Lesson observation

[fairymuff]

I'm feeling really deflated about our lesson observation policy. I feel that everything is set up for teachers to not to be able to get outstanding as every student needs to be working at or above their minimum target grade, which, for some of the more challenging classes, is nigh on impossible regardless of how many interventions and support you put in place.

We have no choice over the class we get observed with and this time round, despite me teaching other classes where all students are working at or above their minimum target grade, this particular class I was observed with is one I share with another teacher (Who hasn't taught them particularly well) and five students have significant personal needs that impact on their attendance and progress. This is the class I have worked the hardest with in terms of helping them to improve but due to factors way out of my control they are unlikely to progress to the target grade they are supposed to.

As a result, there is no way my lesson can get judged as outstanding even though other features of it are.

For context, I was in my old role an advanced skills teacher and part of the best practice teaching team in my school. The other advanced skills teacher has now left and part of the reasons for that is for the same reasons as I mention above.

Everything seems so arbitrary and dependent on the class that is chosen for observation. What is equally frustrating, is that these observations go towards our performance management statements at the end of the year.

[noblegiraffe]

Your school is way behind the times if it is grading lesson oberservations - even Ofsted dropped it because it’s subjective shite. Possibly something you should raise with your union?

Your performance management should also not be data driven. Progress data is made up bollocks. It also shouldn’t be based on shared classes.

[fairymuff]

Thanks noblegiraffe

I totally agree and I've tried, but I'm struggling to find evidence of this to poke under their noses. I've not been on leadership for a couple of years now as once I had my kids I gave up my role - so am feeling a bit out of the loop with regards to policy change. I recall the debates on Twitter about it and know it IS out there but do you know if there are any particular docs I should look at?

[noblegiraffe]

Ofsted’s mythbusting document might help?

In particular:
Ofsted does not award a grade for the quality of teaching or outcomes in the individual lessons visited. Inspectors do not grade individual lessons. Ofsted does not expect schools to use the Ofsted evaluation schedule to grade teaching or individual lessons

Ofsted does not require schools to predict their attainment and progress scores. It is impossible to predict attainment and progress as examination and test results for each cohort are compared nationally and this cannot be done until after the examinations or tests.

Inspectors do not expect school leaders to set teacher performance targets based on commercially produced predictions of pupil achievement, or any other data set, from which they would then hold teachers to account.


www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-inspection-handbook-from-september-2015/ofsted-inspections-mythbusting

[fairymuff]

Thank you so much noblegiraffe

What concerns me is the our school improvement partner (an ex HMI) is directing contradicting this advice and SLT are doing EVERYTHING he says.

Lesson observations are one thing but they are also so incredibly reactive to the SIPs comments and then pass this on in the form of additional staff workload.

Problem is, every time I question the logic of something, I'm getting branded as the difficult one.

The school's not in a good place generally, I think I need out. I've loved working there but I'm kidding myself to think it's going to be any different any time soon.

I will, however, contact my union rep about bringing this up in a meeting.