Chapter 5: Classroom and Subject Leadership
Chapter 5: Classroom and Subject Leadership
Introduction
We were now established as young teachers, delighted with our next career choices and keen to make our mark as leaders, in all three cases as subject leaders or heads of department in comprehensive schools. We saw the opportunity to make a real impact on teaching our subjects and to begin implementing our values and vision for schooling. We were determined to ‘make our mark’ on the school system.
Bernard was appointed as head of history at Sir Frederic Osborn School (11-18) in 1973 and spent five years there, leaving for a deputy headship in 1978. Rob and Cherry both had more than one middle management role. Rob’s first post, beginning in 1975, was as a subject leader in St John’s School, Cyprus, a mixed 11-18 comprehensive that catered for the sons and daughters of military personnel and civil servants. He moved to his second post in 1978, as science and technology coordinator at Bushfield Community School (11-16), in the heart of a new township in Peterborough.Cherry worked as a middle leader in three schools, beginning with Coleridge Community College in Cambridge (11-16), starting January 1984. In January 1987 she moved on to be head of English at Mildenhall Upper School (13-18) in Suffolk. Her third middle management post, which followed a career break, was at Stanground College (11-18), Peterborough.
This phase of our careers spanned the decade from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s. During this period there were many significant changes to schools and school policy. As we shall show, these changes had a definite impact on our careers. It was also the period that signalled the death threat to schools such as the one Billy Casper attended.
The Educational Context for our Middle Leadership Years
Prior to us becoming middle leaders, there was a sea change in educational fortunes. The previous focus on access to schooling and the structure of the school system was now replaced, as discussed earlier, by an emphasis on the link between school standards and economic performance. Secretaries of State for Education were increasingly frustrated by the established partnership between themselves, local authorities, schools and teachers[i] and were keen to increase the role played by central government and its agencies.
Despite this fundamental shift, there was an increased focus on children as individuals, a change of emphasis that recognised the worth of each learner and led the way to more flexible ways of grouping pupils. Schools began reducing barriers to attainment by adopting less rigid approaches to setting and streaming and encouraged access to a wider curriculum. Educators began to review the curriculum and questioned for the first time existing conservative boundaries to subjects and subject content. The teaching profession began to think of new approaches to teaching and learning that increased the scope for enquiry and participation. Teachers, working in partnership with local education authority advisers, often led these developments. A new professionalism emerged whereby a teacher’s worth was measured by his/her skill in, and familiarity with, new developments in the classroom. The burgeoning arrival of Teachers’ Centres, led by teacher trainers, passionate about new techniques, was the vanguard of change in the classroom. This was a new approach to the sharing of ideas, materials and different ways of testing knowledge. CSE, especially in its mode 3 variant, was an important vehicle for this kind of development.
Both the Nuffield Foundation and the Schools’ Council had considerable impact in developing mathematics and science courses that increased their relevance in the wider world and stimulated independent learning. Another notable example was the Humanities Curriculum Project[ii] that promoted classroom discussion with the teacher becoming a neutral chairperson rather than a source of knowledge. This project was a good example of the loosening of subject boundaries and a reduced emphasis on a received body of knowledge. Enquiry methods began to take precedence over content learning. There were experiments with pupil-centred learning and new ways of engaging young people, usually through much greater participation in lessons. In addition to Teachers’ Centres, new teaching organisations were established. The teacher-led National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) and the Centre for Language Teaching (CILT), together with the long-established Association of Science Education (ASE, formed in 1963) and many other organisations, helped teachers share new ideas for teaching their subjects and generating new materials for the classroom. These groups were also active in helping teachers develop CSE mode 3 examinations to suit new ways of learning in the classroom. These initiatives and support groups provided the fertile context in which we thrived as subject leaders, determined to improve teaching and learning.
This enthusiasm was not universally shared, however. The Black Papers, referred to earlier, offered a searing critique of new trends in education. The editors, Brian Cox and Tony Dyson, had working class backgrounds and attended post-war grammar schools. They met at Cambridge University and saw traditional schooling as opening the door to their own careers in academia. In support of grammar school education, Dyson wrote:
We need, in fact, the selective, idealistic and astringent educational system which emerged in this country under a high culture, and is currently being destroyed by a low one. Instead what we are getting is an egalitarian levelling…which functions in a declining culture both as a symptom and a further cause.[iii]
Politicians were influenced by these sentiments and continued to ask questions about what went on in schools, raising doubts about the appropriateness of education being in the hands of local authorities, the Schools’ Council and teachers. Understandably, these doubts often left parents feeling confused and vulnerable. Their children’s schooling was very different to their own schooling, leaving many parents feeling insecure. In addition, the media fuelled the growing suspicion of current approaches to teaching and learning.
Partly because of this, the 1970s became a decade of negative press campaigns. These often focused on major reports that critiqued traditional methods and suggested new approaches aimed at improving learning. Two such reports were the 1975 Bennett Report[iv] on Teaching Styles and the 1977 Bullock Report[v] on literacy. These reports were significant catalysts in developing new approaches to teaching and learning but the press enjoyed stirring controversy about what they saw as progressive approaches. In addition, the national press frequently drew attention to schools perceived to be in crisis.
