attached one. We asked you to apply by the TES and yet you emailed us direct etc.
Sloppy spelling or, more common, sloppy capitalisation. This affected more applications than, as teachers, we should be happy with. I think people have become inured to a sort of digital slang that is seen as acceptable on an online form. It leaves a bad impression.
Asking questions like: 'Will my sofa fit in the flat?' before having even been contacted by the school. Questions like this (and I put in this bracket questions about money) give the impression your primary interest isn't the role itself.
Asking questions that are answered in the applicant pack and/or on the website.
Copying and pasting a personal statement that was clearly made with another school in mind.
Writing a perfunctory personal statement of only a couple of sentences in length.
Not writing a personal statement at all and instead saying something like: 'My CV speaks for itself.'
Leaving gaps in your employment history. However long and tedious, this part of the form needs to be filled in assiduously. You're applying for a role in a school, there will be lots of children about, so there's a non-negotiable safeguarding element to this.
Not providing references at the outset. Asking us not to contact them before deferring to you is fine, but leaving that section of the form completely blank rings alarm bells.
Denigrating - even obliquely - a former employer. Maybe they were horrible and you firmly occupy the moral high ground but we haven't met you yet and so for us, it's 50/50. Those aren't great odds.
Leaving other gaps on the application form. If a section really doesn't apply write N/A. A blank leaves you open to the suspicion that you haven't taken sufficient care.
Things you can't (immediately) fix, but that nevertheless, all other things being equal, did factor in decision making:
Not offering the right level of flexibility in terms of additional subjects taught.
Not having A-Level and GCSE experience (or having less than an otherwise equivalent candidate).
Not having boarding experience (or having less than an otherwise equivalent candidate).
Not having the requisite co-curricular and extra-curricular experience, or not showcasing this sufficiently.
Having a career history that suggests you've moved around rather too often, never staying put anywhere for long.
Not having the necessary experience of KS4 and 5. We had a lot of applicants who were excellent, but had never taught post-16.
Finally, as a startup, we have been very keen to 'get the right people on the bus' as quickly as possible so that we can begin planning for the tasks that lie ahead. This has meant that we have shortlisted for some positions - as we said we would in the application pack - before the application deadline. Annoying though this is, it is just possible that you were a perfect candidate but that we never got to see you because we'd already appointed by the time your application was submitted. Also, the need for some positions diminished, with the recruitment of teachers able to teach multiple disciplines.
So there you have it. Helpful, I hope.
****Addendum****
Since writing this post I have become aware of other reasons why candidates might not be accepted to international schools. To be fair, none of these applied at the time we were appointing our first wave of candidates at MCS, but I do know that they can occur at the murkier end of the international market and in schools operating in countries where such things are the norm.
In such situations, the people who interview you may not be those who make the final decision. Decisions not to appoint can be made for a whole range of reasons which you as a candidate cannot account for. They include:
Loss of bottle - The ultimate decision maker decides that the budget won't stretch to another candidate and so despite having jumped through all the hoops you're not appointed.
Changes of plan - X was going to teach Y but it now transpires can also teach Z and so things have been reorganised to make do without your services.
Racism/xenophobia - Never openly admitted to, of course, but some schools won't appoint certain groups because 'parents won't like it'. Awful, but it does happen.
Visa issues etc. - You may have been the perfect candidate but because of your passport it's either impossible or too difficult to get the right visa for you to work in the school.
Ignorance - Those making the ultimate decision may not have much experience in education. If your qualifications are unusual in any way they may see it as too much of a risk to appoint you.
Delusion - Some decision-makers think that they're going to be able to fill their positions entirely with the 'very best' (Oxbridge educated, first-class degrees etc.) They will reject candidates who don't meet these ideals until doing so becomes completely untenable - and possibly beyond this point.
Cost concerns - You have several children, say, and the school is already running tight margins. A cheaper child-free member of staff may be sought even if you're objectively the best candidate.
A presentation I'm putting together requires an engaging slide to give a bit of background as to who I am.
This is potentially dull stuff, so I wanted to make something that would catch people's interest. Looking around for ideas, I headed to Doug Belshaw's blog where, sure enough, he has a post about representing his CV as a London Underground map.
