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

I disagree with dictating the lip balm brands from an ethical perspective. Carmex is cruelty free but uses animal derived products. Whereas Vaseline is derived from petroleum but not cruelty free. Why should children be forced to compromise their ethics if vegan/ opt for cruelty free.

Have I missed something about the lip balm brands? Who says kids have to use Carmex?

Knowledge can be used to be creative.

Have I missed something about the lip balm brands? Who says kids have to use Carmex?

Policy states they can have lip balm on person but only blue/green/brown vaseline or carmex

Your posts remind me of pengwyyyn.

Pink Vaseline is tinted so I guess that’s why they dictate allowed lip balm.

Not sure how a vegan would cope at Michaela as the food is compulsory and vegetarian, so I think lip balm choice would be low on their list of concerns.

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.

This is a common complaint from Maths and English (not from Science strangely) but it has positives too, taking on every student-such as being guaranteed the highest ability or having tiered papers. For example, RS is often taken by all students in a lot of schools and they don’t get the benefit of two tier GCSE exams or increased teaching time at KS3/KS4. I remember teaching every single student at KS4 when it was considered a core subject (not now, thanks Gove!) but on only 1 hour a week and no Higher/Intermediate/Foundation paper-just one for all. It was no big deal however, because we were guaranteed the highest ability as well as the lowest. With option subjects, nowadays, the highest ability can be creamed off to the Triple Sciences etc. Leaving the option subjects with the others who aren’t allowed to take it. The ‘they chose your subject so they must be good’ is not always true. I’d be a millionaire if I got a £1 every time a parent or student says they will take my subject because they ‘love using a computer’.
We all have positives and negatives in the subjects we teach.

At Michaela School? The only policy that I can find just says no coloured or flavoured lip balms. I can’t see anything about brands. Or is this another school?

Do you mean my posts or the OPs?

I am a name-changer and have been around a while but am not pengwyyyn. I think I remember them though... didn’t they work in a private school?

English does NOT have tiered papers!

It was to try to explain why the kids getting grade 1-3 in history might just be ones who didn’t work hard, but in maths and English because they had no hope of getting a 4 in the first place.

I don’t think any of my bottom set lovelies (they really are lovely but have zero chance of passing maths GCSE) take history. They’re on a different pathway.

Sabine the policy linked to in the OP mentions specific lip balm in the items allowed to be carried on the person.

Science is different as they do teach all students but also have triple science and a bit less relentless results pressure. I teach both English and a mixed ability option subject and results were higher in the option subject than in English.

There’s also the option of BTEC science.

Actually, is BTEC science still offered? Or did progress 8 do for it?

So it does... I see it now. I’d only looked at the contraband list for what was banned.

I think my place is different because we don't have pathways. Although triple science is encouraged for most able , students can choose whatever options they want. And doing triple science would never mean students having to forego , say, computing.

Any jobs going at yours Piggy?!?!

Making higher quality teaching normally available to the whole class is likely to mean that fewer pupils will require such support

I think Michaela would say exactly the same thing about their policy. What they seem to be doing is the very essence of high quality first teaching.

Ed Psychs disagree on all sorts of different things. I’m not sure you couldn’t find a decent number that support michaela’s position over any other schools especially when it comes to SpLD.

All of our students choose 1 subject from History and geography so it’s not the case that I don’t teach “bottom set” kids. I do.
As I’ve already said, I’m not any sort of teaching whizz. I’m not doing anything magical and the pattern in history is not special in my school. Our RE and English departments wipe the floor with us. Our teachers are great but really, no better than thousands of teachers all over the country. I’m fairly confident that our English department is one of the highest performing in the country, their progress score last year was over +2 on fft. If our English teachers went and worked in a school that has much lower results and their teachers all came and worked at our school what would happen? Well our teachers would get far worse results and theirs would get much better results, because it’s not really the quality of the teachers that is making the huge difference. It’s consistently good behaviour that allows teachers to get on and do their jobs well and students to focus and learn.

Chloe, there are ALWAYS computing jobs.

Is the progress score in secondary as badly affected by pupils wEAL and SEN

Not sure what happened there. That should have been with EAL and SEN.

Usually higher EAL (especially early stage English in year 7 rather than fluent bilingual) correlates with higher progress scores in secondary. We have high EAL but low numbers of early stage English learners.

Does anyone know what Michaela’s APS on entry is?

All of our students choose 1 subject from History and geography so it’s not the case that I don’t teach “bottom set” kids.

Thing is, you said that 94% of your kids pass English, which means that your bottom set kids are very different to most schools’ bottom set kids!