One notable example in 1975 was the William Tyndale School in Islington[vi]. The case started a national debate about appropriate ways of teaching and managing a school, pitching formal methods against progressive approaches. The controversy originated in a dispute amongst the staff about the introduction of innovative techniques initiated by the headteacher and his deputy. Their experiments in classroom democracy and in the widening of children’s choices within the school, led to one teacher complaining publicly that they were neglecting educational basics and denying children appropriate academic growth. This resulted in some progressive teachers being subjected to strong criticism from parents disorientated by modern developments and insecure enough to welcome the ceaseless attacks in the popular press. This very public controversy led to a sharp fall in the school roll. The unfolding story widened divisions within the Inner London Education Authority, between the authority and the school management, between radical teachers and traditional teachers, between teachers and managers and between teachers and parents. The issues were not straightforward but the outcome, loudly trumpeted by the media, was the ‘apparent’ failure of one progressive London school. This led to a swing towards traditional ideas and a move towards a more interventionist approach to school management.
There was an earlier precedent to the William Tyndale School affair. This concerned a newly-created secondary school, Risinghill. It opened in 1960, following the merger of two secondary moderns and two technical schools but was closed in 1965 following a disastrous conflict between traditionalist staff and progressive school leaders. There was much resentment, from the outset, about teachers from single-sex schools being required to teach in a mixed school for which they were ill-prepared. Also, the heads of the predecessor schools were expected to serve under a new head whose methods and expectations were often radically different from their own. Michael Duane, the new head, refused to allow any form of corporal punishment in his school at a time when this was a widely accepted practice. Duane was a compassionate and kindly head who wanted to create a different learning environment for his students but the controversy surrounding his approach led to his downfall and the closure of the school. A positive outcome is that, even today, former pupils are working together to present a very constructive view of Risinghill and the care they received there. Leila Berg, an interested journalist, was moved by Michael Duane’s misfortune and felt there had been a travesty of justice.
These examples illustrate the divisions and arguments surrounding educational issues following the arrival of comprehensive schools and the creative approaches adopted by primary schools when the eleven plus ended. These tensions, first emerging in the late 1960s, were still evident well into the 1980s. Teachers, parents and politicians often held firm stances as either traditionalists or progressives, with the latter often described as ‘lefties’. Although this polarity is far too simplistic, it encouraged media coverage of a perceived crisis in education and this was coupled with a growing mistrust of the ‘system’. This dented confidence in education across the country. Inevitably, this de-stabilising effect encouraged politicians to further intervene in both primary and secondary education.
Despite all this turmoil and change, we were thriving in our comprehensive schools and were keen to play an increasing role in shaping teaching and learning to improve attainment for all and broaden experience. Although the schools we taught in were far removed from the exigencies of Tyndale and Risinghill, it is clear from our stories that we encountered both opposition and support for our approaches. As middle managers we had to find new ways of dealing with opposition and building trust in both ourselves and the initiatives we pioneered.
Bernard’ Story
Haberdashers’ thrilled me and lessons with able children were wonderfully exciting but it was not what I planned to do. I was supposed to help disadvantaged children like Billy Casper. Was my life to be about preparing young men to study history at Cambridge? What about the poor? What about the girls? What about the principles of comprehensive education?
After a chance encounter with the General Studies Project (GSP) director who suggested I ought to be a head of department by now, I promptly applied for, and gained a head of history post at Sir Frederic Osborn School in Welwyn Garden City. Age 27, with two years’ experience, I was not even properly qualified because my probationary year had been completed in a private school.
Rex Tregunna, the head, came from a deprived background in Cornwall. This experience gave him a remarkable empathy with youngsters from disadvantaged or traumatised backgrounds and he was completely different to Mr Gryce in KES. Rex was athletic, gentle, and willing to spend hours listening to children. He walked the building and grounds, chatting with youngsters through break and lunch time.
Sir Fred’s was a lucky school in those days. Children were bussed in from numerous comfortable villages, including Old Welwyn and Knebworth, and from Hertford itself, where the schools were single sex. If parents wanted co-education for their sons and daughters, Sir Fred’s was the natural choice and relatively close. It was less fortunate in its buildings. These were of classic Hertfordshire design, prefabricated and assembled on site with an internal steel frame holding windows and structural panels in place. With two schools merged together to form the new comprehensive school, there was an inevitable duplication of facilities, with divided accommodation for science and design technology, for example.
The merger caused similar problems with people. There were too many teachers who had expected to be deputy heads, heads of department or pastoral leaders. New arrivals from outside were viewed with alarm as possible whizz kids, likely to leap over the wreckage of the pre-comprehensive era. I’m afraid I fitted this profile, especially for Linda, an internal candidate who never accepted my appointment. She disagreed with my plans to reform the history curriculum and was angry when I discontinued departmental meetings. Chris Jordan became a strong ally in pushing forward the ideas about history teaching I brought with me from Haberdashers’.
