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The scandal of university finances - December 2017

18/12/2017

We are in the midst of a scandal about the finances of universities. We have had revelations about Vice Chancellors’ pay. Salaries in excess of £400,000 are not uncommon and we have seen massive pay-offs when VPs have been forced to resign. It has highlighted the ongoing anger and dismay about tuition fees which are now routinely £9,000 annually for undergraduates and a loans system which means that students graduate with enormous debt.

Lord Adonis, a Labour peer, seems to be the leading voice in a campaign to sort out this scandalous situation but the government seems powerless to intervene. Most commentators agree that universities’ independence from government is a good thing. They are not public services in the way that the police and health services are. Supporters of the status quo say that market forces have to dictate the high salaries of university chief executives but most universities in the UK are not businesses. So what are they? In actual fact, they are constituted as charities.

From our perspective in HertsCam, this is puzzling. We are also a charity and we provide a masters degree programme for teachers (www.hertscammed.com). We have to live up to our stated objectives which commit us to working to improve education in schools. We are obliged to demonstrate that any surplus that might accumulate is spent on furthering our stated objectives. We keep the fees for our MEd programme to the absolute minimum being keenly aware that in schools, money is scarce. We can only keep the fees low – just over £3000 a year – because members of our teaching team are happy to be paid very modestly for their labour. And, we don’t have a chief executive. We have an MEd Programme Leader who is paid at the same rate as the rest of the team. As a founding member of the Board of Trustees, I offer support and guidance to the team but I do not receive payment at all. The point is that we take our charitable status seriously. We do not do provide these services in order to enrich ourselves. We do it because of a strong sense of moral purpose and commitment to serving teachers and schools.

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Decisional capital, technology and human warmth - June 2017

16/6/2017

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Regular readers will have noticed an unfortunate hiatus in my blogging. There was no blog in May. In case you were wondering why, it was just acute embarrassment. Let me explain: at the beginning of May a posse from HertsCam had travelled to Rotterdam to participate in the Education International conference. At this event we launched our new book, published on 1st May. Tweets and emails repeated the good news and a gratifyingly large number of people logged on to Amazon to try to buy the book only to find that it was ‘Unavailable’. We had begun the process of opening our Amazon Seller Account in January but had not reckoned with the extreme rigour of Amazon’s ‘verification’ process. This involves checking every bit of data through which we are identified on Companies House and the Charities Commission websites, at the bank and so on. At HertsCam Publications we expressed our frustration in some very short words and some with just two syllables. We were frustrated by a system which relies on algorithms and standard electronic replies to our enquiries. We just wanted to talk to real people. We wanted dialogue. We wanted to say – so what’s the problem? How can we fix it? Alas, it seems that the Amazon business model does not involve many actual people.

We know of course that this is the way things are done these days. Fewer face-to-face transactions. Fewer opportunities for human error. Pilotless air flight. Driverless cars. What will they think of next? At the EI conference in Rotterdam we heard Andy Hargreaves railing against the march of technological solutions to the problem of education. He gave us a robust critique of developments such as the Bridge International Academies which provides ‘low-cost education’ in countries such as Liberia, Uganda and Nigeria. Their approach is to minimise dependency on their teacher’s ability to plan lessons and make other professional judgements. Teachers are given an iPad with all their lessons pre-loaded, planned by experts at central office. Hargreaves’ argued that in this sort of approach teachers are construed as mere technicians and ‘decisional capital’ is diminished.

In HertsCam, our raison d’etre is to promote a mode of professionality in which teachers’ decisional capital is enhanced and extended rather than substituted by technology, so it is perhaps not surprising that we responded warmly to Andy Hargreaves’ message. Human warmth is what we depend on to support dialogue and collective knowledge building in our network events. We have seen wonderful examples of this recently at an event in Taraz, Kazakhstan where teachers from four local schools came together along with a group of four teachers from HertsCam schools. They used tried and tested techniques to create a sense of friendship and community within a very short period of time. We saw this happen again recently at Sir John Lawes School, Harpenden when colleagues hosted the 6th Network Event of the year. You can tell from the slide show on this website that the event was above all a glorious set of human transactions. You could hear live music from students as network members from many schools reconnected over refreshments in the sunshine. All of this eased the way for robust discussion of vital aspects of professional practice which strengthens everyone’s ability to make decisions and exercise professional judgement in their daily work.