Mmm I thought... maybe I could do the same as a piste map? So I had a go, using Keynote as he suggests. Here's the result - a bit of fun if nothing else :-)
(With thanks to Jon Standen for passing on this meme!)
Steve Munby gave an excellent presentation yesterday evening in which he presented his thoughts on school leadership in the pandemic era. He structured what he said around six principles, which I share with you here:
Show up and 'walk into the wind' Crisis moments are not the time to delegate. People need the reassurance of your physical presence more than ever in times of crisis. Clear your diary and be in school alongside your staff.
Focus on leadership as service. Steve suggested that rather than asking: 'What kind of leader do I want to be?' ask: 'What kind of leadership is wanted of me?' Remember that in leadership context matters - leaders need to change their style to suit the context they find themselves in. In a crisis, the chances are you'll need to adapt your leadership style for the new reality.
Ask for help. Steve encouraged delegates to become 'invitational leaders' who actively look for help from others. We were encouraged to seek out mentors - people we could call on for help and advice. We were encouraged to be honest with ourselves and accept when we don't know enough. Asking for help builds trust. By revealing your own vulnerability you encourage others to reveal theirs too and to be honest with you.
Be decisive, but quick to review and amend. It's likely that in a crisis you'll make a mistake. Own up to it, be prepared to U-turn, don't soldier on just to save face. People will respect you for your honesty and humanity.
Deal with the urgent, but make space for the strategic and for the future. It's easy to get engrossed in the immediate during a crisis as a leader. Steve encouraged us not to neglect the big-picture stuff. Steve referenced the work done during the darkest days of WW2 on the setting up of the NHS as an example of thinking ahead even in the midst of a crisis. If the leader him or herself doesn't have the time or the headspace for strategic thinking then there's no reason not to delegate it. The point is that strategic thinking shouldn't stop during a crisis.
Be authentic. This last point hammered home the need for honesty and transparency in a crisis. It may well be that controversial or unusual things need to be carried out during a crisis. Mike stressed the importance of managing up in this sort of situation and spelling out to the Board and/or your line-managers what actions you are taking. As Mike explained, if nothing else, getting their agreement makes it harder for them to dismiss you if your solutions don't bear immediate fruit.
A couple of weeks ago I gave this presentation to parents entitled 'Making Kids Cleverer':
As I explain at the start, the thrust of the arguments draw heavily on David Didau's book of the same name. The arguments centre around two things:
the importance of knowledge
the role of knowledge in increasing cleverness
I deal with each in turn below:
The importance of knowledge
Teachers are bombarded by advice from non-teachers about what should be taught in schools. Most commonly, a wealthy entrepreneur, who didn't do well in school themselves, argues that schools should be teaching things like creativity, innovation, collaboration. Often these things are grouped under the heading '21st Century Skills'. It all sounds so noble, so reasonable - who would not want their children to have these skills? But there are problems:
Firstly 21st Century Skills are a conceit. There is nothing new about needing to be collaborative, creative or innovative. It has always been necessary to have these skills.
Secondly, these skills cannot be taught in isolation; they all rest on knowledge. You cannot just walk into a class of 15-year-olds (or 35 year-olds for that matter) and ask them to come up with creative ways, say, of conducting an adenoidectomy. Being creative here requires detailed knowledge of human anatomy, of surgical history, of biochemistry, of histology and so on. And just as this is true of highly specialised throat surgery so it is true in any other field you care to mention, even the more prosaic ones. Coming up with novel ideas depends on a store of knowledge on which creativity can draw.