Chris was quick to grasp the potential of history games and simulations and was soon inventing his own. We thoroughly enjoyed team-teaching and very soon we were challenging one another to come up with new and better ideas. I suggested a lesson sequence based entirely on the Tudor kitchen. What is different from your arrangements at home? How would this impact on your cookery? Inspired by the Royal Hunt of the Sun[vii], Chris imagined a confrontation between Atahualpa and Pizarro. Our classes came together in a single crowded room while we performed as the leaders of the Incas and the Spanish, ready to confront one another in the sixteenth century Andes. Students could ask any questions they liked. We would answer. Homework was to explain how a small force of Conquistadors succeeded in conquering an entire empire, almost overnight. Why was Atahualpa so easily tricked?
Chris fell quiet during a particular frenzy of bright ideas. I suspected he was working on something good. It was the Medieval Medicine game. Half the class became doctors and were given cures to sell. The rest were patients suffering from a variety of diseases and were given money to spend on treatment. The winning doctor made the most money by selling cures. The winning patient survived treatment. The key to the game’s success was a carefully constructed table showing the relative effectiveness of typical medieval treatments for commonly occurring illnesses. Mercury killed those who bought it but bloodletting was relatively neutral, unless you suffered from open wounds acquired in battle. Doctors were free to ply their wares while patients could sample as many cures as they felt would be useful.
As we gained in skill and confidence, we built relationships with other schools and organised joint weekends at Pearse House, the county residential centre for young people. One year we staged a reconstruction of a murder mystery set in Charles Booth’s London, with the students assigned characters in an unfolding investigation. Another year there was trouble in an early nineteenth century cotton mill, where the owner was careless about human life and imposed long hours and harsh conditions. We became increasingly ambitious and staged our grandest event at Sir Fred’s itself one weekend, with a mixed menu of lectures, music, activities and food. The day was devoted to Russia. We showed Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin[viii], asked participants to design a Soviet new town in Siberia, staged a show trial at the height of the purges and played Shostakovich's Leningrad symphony before concluding with generous bowls of Borscht soup and jacket potatoes, prepared by my wife, as the German tanks roared.
This was 1976, however, and these experimental methods were at variance with the divided assessment system in play at the time. But by the end of my time at Sir Fred’s we had succeeded in establishing our own GCE and CSE Mode 3 examinations, in a format consistent with teaching methods that emphasised simulation and debate about alternative outcomes. We abolished long dissertations and asked candidates to write in the examination room about a ‘subject that you have studied in depth’. I published my twentieth century world history lesson materials to support this approach. Basil Blackwell’s History Replay[ix] series aimed to take students inside the minds of historical agents, to help them understand the influences on decisions and to see inside the human calculations that led to action.
To my surprise, these methods often did not overcome the difficulty less able students experienced in coming to terms with historical events. I tried everything to make abstract ideas tangible. An early trading game, for example, used longitude and latitude to negotiate trade winds and travel the earth but, in a few classes, students were perplexed. My response was to hurry home to my workshop and make little ships and tokens for their cargo. I replaced my attempt to simulate navigation with a playing board where you moved through squares to ports around the world. There was a moment of understanding and they played for a while but were soon bored. ‘What do we do next, sir?’ asked a group of girls as their tokens clustered on the African coast. I wanted to suggest buying slaves and embarking on a voyage to the Caribbean but knew this was a step too far. If I explained everything, I might as well tell them the whole story and have done with it.
These were not my only difficulties with less able or disadvantaged children. I also struggled with misbehaving youngsters in small bottom groups that were dreaded, as it turned out, by many of the teachers. Peter would wander around the room making funny noises. Jeremy would interfere with the trading boards and spill the little ships on to the floor. They were brilliant at finding your vulnerable point and working on it.
My first timetable included a lesson that appeared on the print out as ‘Humanities/Canoe’. I asked the deputy head what this meant. He explained this was the Humanities Curriculum Project (HCP), an innovative teaching scheme devised by the Schools Council. I’d find the materials in a cupboard on the third floor of the main block. I hastened upstairs and found the cupboard. The materials comprised a set of plastic envelopes containing newspaper articles about various subjects. There were notes about how to set up a discussion. The teacher’s task was to enable a constructive dialogue but to remain a neutral chairman, a facilitator for the young people’s enquiry. When the first class arrived, I recognised them as fourth form leavers. ‘Hey, mate,’ they chorused together, ‘Where’s the canoe?’ The original intention was that leavers would alternate the HCP with a visit to a canoeing centre but this had fallen through. ‘Sorry, folks,’ I apologised, ‘You’ve got this instead’. I opened the first envelope and distributed the printed matter. The leavers sat down grumpily and glanced at the article. It was far beyond their reading ability and even more remote from their interests. In later years, I discovered the project was the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, then a legend of progressive education. In truth, no one really knew what to do with the group defined in a 1968 Schools Council report, The Young School Leaver[x] .
The staff room was a friendly place but below the surface there was a clear divide between teacher traditionalists, who had grown up under the old system, and supporters of comprehensive education, eager for changes to give students equal dignity and curriculum access. The division was deepened by a battle over streaming. Colleagues struggling with difficult classes made their feelings known and over a short period of time opinion shifted towards de-streaming.
