Michaela School and behaviour - AIBU

[herculepoirot2]

AIBU to think that you might read this behaviour policy and think it is authoritarian and unnecessary, but to also think that, with results four times better than the national average, these people might have a point about the benefits to young people of being expected to work hard and behave well?

mcsbrent.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Behaviour-Policy-11.02.19.pdf

Central Stevenage is not 'leafy'

There were kids at ds’s old school where turning up and registering for an exam was a massive achievement.

Why?

I definitely do not think those grades are only for shirkers. I have taught kids for whom a grade 2 or 3 represented a huge achievement and a lot of hard work. The fact is that they are not the majority of kids who get grades 1-3. The overwhelming majority of 1-3 grades that I see are kids who have not worked hard enough. I don’t believe that my school is especially unusual in that regard either.
Are you really saying that the majority of the grade 3 and below that you see are kids who worked hard and got the very best grade that they could? If so I’d love to come and work in your school. It must be an amazing place to work.
That’s the dream isn’t it? That all kids get the very best grade that they could and the grades 1-3 represent a genuine achievement for kids who could not have done any better. At the minute I believe a lot of those grades go to kids who could have got better grade if they’d worked harder or been in a more focused environment.

The interesting thing about Michaela is how it quite proudly sets itself up as an outlier. Like Millwall their slogans should be ' nobody likes and we dont care' . They work with other schools but only ones with the same mindset and not with other local secondaries. The ' they want us to fail' thing is a historical throwback to the protests against setting up free schools in areas with surplus places. That splendid isolationism is not going to go down well in Herts. I know two SLT in a Stevenage school who are already concerned about Michaela aggressively poaching their intake.

Successful black hat does well. Ooooh she's a right winger. Cannot have that no no no. Deprived children don't do well at school they cannot have expectations raised. Well, it looks like they do. And can. Great post

Maybe this is the difference between an English teacher and a history teacher, I don't know, but at all levels there is a range of attitudes to learning, but certainly I taught this year many students for whom a 4 was a pipe dream because their ability was the basic barrier. I did not give up, but it is not surprising that some of them felt overwhelmed, disengaged and dispirited.

Just in case anyone is labouring under any of their own misconceptions, KB doesn't herself come from a remotely disadvantaged background. That's not to denigrate her work or aspirations for those who do but it is a narrative that some do try to build.

The overwhelming majority of 1-3 grades that I see are kids who have not worked hard enough.

But you teach an options subject so the kids who are unlikely to get a grade 4+ even with a lot of hard work are filtered out. They don’t take it because they don’t like it, or because the Y9 teachers encourage them elsewhere. Maths and English have to teach them all.

I’ve taught some kids who were never going to get a 4, of course I have. But I have taught many more who were never going to get a 4 by Year 11, whether they worked or not. If their hard work and application had begun in Year 1, they would have passed.

Do you really think that OP ? I'm a bit at a loss there.

I do.

The English department at my school get even higher 9-4% than the history department despite not being an option. I think last year 94% of our mixed ability cohort got a 4 in at least one of their English subjects. Our pupil premium percentage is way above national average and we are in one of the London boroughs with worrying levels of knife crime and gang violence.
I just don’t agree that there are huge numbers of kids out there for whom a grade 4 is never going to happen. Not if there is a disciplined school environment where doing well isn’t seen as uncool.
I have a relative who works in another London comprehensive with similar results and even higher levels of deprivation. (One of the ones that sends crazy numbers to Oxbridge). High standards and strict discipline isn’t bad for disadvantaged kids.
I find it insulting that as soon as a school does well for a disadvantaged cohort people start trotting out lots of reasons why they probably aren’t really doing a good job. They must be managing our kids with SEN, they are only training them to parrot facts, their kids won’t have any social skills, they won’t be able to think critically, they must be miserable, the kids can’t even breathe in these schools, it only works because the kids come from immigrant families, their families probably pay for tutors and so on. I don’t know why we can’t just see a school doing well, be pleased and see if there’s anything we can learn from them.

No,but you are getting more funding per student than anywhere else in the country...

I wonder whether maths and English gcses are fit for purpose as leaving qualifications?

Do you think it would be better for those who are unlikely to reach a 4 to instead do a numeracy and literacy qualification to aim for a pass? I mean in many jobs you don’t have to do trig or geometry but basic arithmetic, place value, percentages are common. Similar for English - I’m not sure a lot of people would use essay writing, but it might be helpful to do comprehension and composition (eg letter/email explaining a problem with adequate grammar).

Kids could always sit gcse later if they wanted to build on their qualification.

I work in school were getting below a 4 is definitely not cool, but plenty of students still get them.

Absolutely agree, Sabine.

I just don’t agree that there are huge numbers of kids out there for whom a grade 4 is never going to happen

But it’s a zero sum game because of how the grade boundaries are set. If one extra kid gets a grade 4 at your school, that means one fewer kid at another.

Possibly, name but the trouble is everyone sneers at those qualifications (they already exist) and some people believe all students should be able to get at least a 4 if only they worked hard enough.

I wasn’t expected to perform, I was “guided” away from Alevels and not allowed to take them due to dyslexia. I did Scottish highers and whilst doing them was advised to look at uni courses with a C grade only.

I went on to go to get amazing grades, went to a small uni to start off with, ended up with a scholarship for my masters and then for my PhD from one of the top three universities in the country.

I wish I’d gone to mikaela because it took years to get my confidence back as I was told I would never
Achieve and barriers were set on me.

I self taught myself for my highers mostly because most teachers (not all) had very low expectations of me.

Good for the school. Underprivileged children should have the same expectations of educational success as rich ones. Low ambition for certain kids is extremely damaging. I’ve seen bright kids give up under the weight of everyone around them from parents and peers to teachers acting and behaving in ways that keeps them down to the point they give up and the prophecy is realised.

I volunteer in local schools in my spare time to try and inspire kids from poorer backgrounds to break through and succeed. One of the easiest ways for them to do this is to ignore those who appear to be on their side, making excuses for why they can’t succeed and excusing poor behaviours because they can’t be expected to do/know any better. These people, no matter how well meaning, are not on their side.

I hope the kids from Michaela will go on to be huge successes and make a real difference. They can be the kind of success stories other working class kids can look up to and emulate because I’m sick of working class kids being shown the cast of TOWIE and football players to aspire to whilst their ‘betters’ waltz towards ‘their’ careers’ in senior roles in media, finance, law etc.

If the first 10 minutes of every lesson isn’t filled with the teacher having to beg two of the kids to be quiet, the kids may get a chance to succeed.

Flude

Well, sorry but I come from the bonkers left wing end of the spectrum that doesn't view a 3 as a fail!

It's a 3.

Sabine you’re in a London school, and London schools massively outperform schools in the rest of the country, Surely you must understand that people are looking for reasons as to why this might be the case beyond ‘London teachers just teach better than teachers in the rest of the country’.

@noblegiraffe - I guess it depends on how grade boundaries are set. There are niche subjects where distribution of grades doesn’t look normal.

It is a zero sum game. We have lots of really hardworking students in lower sets for English who currently get 4s. If brighter kids in other schools were doing better they wouldn’t get 4s.
From a purely selfish point of view, whilst other schools are getting poor results ours look great but in a fairer society our school’s 9-4 and 9-7% would be broadly average as our kids come in with average prior attainment scores.
You are right that we get more funding, but if more funding would improve the 9-4% in your school that only goes to prove the point that currently many kids are missing out on 4s who have the potential to do better. Funding helps but the key to the results we get is strong discipline. Other local schools with the same funding formula but worse behaviour aren’t doing as well.