Then there are the educators who maintain that we only need to focus on '21st Century Skills' because in the 21st Century you can Google everything else (if you think I'm creating a straw man here, have a look here - plenty of people, educators amongst them believe this stuff). The truth is, anyone who's ever asked a Year 9 class to 'go away and research x' will know how inefficient this way of learning is. Children cannot access the material about x on the internet because they don't have the vocabulary or the pre-existing mental hooks on which to hang their research. Direct instruction of new material, carefully modelled in small sequential steps by a teacher-expert is a much more effective way of getting children to learn. Dylan Wiliam explains this superbly here. If you were ever in any doubt about the importance of learning things by heart, you won't be after watching this little clip:
Lastly, there are the futurologists who maintain that we should be shoe-horning into the curriculum the latest and most expensive baubles from the tech industry. Their argument is that not acculturating children to the latest set of VR-googles, phablets or smartphones is an act of gross negligence. But this argument is quickly undermined by pointing out that only a couple of decades ago, state-of-the-art education looked like this:
So we needn't worry too much about 21st Century Skills -certainly not to the point of trying to teach them in isolation - and we should have the humility to accept that what is state of the art today, won't be tomorrow. What we should be teaching in schools is the material that has stood the test of time. People who advocate teaching children the accumulated wisdom of the ages often quote Matthew Arnold, who argued for passing on:
...the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits...
In terms of choosing what actually counts as the 'best which has been thought and said' Didau points towards the Lindy effect and the observation that it is the most durable knowledge and ideas that will be most useful in the future:
What this means for educators is that the sort of knowledge that is likely to be of most use to our students in the future is the sort of knowledge that was also useful to our ancestors in the past. This requires a bit of mental effort to assimilate because most of us are, myself very much included, are attracted to novelty and modernity. But it's hard to argue with the logic of Lindy's observation and the weight of evidence that supports it. What it means in practical terms is that teachers should be passing on the knowledge and ideas that have stood the test of time in their subjects. Fortuitously, in England at least, subject specialists collaborated with the government to put together in the form of the National Curriculum lists of essential knowledge that should be passed on in the various subject disciplines. The first listed aim of the National Curriculum co-opts Matthew Arnold as seen in bold below:
The national curriculum provides pupils with an introduction to the essential
knowledge that they need to be educated citizens. It introduces pupils to the best that
has been thought and said; and helps engender an appreciation of human creativity
and achievement.
There is scope for teaching other things, of course, but teachers shouldn't be ashamed of championing knowledge - in the form of the accumulated wisdom of subject specialists - as the foundation of a good education.
The relevance of knowledge to cleverness
Hopefully, by now you are convinced of the efficacy of a fairly traditional, knowledge-based curriculum as likely to be the most future-proof of all the various curricula that schools might pursue. But we have yet to explain how increasing children's knowledge (or as Dylan Wiliam has it, the contents of their long term memory) makes them cleverer.
One illustration of the importance of knowledge comes from an experiment in which expert chess players and novices were asked to memorise the positions of chess pieces on a board. Where pieces were in positions that could occur in an actual game of chess, the chess experts did better on the memorisation task than the novices. But where chess pieces were placed randomly on the board the difference between the experts and the novices diminished almost to nothing. Expert chess players are at an advantage in the first case because they have memorised knowledge about possible sequences of play. They're at no particular advantage, though, where pieces are in positions that are not possible in the course of normal play:
As in chess, so in other fields of human expertise. In order to become expert at something you need to know a lot about it, and your knowledge needs to have been memorised to the point where it's become part of your psyche and can be recalled with little or no effort. If it requires effort to recall the knowledge space in the limited confines of working memory will be used up. This means that, if tasks can be completed at all, they will be slow, halting and prone to error. Since an important aspect of being clever is the speed of cogitation failure to have the knowledge to act upon in long-term memory is a serious handicap.
Although some aspects of cleverness are inherited, this research shows that cleverness can be increased. Consider these two babies - one lucky, the other less so:
The great news for teachers is that the unlucky baby can more than make up for the disadvantages he has inherited providing he is given a wholesome diet of knowledge and guided towards getting this knowledge into his long-term memory. School can make all the difference and no-one need be defined by their genes. The key is that education needs to focus on helping children know culturally important information. Beguiling, though the alternatives might be they are a distraction. And it's the most disadvantaged, as ever, who have most to lose from well-meaning teachers prioritising the wrong things. The English teacher, Joe Kirby, sums this up far better than I could, so I'll let him have the last word:
The opportunity cost of allowing my pupils to focus on supposedly relevant topics they already know about like celebrities, TV and social networking, is that it limits my time to help them catch up with richer kids who get rich cultural knowledge at home. The opportunity cost of spending entire lessons making posters and trailers, doing enquiry circles and opinion positioning, carousel groupwork and fun games is that they have less time to focus on broadening their horizons by reading and writing about the greatest literature, (auto)biographies and speeches ever written. Given that poorer kids start secondary school thousands of words behind richer kids in vocabulary, it seems to me that we are widening the gap if English in disadvantaged schools is taught without an unrelenting focus on explicit knowledge of context, novels, plays, poems, grammar, rhetoric, spelling and vocabulary.