With the staff in favour of change, Rex felt able to abolish streaming. In future, children would be organised in mixed-ability forms, with setting for individual subjects as appropriate. As head of history, I was a strong supporter of mixed ability and intervened in debates to say there would be no difficulty teaching history in all ability classes. We should provide learning experiences accessible to everyone but allow for responses that would vary by a child’s interest and ability. What was the point of comprehensive education if we segregated children by IQ? Although I spent my own school career in top sets, I always disliked the status hierarchy at Eltham Green and believed it was contrary to comprehensive principles.
I was in my pomp as a teacher, working with Chris to develop and trial new ideas, publishing learning materials, setting up a Hertfordshire History Teachers’ Association (HTA), coaching hockey and cricket teams, founding a school newspaper and organising sixth form conferences on various subjects. Iris Murdoch and Kingsley Amis were among the visiting celebrities who helped maintain an atmosphere of excitement and anticipation. But public success provoked resentment. After a few months Nigel, the new head of English, asked for a quiet word. He was disturbed, he said, by the history teaching in the school. We were encouraging constant argument and debate; we were asking pupils to reason issues through for themselves. This wasn’t what history should be about. We were giving the children nothing to believe, no island story in which they could take pride. ‘Yes, that’s the whole point,’ I said.
The positive glow of innovation and active learning for young people was soon jolted by news on the front page of The Daily Telegraph. Dr Rhodes Boyson had denounced us as Maoist revolutionaries[xi]. County Hall wanted to see me, the radio programme ‘World at One’ was scheduled to arrive mid-morning, and several newspapers were lining up to ask questions about the offending Maoist indoctrination classes. ‘Drive safely,’ said Rex, patting my arm as I gathered copies of the departmental syllabus and our learning resource booklets before setting off for County Hall in Hertford.
It helped that the education officer greeting me on the steps was a Sir Fred’s parent with a son in my second year (year 8) history class. I explained the story and showed the booklets. ‘Am I producing Nazis as well?’ I asked, hoping a rhetorical question would do the trick. ‘You’ll need to be careful,’ he replied, ‘There’s a lot of press interest in this.’ There certainly was. Robert Fox interviewed me on the theme of ‘bias in the classroom’ and I emphasised, quite truthfully, that at Sir Fred’s the typical history lesson presented evidence for different points of view and invited students to work out what was going on. Boys and girls, touchingly eager to help me, insisted that ‘Mr Barker never tells us what to think, we get both sides of the argument.’ Friends rang to congratulate me on my radio appearance while Rex prepared a statement for the press. By the end of the day I was confident we were in the clear until Rex popped into my classroom. The governors demanded a full meeting about bias at Sir Fred’s.
A few days later I waited for an hour in the corridor while governors deliberated. Rex was probably telling the story and calming troubled waters but the length of the wait allowed other thoughts to pop into my mind. Perhaps they thought I was a communist? Perhaps I should be sacked? Eventually admitted to the inner sanctum, I found myself scrutinised by strange faces. One Conservative councillor was very concerned. ‘We can’t have communism here,’ he said. ‘There is no communism here,’ I said. ‘We simply introduce students to the idea of political propaganda and help them think critically about dictators who manipulate people.’ The councillor did not follow my logic. ‘There’s communists everywhere,’ he said. ‘Where do you mean?’ I asked. ‘In the cabinet, that Tony Benn, he’s a raving communist.’
Cherry’s Story
My first post as head of English was at Coleridge Community College in Cambridge, starting in January 1984, not an easy time of the year to change schools. Coleridge was a mixed comprehensive school with approximately 750 pupils. It was previously two secondary modern schools, one for boys and one for girls. The schools opened in 1938 and the building was very stolid and symmetrical - boys on one side, girls on the other. It was seen as the working class school of southern Cambridge, always in the shadow of Netherhall, a grammar school with a sixth form prior to becoming comprehensive. In terms of ability, Coleridge was described locally as having a ‘long tail end’. During my time there it was never full to capacity, unlike Netherhall. This meant we had places for the Vietnamese boat children who arrived in the city and proved to be an exquisitely talented and hardworking group of students. We also had room for the children of visiting professors who were very bright and stayed with us for only one or two years.
The school operated a rigid setting policy and for some curious reason English was linked with science and geography for grouping purposes. The three heads of subject had to liaise over where to place new entrants to the school. This was always the subject of hot debate and disagreement between us, especially where it concerned the children of visiting professors and refugees. Invariably I wanted to put them in the top or the second set; invariably the other teachers wanted to place the newcomers in bottom sets with intellectually disadvantaged youngsters whose behaviour was often problematic. I was told this was because they couldn’t speak English! Not only did these youngsters acquire fluent proficiency in English in a few months but they also brought a wealth of experience and cultural diversity to the school.