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Distributed editing to amplify the teacher voice - April 2017

26/4/2017

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Alan Johnson’s story is captivating isn’t it? And quite a well-known story these days since he has published his eminently readable memoirs in which he tells the story of his humble beginnings stacking shelves in Tescos, rising to become Secretary of State for Education in the Blair government. He has recently been clearing out is office because he is not standing in the forthcoming election and in an interview he said that he is looking forward to concentrating on his writing. He said that it makes him happy; he enjoys the solitary nature of the activity, spending time quietly writing, refining and polishing your text. Being of a similar age, I also look forward to some of this.

Teachers have much to write about and their stories need to be heard, but the sort of solitary, contemplative activity Alan Johnson anticipates does not necessarily harmonise with the rather frantic life that your average teacher experiences. Besides, writing serves many different purposes. In HertsCam we support teachers in writing about their leadership of development work partly to inform and inspire other teachers, but also to offer policy makers and others in positions of influence a glimpse of how education can be improved by empowering teachers as agents of change. It is no coincidence of course that this is the title of a new book which illustrates and exemplifies non-positional teacher leadership [1]. This book has not relied on the traditional solitary approach in which people write purely in quiet contemplation but it has been more of a collective endeavour. Most of the chapters are co-authored.

Co-authorship in this case does not mean that the projects presented have been led by groups; actually one of the key features of the teacher-led development work model is that participants are enabled to identify a problem that they really care about as individuals. The release of energy and creativity that arises from this is a powerful catalyst for change. Co-authorship in this book is more about lending a hand to the author, bringing a second pair of eyes to the piece, editing to sharpen up the story and adding a perspective that helps to overcome the teacher’s modesty in portraying their own leadership. You’ve heard of distributed leadership; well, this is what we call ‘distributed editing’. Maybe this is how, within a network, we can work together to amplify the teacher voice.

[1] 'Empowering teachers as agents of change: a non-positional approach to teacher leadership' edited by David Frost is now available on Amazon.

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Across the great divide or othering and belonging in a professional learning community - March 2017

28/3/2017

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Anthropologists tell us that humans have a natural tendency to discern groups of ‘others’ and attribute to them a range of negative characteristics. An article from the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society included this:

Studies since the 1950s demonstrate the tendency of people to identify with whom they are grouped, no matter how arbitrary or even silly the group boundaries may be, and to judge members of their own group as superior. Studies dividing students into completely fabricated groups lead to consistently different perceptions of in-group and out-group members (www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering).

This ‘othering’, as some call it, connects with the identity politics that underpins so many catastrophic conflicts that dominate our news these days.

As teachers, we sometimes find ourselves limited by this othering tendency. One tribal divide that tends to persist is the one between primary and secondary teachers. It isn’t hard to find a primary teacher who thinks that ‘they’, the secondary teachers, are not really concerned with the development of children as individuals and haven’t a clue how to make a decent display. Similarly, we still come across some secondary teachers who think that ‘they’, the primary teachers, have low expectations and focus on play at the expense of an emphasis on achievement. There is also the divide between subjects. I learnt from bitter experience as a young history teacher when I proposed that we embrace the idea of ‘integrated humanities’. Colleagues in the history, geography and religious studies departments took the unusual step of collaborating, but only to organise a lynching.

What we need to guard against is the assumption that our professional practice will only benefit more from participating in a dialogue with colleagues who work in a very similar part of the education system or curriculum area - for example ‘Early Years’ or ‘post-16 science’. Of course, such conversations can be satisfying and constructive, but there is the inherent danger that we deprive ourselves of the learning that can arise when we engage in dialogue across the boundaries of subject and phase. This is illustrated in Rachel Woolrych’s chapter in our new book (www.hertscam.org.uk/publications) in which she, as a drama teacher, consults with the modern languages department and the mathematics department to help her to develop her thinking about transferral skills.

When we seek to build professional learning communities, we really need to focus on what we have in common rather than what divides us. Questions like these are essential to all of us: How do children / humans learn? How can teaching enable learning? How can we cultivate positive dispositions for learning? How can we design development projects that will improve practice? How can we persuade colleagues to participate in processes of innovation? What can we do to build positive professional cultures in our schools? An agenda of this kind transcends our sub-divisions. Let’s banish this othering. It’s not big and it’s not beautiful, if you get my drift.

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Empowerment and facilitation - Feb 2017

23/2/2017

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Being a university academic is a particularly privileged life and I am especially I am blessed with having some wonderful doctoral students from whom I learn a lot. For example, I recently had a supervision with Hanan Ramahi. She is remarkable because not only is she an extraordinary champion of teacher leadership, but also because she is the author of the ground breaking report - ‘Education in Palestine: Current Challenges and Emancipatory Alternatives’ (you can find this under Publications on this site).