In this post, I'll be pulling together some models for the use of devices in schools and making some comparisons. This is a complex area of school management, so for the sake of clarity and brevity, I'll be restricting myself specifically to devices, not to other pieces of hardware. Although I will need to refer to software, I'll only do so in so far is it is tied into some devices.
Since I rolled out BYOD at Oswestry back in 2012, a lot has changed. Technology has moved on and many schools have moved on to the second or third iteration of their chosen solution. Some schools have made expensive mistakes, betting on solutions which quickly became superseded. Some, through accident or design, have avoided costly hardware solutions and remain blank canvasses. I hope this post will be useful to senior leaders weighing up the pros and cons of different device solutions for their schools.
Jargon-buster
Unfortunately, like most things IT-related, there are some acronyms it's useful to know about before diving into the detail. In relation to device-use in schools here are the ones you're likely to come across:
BYOD - bring your own device. Pupils (and/or teachers) may bring their own device into school to connect to the network.
CYOD - choose your own device. Pupils/teachers may choose their own device from a range of school-ordained options.
DNBYOD - do not bring your own device. Schools provide pupils/teachers with a device which they use for the duration of their time in school. There are two variations of DNBYOD (also, confusingly, sometimes dubbed YWYT - use what you are told!):
COPE - company owned, personally enabled COBO - company owned, business only
The spectrum of control
In terms of a school's control over the devices, there is a spectrum along which the solutions above fall, best visualised diagrammatically:
Who are the main players?
Essentially there are three main 'ecosystems' which schools can choose to inhabit. Alternatively, they can choose to hedge their bets and allow for all three (or any combination thereof) to co-exist. Each ecosystem has its own quirks, as summarised below:
Apple
Microsoft
Google
👍🏽 Seen as premium.
👍🏽 The ecosystem works on any device.
👍🏽 The ecosystem works on any device.
👍🏽 Proprietary devices are of high quality.
👍🏽 Proprietary devices are Surface Books which as both tablets and laptops.
👍🏽 Proprietary devices are Chromebooks, most of which are relatively low-cost.
👍🏽 If embraced in its entirety probably the 'slickest' of the options. iPads have advantages in primary settings - simple to use, light etc.
👍🏽 Familiar to most people, particularly to those who've been using computers for a long time.
👍🏽 Built for the cloud, probably still the best solution for leveraging the cloud’s advantages.
👎🏽 Locked down ecosystem – only Apple Devices can be used (iPads, MacBooks etc.)
👎🏽 Familiarity breeds misuse. Old-school computer types are too easily able to stick to bad habits.
👎🏽 Chromebooks are a bit cumbersome for the very youngest children. Android tablets are another possible solution, but this means (cf Apple) multiple devices.
👎🏽 A steep learning curve for most schools.
👎🏽 Devices tend to be lower-quality - ‘plasticky’ would best describe them.
👎🏽 Some of the more advanced functionality of the Apple/Microsoft suite of programmes is not available in G-suite.
👎🏽 No single device solution if you want inkability users need both a MacBook and an iPad plus a stylus etc.
👎🏽 Less popular as a solution for very young children as there is a degree of complexity in getting set up etc.
👎🏽 Not the best solution for computer scientists (complicated workarounds needed for programming in certain languages etc.)
👎🏽 Expensive.
👎🏽 Moderately expensive.