My arrival, along with one or two other new recruits, lowered the average age of the staff considerably. A large proportion of the teachers was in their late forties and fifties and had significant experience of state secondary modern schools. The head of special needs, who usually taught the bottom sets in English, was a caring, skilful practitioner who was very open to new ideas and suggestions. She was pivotal, her skills were obvious to all and were respected by all and she was an excellent ally to newcomers who could be regarded with suspicion. She had a gift for knowing what young people needed and opening their minds to new opportunities. In a very rather austere, physical environment, she knew exactly how to build the softness and welcome that characterized the SEN[xii] department. It was no surprise that pupils wanted to be taught by her. Under her exemplary management, they felt safe, they grew and they looked forward to school each day.
There was an on-site Hearing-Impaired Unit. It was run by caring professionals who earned the respect of all. The children were well-treated and carefully integrated into school life. Although the school could have easily slipped into an uncomfortable masculine culture, the SEN department and the Hearing Unit softened this possibility, as did the arrival and induction of the boat children and visiting overseas students. Although there was no overt strategy, these initiatives humanised what would otherwise have been a stolid environment, and made Coleridge an interesting and engaging school.
In personal terms, my first head of English post, at age 30, was a real challenge. The staff in the department liked everything the way it had been for a long time. They were all older than me, up to 27 years older, and that presented a challenge. There were five of us in total and three of them made it clear they had no energy for change. One was a new entrant who trained as a mature student. We joined the school at the same time and she was very positive and hardworking but inexperienced and needed support. I felt the weight of the challenge, especially when I discovered the second-in-department had held the fort for a term but had not been interviewed when she applied for the job. She remained hostile and difficult throughout the period of my tenure. A polite request to teach a certain text for CSE resulted in her calling out across the crowded staffroom: ‘No, never, and I hope your arms and legs drop off.’ A curious non sequitur, but it took a while before I could smile about it and repeat the anecdote with detached good humour.
Why change anything? The department ticked over quite nicely. The top set was entered for GCE ‘O’ level examinations in both language and literature, and did quite well. Three other sets were entered for CSE English with set 2 often gaining many ‘O’ level equivalent passes, especially when taught by the elderly man in the department. He alternated with the woman second-in-department for teaching this set and his results were always superior, an important and reliable point of pride for him. In the longstanding tradition, the head of department always taught the top set; others preferred not to do so. It was not a question of top dog taking the best group; quite the contrary, it came with the job. The team didn’t want it or the responsibility that went with it. They also did not want to let go of the comfort blanket of The Art of English, Experience of English and numerous other outdated textbooks that provided the core of daily English lessons.
Then turbulence arrived in the form of a crusader for informed, personal response, role play, simulations, discussions, work journals and any number of new ways of expressing your thoughts and feelings about literature, journalism, current affairs, the world at large and, in particular, the issues close to the hearts and experience of young people. There was nothing unique about me. I belonged to a wave of teachers, excited by new approaches to teaching English and the organisations set up to support us. In particular, in my field, we had the National Association for English Teaching (NATE) and its Cambridgeshire offshoot. The local Homerton College PGCE team were also inspiring, especially Meg Styles who was notable for her approaches to poetry. Instead of working in isolation, creating endless materials to stimulate personal responses from young people, we could buy booklets and materials aplenty for the classroom, share the outcomes with colleagues at meetings and collaborate to develop young people’s voices and responses. We also attended training courses led by inspiring lecturers and advisers who helped us to enhance our teaching skills.
The Bullock Report, A Language for Life, heralded a significant period of change in both English teaching and the development of language through other subjects. It had significant implications for the whole school, and seminal implications for the way educators looked at language across the curriculum. The report emphasised the equal importance of all four key language skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing. The previous emphasis in schools such as Coleridge had been on writing. It also emphasised the importance of making language relevant to young people by, for example, increasing the breadth of literature used in English lessons, encouraging speaking and writing in many different styles for many different audiences and much more. The Bullock Report signalled that pivotal moment when the ‘I’ entered students’ writing and English teachers moved towards a personal response informed by context and wider knowledge.
How should teachers, set in their ways, be prompted to move from the workbook style of teaching to something far more creative and student-centred that enabled the students to practise many different skills? As I was new to managing people, the answer for me was awkwardly, clumsily and difficult. My only ally was a new entrant teacher who was not yet skilled in the classroom while our young people were not used to contributing opinions, taking part in debate or entering into discussions about their writing. Talk stimulated disruptive behaviour until the students got used to new ways of working and new behavioural norms. Noisy classrooms gave useful ammunition for the ancien regime that enjoyed tut-tutting about the noise coming from a particular classroom. By changing the GCE examination board to suit a different way of teaching and through the support of the new recruit and the head of SEN, I gradually started to change things and ‘open up’ our approach to teaching English in a collaborative manner. Our results with the new Plain Texts[xiii] GCE ‘O’ level literature paper were outstanding, the best the school had experienced. That helped. I never succeeded in changing the lady who wished to see me dismembered, although I am pleased to report that my limbs remain intact.