After our supervision, Hanan and I ran into John MacBeath who enquired how she was getting on. She said: “Oh, it’s great, David really empowers me”, but MacBeath was quick to challenge the construction. “Nobody can empower you”, he said, “you can only empower yourself”. Hanan quickly acceded and reconstructed her comment as: “David facilitates my empowerment.”. This was an interesting exchange because it highlights an issue which is at the very heart of HertsCam’s approach to teacher leadership. In the documentation that guides our programmes there is explicit reference to a ‘pedagogy for empowerment’. You can’t teach empowerment, of course. You can discuss the idea and agree that it is a desirable goal, but the key question is what can be done to enable people to become empowered. In Hanan Ramahi’s teacher leadership programme in Ramallah, Palestine, she has observed changes in teachers in her school. They have become more vocal and they exhibit all the signs of growing confidence. They are excited and seem to be relishing the opportunity to be influential. We have seen this too in HertsCam. Teachers, and other practitioners, engaged in teacher-led development work are visibly transformed. I think it is reasonable to say that they have become more empowered.

What is making the difference here? As Hanan was quoted as saying at the beginning of my story, it is a matter of facilitation. This is antithetical to concepts like instruction and training. Facilitation is partly about creating the conditions within which people can think for themselves, support each other in their reflection and planning. It is also a matter of using tools designed to provide focus, stimulation and structure for dialogue through which individuals can clarify their values and priorities, share perspectives and challenge each other. Engagement in such focused and productive dialogue leads to the ability to express ideas with confidence but also to open their minds to alternative ideas. Thus, assertiveness and self-efficacy are strengthened and easily transferred from the safety of the workshop environment - where participants are like-minded and committed to mutual support – to the potentially more hazardous terrain of the interpersonal interactions and transactions that are the stuff of teacher leadership. Practitioners who want to take up the challenge of leading change in their schools need to sharpen their ability to communicate their ideas, but they also refine the art of negotiation and persuasion.

Having benefitted from the facilitation they have experienced in a TLDW group or on the HertsCam MEd, practitioners find themselves facilitating reflection and self-evaluation on the part of their colleagues, in order to advance the goals of their projects. Some of them also find themselves taking on the role of TLDW Tutor and member of the MEd teaching team where a facilitative approach leads to empowerment for those who participate in those programmes.

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Snapshot of a teacher-led masters course - Jan 2017

10/1/2017

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Imagine the scene. It is a late Tuesday afternoon in January. We are in a suite of classrooms in a secondary school in Stevenage, Hertfordshire. Teachers are arriving from all over the region. Eventually there are about forty people gathered in out of the cold, grabbing the tea and biscuits and having animated conversations about their day’s work – teaching in primary, secondary and special schools. Amongst this crowd of teachers are six or seven who are very busy arranging the furniture, logging on to computers, arranging piles of documents, fetching the sandwiches and cake trolley, making last minute adjustments to PPT presentations and having ‘conflabs’ about the activities that will be leading from around 4.45pm. These very busy teachers break off from their preparations to say hi to other teachers as they arrive and by 4.30 they are prepared, relaxed and ready to lead the 3 hour ‘twilight session’ of the HertsCam MEd in Leading Teaching and Learning.

In one classroom there is a session for the Year 2 cohort who are just starting their fourth Module, ‘Leading Development Work’. The Module Leader, Clare Herbert, is a primary school headteacher and member of the MEd Tutor Team. She opens the session by saying something about her own biography. She tells the participants that she has been a teacher for fifteen years and a member of HertsCam for ten. She had been a participant in an earlier version of this MEd programme and shortly after graduating had become a supervisor on the programme. She became a headteacher a couple of years ago and is also in the final stages of a part-time doctoral study. In teaching this module Clare is assisted by another long-standing member of the HertsCam team, Paul Rose who is an assistant headteacher and English teacher in a secondary school. Jeni McLean, a Year Head in a secondary school is also helping to teach this module.

In another classroom, the Year 1 cohort are being introduced to their second Module, ‘Improving Teaching and Learning: Exploring Starting Points for Development’, by the Module Leader, Tracy Gaiteri. Like Clare, Tracy starts by outlining her teaching career and her experience as the headteacher in two schools. Particularly inspiring was her story about how being a participant in the HertsCam masters herself was transformative. She said that it had enabled her to focus on the most pressing professional problems for her at that time and, by applying the rigours of scholarship and engaging in collaborative dialogue with colleagues, she had been able to improve practice in her school. In teaching this module Tracy is supported by Maria Santos-Richmond, who also outlined her biography as a secondary school teacher with more than 20 years of experience. Also teaching this module is Alis Rocca, also currently on her second headship in a primary school.

