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

No. You’re supposed to just trust what they say about most of their pupils not being able to read or multiply when they start in year 7.

If their kids can’t read or multiply when they start in Y7 then you’d expect their progress 8 to be way more than 1.5 given the number of 9s they raked in.

Oh come on. Michaela have not claimed that no child starting with them can read or multiply. Just ‘some’.

I can’t work out if people on this thread are displaying a healthy cynicism or a baseless fury that a system that goes against their personal values is working so well for the children there...

In what way do you imagine our bottom set kids are different to most schools? Our school has a very average prior attainment profile. In that cohort last year we had kids with SEN, kids who were looked after, kids who had been excluded from other schools (that year was undersubscribed so there were a few of those), teenage mothers, refugees etc: Not all of those were necessarily in bottom sets to be fair. In what way are they any different to the cohorts in thousands of other schools?

Rafals If their teaching is orientated to rote learning, and their aim is for SEN pupils to have mastered 80% of eg GCSE content then it is not high quality teaching. There needs to be a mix of teaching styles recognising that memory based teaching styles do not work for some children (whether or not they have a SpLD). My DDs are both in the top 95% ability range but neither at GCSE they could have mastered 80% of content. Instead the school focused on giving them the skills and strategies that enabled them to gain marks where they had strengths and minimise the areas where they had (very significant) difficulties. One of my DDs has a photographic memory but very poor aural memory and processing so in an MFL exam she could focus on vocabulary and set grammar over the listening and oral sections of the exam whereas my other daughter was the exact opposite, struggled with vocabulary and picked up her marks on the listening section, they got an A* A and B between them.

Once you get to university level and into the real world, it is analytical skills, problem solving, creativity, understanding and ideas that matter, not content. I have pretty much forgotten all the content I ever learned, I even have to use strategies to access times tables never mind trigonometry and algebra but when I needed to work out the equation of a curve for work, each time I used the logic skills my brilliant Maths teacher taught us (even back in the 70s) to teach myself how to do it, and as you don't cover that until A level, I had never been taught it in the first place. I have heard the High Mistress at St Pauls, Sarah Fletcher talk about this at length, she believes the methods used to teach dyslexic / children with SpLDs by giving them skills and strategies work for all pupils, and varying teaching styles is important. She also believes that pupils with different learning challenges bring a lot to the classroom in terms of different ways of thinking around problems and issues. In a classroom where for instance a period in history is being discussed different ways of thinking about an issue can be very valuable in teaching the whole class about an issue. The best private schools do not focus on rote learning but on giving all their pupils skills and strategies that see them through lifelong learning. I failed History O level because I had no hope of mastering the content, yet I have successfully studied it to Master's level, using theoretical frameworks to hang the content on, if I understand why something happened, and have become intrigued by it, it will be the key to remembering what happened, and that would be a useful tool for many children, not just ones with learning difficulties.

A school automatically putting their SEN pupils in the bottom stream with the excuse that they need to be taught more slowly as the Michaela does misses the point, they are not necessarily "slow" they are different and find one area of memory based learning that is unfortunately the pedagogic norm especially in traditional Conservative education difficult but they also have strengths that can be played to and that will benefit all pupils.

I would not let a child with SEN near the place.

In what way do you imagine our bottom set kids are different to most schools?

Given your results, they’re different in that at least some of them will pass English. Most schools have an English pass rate much lower than 94%. Which must help with their history, no?

The pupils we teach often arrive at school far behind, unable to read fluently or multiply. Many have a vocabulary of fewer than 6,000 words, while wealthier pupils often have one of over 12,000 words

That’s one out of a fair number of quotes that were made about the first couple of cohorts at the time they started.

My personal values are fairly well aligned with Michaela. But they have a tendency to overstate some of their claims, sometimes at the expense of other schools.

It does help. As I said, the history department at my school isn’t special. What is special is the school culture and the leadership of the Headteacher, who is amazing.

@Emilyontmoor - I’m sure a lot of people would want teaching like at private schools where there are multiple different styles for different people, more interaction etc. But I think it would be hard to deliver with large class sizes.

I’m sure many teacher have planned for brilliant engaging lessons with cool demonstrations to be wrecked by kids who misbehave. It is sad that behaviour levels have made such draconian methods necessary. I was more scared of what my parents would say than teachers if I did something bad.

There needs to be a mix of teaching styles recognising that memory based teaching styles do not work for some children

Absolute rubbish. All learning has to be memory based. Not rote learnt, but memory based. Learning is a change in memory.

There have been plenty of studies which have discredited learning styles. VAK is the biggest load of bollocks going.