After three years, I missed sixth form teaching and started applying for jobs in bigger schools. In January 1988, I was appointed as head of English at Mildenhall Upper School (13-18) in Suffolk. At the time it was a progressive school, similar to Stantonbury Campus[xiv] in Milton Keynes. Mildenhall is known for its large American Airforce base but the upper school served only the local community and was managed by Suffolk LEA. Our year groups numbered 300 in years 9 to 11 and the sixth form had about 400 students on roll at the time. The school served a very large rural area and the intake presented plenty of issues with many students coming from problematic homes. The young people bussed in from Brandon often presented particular challenges. We also had a very interesting cohort from Newmarket where many boys had very sketchy attendance patterns, stemming from their casual work as grooms or other menial jobs at the racing stables. School held little interest for these lads. Far more students were bussed in than lived locally and this made it hard to unite the school population.
The new headteacher, Terry Lewis, preceded me by one term. He was appointed to smarten the place up, improve behaviour and improve the outcomes for young people. Prior to his arrival, the school’s reputation had sunk, both in the eyes of the local community and the LEA. The teachers were impressive, warm, welcoming, very bright and creative. There was a strong ‘esprit de corps’, perhaps because of the challenging intake or perhaps because they had taken a batterings from the LEA and the local Press at the time. The school opened in 1976 as a dedicated, mixed comprehensive so there was no split between the secondary modern teachers and those trained in comprehensive schools. This resulted in a very different staff culture from Coleridge.
My predecessor had made sweeping changes. All text books were consigned to the back of the store cupboard and, led by her, the whole department had collaborated on producing booklets for the newly introduced GCSE examination, as well as thematic booklets for the third year. The preparation was complete and the work seemed impressive until put to the test in the classroom. The intention was a serious attempt to have all members of the team work together, presenting tasks suitable for all students. Students studying both English and English Literature to exam level were expected to produce ten pieces of work and two of these were to be completed under examination conditions. The school had prepared well for this, using the shared booklets in mixed-ability groups.
The problem was the lack of challenge, everything was aimed at a bland middle. The classes were, on the surface, well-behaved because they chatted to each other quietly while they carried out the work at their own slow pace. There was a lack of activity to stimulate thinking and intellectual challenge was limited. Previously, as part of the move to full mixed-ability grouping and away from comprehension and précis exercises, the department had focussed on diary and letter writing, preparing newspaper articles and reports from court trials (where characters and novels and poems were put ‘on trial’). Unfortunately, the staff had not been trained in how to develop this approach in a way that would improve the students’ writing. When I raised questions about the impact of the booklets and the absence of high-level outcomes, there were mutterings of ‘I see, we’re moving to the Right now.’ The new head was regarded as belonging to ‘the New Right’.
So, in the minds of my colleagues, what was the New Right and what was it trying to achieve? Irrespective of this, I was aiming to lead a department that was rich in stimulus materials across several genres, including good quality journalism, stimulating debate, reviewing up-to-date documentaries, and extracts from journals and biographies. I wanted a shared starting point using rich materials that added to students’ vocabulary, provided a context for debate and higher level stimulus for their own creative and discursive writing. I asked the team where should we pitch our teaching in mixed ability classes. Should we teach to the top and then hope to reach others along the way? The same can be asked of any classroom, mixed ability or streamed. The challenge was to find stimulus materials across all genres that can be understood in different ways by everyone and then to work with students to develop their individual responses. I could never be happy with teaching materials where the reading levels were pitched at the middle simply so that everyone could work independently and in their own time. It saddened me to think that this approach should have any particular political classification, let alone the ‘New Right’, whatever that meant. It just seemed to me that it was about high quality teaching for good learning.
Rob’s Story
The brand-new St John’s School building in Cyprus was designed for 2000 pupils and intended to become the University of Cyprus when the British Forces pulled out – a lasting legacy of colonial occupation. The original school was a motley collection of huts spread down an adjacent hillside. It was now being demolished. The 2000 pupils, sons and daughters of the British military and civil servants, had contracted overnight to 350 following the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island. We had oodles of space.
Life in general was pretty good. We worked from 07.30 through to 13.30 and then the school day stopped. We taught seven forty-minute lessons with two short breaks and no lunch. By early afternoon the temperature was too high to do anything other than flee to the beach with beer and a picnic and then alternate between the warm sea and the shade. At work and before term started, my first task was getting the brand-new physics department operational. It comprised two new labs, prep rooms, an optics room and a massive apparatus and resources store. All the apparatus had been boxed up for the move and was in disarray.
Service children in service schools are an unusual social group. There are no Billy Caspers. By definition, every child has two parents and every father is in good well-paid work. The children are, nevertheless, quite insecure. On the face of it, they are usually socially confident and outgoing. But deep down the regular move of location and school often manifests itself as slight anxiety and a lack of self-belief.
Once term started, I felt deflated at the prospect of, at one level, delivering a mundane science curriculum that slavishly followed the Scottish scheme ‘Science for the Seventies’[xv], and by the lack of discussion about mixed ability teaching. All classes were streamed and that was how it would remain. At this time, mixed ability teaching was a hot topic in the UK and the debate was stimulating and purposeful. Not so here in sunny Cyprus!
My teaching felt dull and monotonous despite the happy and relaxed culture of the school. Gone were the challenges of difficult children. Gone was the thirst to design and implement a genuine comprehensive pedagogy. Gone, with minor exceptions, was any meaningful education discourse amongst colleagues. Far more important was sun and sangria.