Tracy, Alis, Clare, Paul, Maria and Jenni are part of a team of twelve teachers who teach this masters course. They are both ordinary and special. They are ordinary in that they are teachers in state schools, but they are special in that they have chosen to become scholar practitioners - something I have written about before (see my blog post, 13.5.13). You might assume that they do this on behalf of and under the supervision of a university. No. They own this programme. They plan the modules. They teach the modules. They provide one-to-one supervision. They assess assignments. This unique masters programme belongs entirely to HertsCam which is an independent charity governed and managed by teachers.

If you want to know more, you can email the Programme Leader Sarah Lightfoot (slightfoot@hertscamnetwork.org.uk) or her Deputy, Sheila Ball (sball@hertscamnetwork.org.uk).

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A salute to ‘il professori’ - Dec 2016

1/12/2016

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I was asked to present the prizes and give a little talk at the Robert Barclay Academy in Hertfordshire recently. The headteacher, Ced De La Croix, made an address which featured the idea of hope and, as I listened, I recalled the optimism of the beginnings of the school in the 1970s. The first headteacher of what was then known as Sheredes School was the late Maurice Holt and I recalled reading his book The Common Curriculum (1978) in the early stages of my own career as a teacher. I found it particularly inspiring because, although it sat next to a very large number of excellent texts about the ‘common core curriculum’, it was the only one written by a theorist who was also a practicing teacher. As a headteacher, he had the day-to-day responsibility for children’s learning, their curricular diet and their achievement. This represented for me then as now, the apotheosis of teacher professionality – the scholar practitioner who both teaches, leads and contributes to the development of educational knowledge.

Maurice Holt’s headship at Sheredes in the 1970s gave many of us a great sense of hope about the future of mass education and my recent experience of the Awards Evening at Robert Barclay Academy renewed that feeling. The school hall was full to overflowing with students, ex-students and parents and it was my privilege to shake the hands of all the young people who came up to be recognised and applauded. The sheer variety of their achievements was a pleasant surprise. There were prizes for Science, Maths, English and all the subjects you would expect, but also for things like Creative Writing, Dance, Photography and Community Work.

After the awards had all been made, I was introduced with considerable panache by the Head Girl. Her speech was fulsome and flattering, but there was just one tiny error; she introduced me as Professor David Frost which gave me a status I don’t actually have. At least not at home I don’t. When I travel abroad it is commonplace to be respectfully referred to as Professor but in my department in Cambridge only 10 percent of the staff actually hold that position. When colleagues at the University chat about this, someone will inevitably say, ‘in Italy, even primary school teachers are called Professor’. An exaggeration of course, but also an implicit denigration. Why is it so laughable to acknowledge the status of a teacher with the title of Professor?

I don’t yet know the staff at Robert Barclay Academy well, but it was clear to me at the Awards Evening that a lot of talent, hard work and commitment on the part of the teachers had contributed to the achievements of the young people we were there to celebrate. I was delighted to learn that RBA has recently joined HertsCam and Rav Phagura, one of the assistant headteachers, has become a member of the TLDW Tutor Team. HertsCam is a network of schools and teachers who are not only good practitioners, but are also engaged in the leadership of innovation and the creation and refinement of professional knowledge. I think that Maurice Holt would have approved of HertsCam and RBA’s joining up. In a recent obituary, I learnt that he had become a professor subsequent to his headship at Sheredes, which I think is a fitting recognition of his work as a scholar practitioner. In my view the teachers that I am privileged to meet through my work as a Trustee of HertsCam all deserve this honour. So I want to take this opportunity to salute the teachers and show them the respect they deserve; as they say in Italy: 'I miei rispetti a maestri e professori'.

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Author

David Frost writes a monthly blog focusing on aspects of teacher leadership.

If you would like further information email: dfrost@hertscamnetwork.org.uk

Summary of Posts:

December 2017: The scandal of university finances

June 2017: Decisional capital, technology and human warmth

April 2017: Distributed editing to amplify the teacher voice

March 2017: Across the great divide or othering and belonging in a professional learning community

Feb 2017: Empowerment and facilitation

Jan 2017: Snapshot of a teacher-led masters course

Dec 2016: A salute to ‘il professori’