DD2's school is adopting strict new rules. They have introduced a "learning hub" for children that break any of a long list of minor behaviour rules. Inattention, dropping a pen on the floor, talking at the wrong time, asking a question at the wrong time... Anything that is deemed to disrupt the class.

DD2 has ASD. She's actually said she'd like to go to the hub in one sense, because it sounds dark and quiet. The other part of her is very scared that she may do something that breaks a rule without knowing. Last term, she was told off by her tutor for reading in tutor time. Not because it's against the rules, but because the teacher decided she needed to be more sociable in tutor time. She reads to escape the pressure of being in a tutor group that she feels very uncomfortable in.

Her school changed the uniform rules last year. Now they've changed them again, with the threat that any non-compliance will result in a visit to the hub. Shoes that fit the rules last year, don't this year. The £25 skirts we bought last year are now too short because they've decided that "7 cm above the knee" should change to "knee length".

I love the idea of strict rules. But when a child is so anxious about inadvertently breaking rules, when they barely speak in class anyway (and have to be encouraged to speak), that's counterproductive.

I know DD1 would not survive the rules of this school. She's been to special school since she was 4 and her school sees behaviour in the context of need. She's pushed, but in a way that she can cope with.

Rafals If their teaching is orientated to rote learning, and their aim is for SEN pupils to have mastered 80% of eg GCSE content then it is not high quality teaching. There needs to be a mix of teaching styles recognising that memory based teaching styles do not work for some children (whether or not they have a SpLD)

I agree with Teachermaths: what you can’t remember, you haven’t learnt. Learning styles (visual, kinaesthetic, auditory) are debunked. People learn by repeated exposures to material in formats they can understand, and by processing of that material. “By rote” isn’t bad teaching when you a) know it and b) understand it. It means you have learnt it.

A school automatically putting their SEN pupils in the bottom stream with the excuse that they need to be taught more slowly as the Michaela does misses the point

My dd would have been stuffed then. She has SEN (asd, hypermobility & possible dyspraxia) but unlike her brother has lightning quick processing speed and a scary IQ. Her difficulties were she couldn’t get her ideas down on paper as her brain worked faster than her fingers and she was always 5 steps ahead.

Would she necessarily have ended up in the bottom stream then come? I’m not sure how Michaela streams but I think some of it is down to timetabling of reading and maths interventions. I don’t think it’s as simple as has SEN must be put in bottom stream.

“By rote” isn’t bad teaching when you a) know it and b) understand it. It means you have learnt it

Not necessarily. Plenty of people can do times tables to 12 12 but ask them what 13 12 is or 120 * 12 is and they go to pot.

Rote teaching teaches facts. But learning facts does not equal understanding or applying. Or thinking creatively. Or applying.

It looks like their SEN policy has changed but when I read it a couple of years ago they had a policy of automatically putting all students with an SEN in the bottom set.

Dd may well have ended up their as in Year 7 her CATS tests showed high ability but written English tests she was massively underachieving.

Not necessarily. Plenty of people can do times tables to 12 12 but ask them what 13 12 is or 120 12 is and they go to pot.* Learning your times tables is one of the most useful things you ever do

Rote teaching teaches facts. But learning facts does not equal understanding or applying. Or thinking creatively. Or applying.

I know that one does not equal the other. You are better off with both, but without facts, you are poorly equipped for applying anything, or creating anything. Facts are the foundation stone.

Or, more accurately, knowledge is. Think of Milton: when he wrote Paradise Lost, consider his application of what he knew about politics, philosophy, history, theology, languages, mythologies. The man was blind, and he wrote one of the most beautiful pieces of writing ever written in any language. He didn’t just pull it out of his bum.

Facts are the foundation stone

There's lots of facts out there. Probably too many. I would hate to be in a school that focussed too much on facts and didn't focus on other things to help develop a well rounded student ready to face the world.

There are some things that GCSE results can't measure.

At the moment - I think critical thinking is something that should be high on a curriculum.

The ability to analyse, question, research, argue....I wish we could have a GCSE in that.

If you don’t know what 12 12 is then you’re fucked if you’re asked 120 12. Can’t work everything out from first principles all the time, exams are timed after all.

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!

Hercule I agree with you that facts are the most important thing you need before you can use any other skills.

You can't add numbers until you can count. Counting is completely rote learning. You can't use Pythagoras' Theorem to work out a missing side on a triangle unless you know the theorem to start with. Applying the theorem to a complex problem requires the ability to read, problem solving, diagram sketching etc. But you can't escape the need for facts first.

The most useful thing that my maths averse dd ever did was to learn her tables up to 15x15. Properly, by heart. Otherwise she would have wasted so much time going back to first principles every time. I’m pretty sure she still doesn’t understand the process. But she knows lots of other stuff so that’s OK by me!