I put up a research proposal to Bath University for a masters degree in education, flew back for an interview and was accepted. Basically, I was out to demonstrate that the conceptual demands of ‘Science for the Seventies’ were not matched to the students’ stage of cognitive development. My quantitative research, using a sample of the school pupils, proved my point and my thesis secured the degree, but the science department showed only cursory interest and nothing changed.
By far the most satisfying aspect of school life was being tasked to run the very vibrant Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. Here was a real opportunity to do something creative and challenging with individual students. This work led to me chairing and running the annual Horseshoe Hike. This involved a gruelling five-day expedition across the island with full military support. Over a hundred youngsters from various Cypriot, British and Forces schools and youth organisations took part. It was a great piece of cross-cultural endeavour.
The second-best decision my then wife and I made was to take the job in Cyprus but the best decision was to leave at the end of my three-year contract. For me it was time to go for head of science in a UK school. Many of my more staid colleagues thought I was far too inexperienced for such a role, as I had only been teaching for six years.
‘PS: bring your wellies,’ said the letter inviting me for interview for ‘cross curriculum co-ordinator for science and technology’ at the brand new Bushfield Community School then being built in the centre of the Ortons, a large new township in south west Peterborough. I got the job and a few weeks later flew back to England for a planning conference with the inspiring and incredibly well experienced Principal, Ray Stirling, two deputies, six co-ordinators, four heads of subject and four newly qualified teachers. We were to be pioneers, wrestling to create a proper comprehensive pedagogy built around an articulated set of facts, concepts, attitudes and skills that all children should encounter. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
Bushfield Community School was situated in the heart of the Orton shopping centre and included a dual use library that linked the school with the public space. It opened with 159 (1st to 3rd years) children in September 1978. We were going to make a fresh beginning for both the students and comprehensive schooling. We were, for a start, going to be very nice to the children – even friendly. But we decided that they would not be on first name terms with us, unlike at Stantonbury and Countesthorpe, two well-known progressive schools where this was the norm.
Billy Casper could easily have been in our intake. The social and economic problems rapidly became enormous as an unstable new population arrived from all over the country, seeking work and better living conditions in a new town. My romantic notions of building a warm and human environment for learning were to be fulfilled in this new and exciting setting. However, by the first half-term break our dream was becoming a nightmare. Some students were running rings round us and order was on the verge of breaking down. In our febrile state of mind about learning and the curriculum we were losing sight of the need to provide an orderly, secure and safe place for the children to be in. We needed to remember how insecure they were and the need to provide boundaries and clarity of expectation. With a jolt we ‘came to’ and things changed rapidly. The hatches were battened and our progressive aspirations were moderated until we had everything back in balance. We succeeded and by the end of the school year all was well and we had established a compromise between our progressive and traditional approaches.
Ray was putting me under pressure to produce a taxonomy of learning for science and technology in the whole curriculum, something that had never been done before, and then there was the everyday business of lesson planning and teaching. We piloted the ‘three-part lesson’ in science, long before it became commonplace, and produced extension work at three levels of difficulty for our lively mixed ability classes. We were already planning the shape of the curriculum for the years 10 and 11 curriculum and I negotiated and secured the requirement that all students should do both physical and biological science to examination level. Some would convert this to physics, chemistry and biology at GCE and all would do an additional hour a week about science and technology in the wider world. In addition, I was determined to use the results of my research degree to ensure that the curriculum fitted appropriately with the students’ cognitive development. The result was that I became an insomniac and to this day do not know how I survived that year.
Professionally, everything moved on apace. We gradually got Bushfield up and running but we never grew at the projected rate. By the time I left the roll had only grown to about 600. There were two reasons. The township grew slowly and our progressive school was regarded by many as too risky when a more traditional neighbouring school had spare places. Through Ray’s efforts, we gradually became well known in professional circles and were recognised for what we were doing. There was a steady stream of visitors coming to see our methods. Many could not understand an open door policy that enabled teachers and students to move freely from one lab to the next, or how one of us would do a lead lesson to three classes at once on a new topic. Even more befuddlement arose around our one hour a week session for years ten and eleven on science and technology. We had visiting expert speakers or showed films, all with the purpose of helping children to see and discuss the impact of science on our way of life. The topics were many and varied and often controversial. One example, done in connection with the drama department, simulated the trial of a scientist accused of needlessly using animals in experiments to perfect cosmetics.
The cross-curriculum bit developed slowly. I was involved in the teaching of many subjects including drama, English, maths, history, PE, RE and home economics. Centred round our taxonomies, we sequenced work across subjects so that students had a clearer insight into the knowledge we were dealing with. Rigid subject boundaries were thus removed and children, we hoped, could see conceptual fields more clearly. And, of course, other lines of development impacted on the science subjects. We worked, for instance, with the language co-ordinator on alternative ways for students to present the results of experiments that more closely reflected their language development.
Somewhere along the way our work was noticed and I was invited to give talks here and there to the science teaching community. The Association for Science Education picked up the theme and I was asked to give a keynote at their national conference. This led to me being invited to apply for the Memorial Fellowship Award given every two years for achievement in science education. I applied and won – effectively a blank cheque to go anywhere in the world to look at the way science was taught. I decided to go to Australia for six weeks and did so in 1983, after I left Bushfield.