Some people will want to point out that there are other alternatives and that this table is not exhaustive. It is true that if you object to the commercialisation of education, or to the concentration of power in the hands of just three American Tech companies, then you could take the red pill and opt for entirely open source software run on any machines of your choice. There are schools that have done this - here for example - but I suspect it's fraught with technical and logistical problems. Also, in its own way, it is just as loaded with contentious political and moral judgement as is deciding to stay mainstream. Open source enthusiasts will roll their eyes, but for the purposes of this post, I'm discussing mainstream options only.
Practicalities
There are multiple solutions to the device conundrum in schools. The more I've researched this, the more I've realised most schools have hybrid systems: some have BYOD for pupils, but not for staff; some have CYOD for younger children, but BYOD for older ones; some insist on Apple devices in one part of the school, but not in others, and so the permutations go on, ad infinitum...
The schools where the neatest solutions exist (i.e. one platform all the way through) tend to be those with limited age categories. It is relatively easy to introduce the Microsoft Surface, say, in a 13-18 school. Making this decision would be harder in a K-12 school where the needs of younger children are different and handing them a Surface to use for their school work might not be appropriate. As most international schools are K-12, most have hybrid systems. But if simplicity's your thing, it is probably the Apple solution (MacBook + iPad) which best caters for the needs of children of any age.
In Thailand, were you to go down the CYOD/DNBYOD route, these are the main contenders. I've included some models and prices to aid comparison:
Metric
Dell
Apple
MS Surface
Price/unit - staff
Dell 5300 13-inch ฿35,500 or Dell 5300 13-inch tablet ฿42,000
MacbookPro 13-inch ฿55,900
Surface i5-8250U/128GB/8GB ฿39,990 or Surface i5-8250U/256GB/8GB ฿51,990
Price/unit - pupils
Dell 5300 13-inch ฿35,500
Macbook 12-inch ฿46,100
SurfaceGo with keyboard ฿19,680
Service agreement
Onsite service with spare parts (4 years)
No onsite service, 1-year warranty for spare parts
No onsite service, 1-year warranty for replacement
Inkable?
Yes
No
Yes
Pros
Excellent service agreement
Inkable - saves paper
Excellent MDM solution - a one-stop-shop
Cost-effective
Not locked into any software Ecosystem
The closest thing that exists to a single solution for everything
Staff already likely to be familiar with MS-Windows
Seen as flagship/top of the range
Ties in with iPads where these are already used
Good for high-end users (artists etc.)
Lightweight, fast
More of a 'statement' than Dell machines
Familiarity with Microsoft
Inkable - saves paper
Cons
Some students will still want Apple machines(!)
Not a 'cool' flagship
Relatively low build quality
Service agreement not as good as Dell
The most expensive option
Most staff would need retraining
Apple does not provide onsite support
Needs separate MDM solution at additional cost
Ties students into Microsoft a little more than a 'Vanilla PC'
Have poor reliability record
Most staff would need retraining
Microsoft does not provide onsite support
The model we have in place at the moment at Harrow Bangkok is a hybrid. As if often the case with these things in schools, it has evolved organically. What we've arrived at is as follows:
Ages 9 and below (UK Year 4 and below) - DNBYOD, school iPads and desktop PCs available for teachers and pupils to use in the classroom as required.
Ages 10 to 14 (UK Years 6 to 9) - CYOD, choose an iPad whilst desktop PCs are available for teachers and pupils to use in the classroom as required. Desktop Macs are provided in the Art and Design Departments and for Music Technology.
Ages 14 and above (UK Years 10 and above) - BYOD, bring a device with a keyboard to school for using in lessons as required. Desktop Macs are provided in the Art and Design Departments and for Music Technology.
Teachers are supplied with a Dell laptop, the newest versions of which (Latitude 7390) are inkable.
Over the past few years we've mulled over becoming an Apple school and we've toyed with the idea of rolling out Microsoft Surfaces etc. But when it has come down to the nuts and bolts, no one solution has been the right fit for the whole school. As a result, we've made a strength out of not having committed ourselves too firmly to any particular platform. Although the array of choices can be bewildering at times, pupils leave our school not having had any particular system foisted on them. They go out into the world with the flexibility to embrace whatever computer system best fits the projects they find themselves working on.
I'd love to hear how things work in your school, particularly if you work in a K-12 international school. Do you have a similar setup? What have you found that works?