Following this award, I was invited to chair a national working party looking into the future of the science curriculum. I worked with a range of excellent and influential practitioners and academics and our final report recommended introducing double subject science at GCE level. This was subsequently taken up nationally and implemented. It is controversial to this day!
Four years on, in late 1982, my ambition and desire to run my own school was getting the better of me. A few applications and two interviews later, I secured a deputy headship and another step up the ladder. By way of preparation for deputy headship I arranged to help one of the deputies with timetabling. I also took responsibility for arranging cover for absent colleagues for one year. These were important rites of passage for the aspiring deputy head in those days.
Reflecting now on the Bushfield years, several issues come to mind. Unfortunately these are more about the things we got wrong, not the things we got right. I firmly believe we made a huge and positive contribution to comprehensive pedagogy but, with hindsight, we could have done some things much better. For instance, we tended to assume we had full parental support for our methods. We didn’t take sufficient time and trouble to explain what we were doing, how we were doing it and why it was good for the children. The result was a lack of trust that sometimes spilled over into the students. We were viewed as a group of trendy lefties upsetting the orderly and traditional view of education. As a result, the school didn’t initially secure the popular community support it deserved. We should also have given more attention to the craft of teaching with an emphasis on assuring progress and achieving results. We were so consumed by lofty discussions about the curriculum that we didn’t put enough stress on what was actually going on in the classroom. Were the students really learning and making progress? We had no tools and no measures with which to judge this. We often left colleagues to their own devices instead of helping them to be better. But, overall, these were valuable and productive years in developing a comprehensive school and a comprehensive pedagogy from which many students benefited.
Discussion
Our early idealism was dampened by the familiar tests and trials of student and probationary teachers but these were soon overcome and burgeoning confidence led us to seek greater responsibility and influence. As we moved into middle management, we encountered new obstacles to our reformist aspirations. The economic and political climate was changing, with newspapers and ministers expressing mounting scepticism about the relaxed and progressive trends that had flourished during the sixties. Even so, the education world continued to embrace more child-centred approaches and to develop a distinctive comprehensive education, with its own methods and internal structures. Teachers themselves were expected to play a leading role in developing new curricula and examinations.
Despite the Black Papers and negative press reports, we found that ‘head of department’ was a vital strategic position and gave us the power and resources to change culture and practice in our subjects. We were allowed to lead and teach, although dramatic coverage of events at William Tyndale and Rising Hill warned us of the dangers of losing the confidence of our colleagues and parents more widely. The largest single obstacle to proper, engaging courses for young people, especially the disadvantaged, was the age 15 leaving age, not national cause célèbres. This meant that a significant minority of leavers was deprived of valid courses and qualifications because their date with the employment market fell at the end of the fourth year (year 10). These young people could become disaffected, especially if the school gave them insufficient attention, and often posed significant discipline problems that would have been familiar to teachers at Lumley Secondary Modern.
Our early schools were well-established and successful by the standards of the time and offered a stable platform for our new methods and culture-changing plans. Cherry (English) and Rob (Science) were significant players in developing a broadly-based curriculum in their respective areas. Science was a subject for every student, regardless of ability level, with a growing emphasis on practical work. English was moving away from traditional textbooks, with their preoccupation with written exercises, to encouraging a wider concern with listening, speaking, reading and writing, as recommended by the Bullock Report. Internal micropolitics were a priority for us as we established improvements but we often stumbled over awkward colleagues and the sheer difficulty and complexity of serving the needs of the full ability range. Bought-in schemes like the Humanities Curriculum Project did not work for Bernard, while Cherry was sometimes stalled by colleagues who pitched their lessons and materials at a comfortable and essentially unchallenging middle. But we were well-supported by advisers, teacher centres and subject associations like the ASE and NATE.
Our schools also reflected the patchwork of comprehensives that emerged in the 1970s. Cherry’s Coleridge lived in the shadow of the ex-grammar, Netherhall, while Rob found himself fighting for Bushfield’s reputation against a more traditional, conservative neighbour. It mattered where you were in the local pecking order and the proportion of disadvantaged students was likely to increase in the lower reaches of the table. But all three of us continued our intense and demanding commitment to every aspect of school life, including a variety of extra-curricular activities. We exhausted ourselves keeping up the pace but were proud of what we achieved. Rob’s experience in Cyprus was atypical and offered some respite from perpetual change and innovation, but in the end, he was bored by too much sangria and sunshine and returned home for a new challenge.
[i] Driving seat
[ii] humanities project
[iii] dyson quote full reference and page numbers required!!Roy Lowe The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom Abingdon: Routledge (2007 p. 57
[iv] Bennet report
[v] bullock
[vi] Tytndale Needs full reference to the Auld Report at least.
[vii] rising sun
[viii] potemkin
[ix] history replay
[x] stenhouse school leaver
[xi] daily telegraph
[xii] SEN
[xiii] plain texts
[xiv] stantonbury
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