Anyone got any opinions on the Michaela School?

[noblegiraffe]

My Twitter is currently full of talk about Michaela as the teachers there have released a book today and are holding a conference explaining what they do. It's a no-excuses school where kids walk the corridors either in silence or chanting Shakespeare, behaviour is expected to be perfect including no slouching. Everything possible is done to reduce workload of teachers - no marking in books, lessons are all joint planned and taught uniformly, no differentiation, they write their own textbooks.

Does anyone's kids go there? Anyone decide against sending their kids there? Does anyone know how it is viewed in the local community?

Do you have shorter lessons then?

We start at 8:15 (pre school duty- four a fortnight/intervention)
Reg 8:25-9am
P1 9-10
P2 10-11
Break (duties)
P3 11:20-12:20
P4 12:20-1:20
Lunch (clubs- I rarely get a lunchtime to myself, expectation is I supervise students or run clubs)
P5 2:20-3:20
Then after school we have late busses two nights a week for afterschool clubs for an hour and a half. Meetings one other day for an hour and a half.

Bloody hell I didn't see that their school day starts at 7:30am. I guess they're ignoring the research about teenagers functioning better later in the day then.

Yes kesstrel most full-time teachers would find a 42.5 hour week an unattainable dream. But I could manage that pretty well with a light timetable and only Ks3 without it being Michaela.

Yes kesstrel most full-time teachers would find a 42.5 hour week an unattainable dream. But I could manage that pretty well with a light timetable and only Ks3 without it being Michaela.

So is 22.5 hours a light timetable? (genuine question!)

I know people keep saying Key Stage 4 will be harder, but I am wondering how much harder, given what they've done so far, iyswim.
A lot of what they have been teaching in Key Stage 3 looks directly relevant to GCSEs in terms of content, and they have been teaching it with a big emphasis on spaced practice and constant revision, to try to ensure that the pupils are likely to remember it. If this has been successful, perhaps they won’t have so much content to teach during years 10 and 11?

Also, nearly all the pupils presumably by Year 10 have developed a strong habit of revising at and working hard at home every day. In addition, everything the school does is focused on making it clear to pupils that it's up to them to learn what they need to learn at the appropriate time, not to rely on teachers to run catch up session after catch up session.

Noble I believe it's 7:55, not 7:30. The gates are open at 7:30.

I wonder whether things will change behaviourally in Y10/11 and how the school will deal with that.

I wonder this too. You can force compliance down everyone's throats in KS3 but a headstrong 15 year old knows their own mind and won't be swayed by anyone sometimes.
I work in a nice school and we still have the odd one or two teen pregnancies/police matters every year or two to deal with.

I wonder if the exclusions rate will go up?

Scary I've now consulted my daughter, and she says that all the lessons are an hour. So they somehow manage to cram them in, I think perhaps by having a shorter lunch break. Yes, now that I think of it, that has always been an issue because it doesn't leave enough time for clubs. I believe there was talk of extending the school day, but we're in a 3 tier system in a market town, and the same buses have to pick up/drop off at the middle school as well, so it all gets very complicated, although I don't really understand it properly!

It's not the delivery of KS4/5 classes that takes time - a 60 minute lesson takes 60 minutes no matter who you're teaching. It's the planning, the assessment and feedback. A lot of my non-contact time us spent marking my KS5 class's work. They write a lot. And that takes time to deal with.

Today was a fairly typical day:

8.20 - dept meeting
8.40 - Yr 11 lesson (practical assessment lesson)
9.40 - non-contact lesson - spent some of it with a boy going over a song for an audition then manned the isolation room and did 6th Form marking.
10.40 - tutor time. Discussed UCAS applications with 3 students. Got others to organise the plan for collecting money for Christmas jumper day.
11.00 - break duty.
11.25 - Yr 13 (double lesson)
1.25 - lunch. Had a short meeting then sorted my room out for P5.
2.00 - Yr 8 (observation)
3.00 - school show rehearsal
4.15 - finish

Take out KS4 & 5 and my day would look VERY different - no UCAS, no GCSE or A Level lessons.

Comparing workload is like comparing apples & pears

I’ve just read some of the past weekend's twitter melt-down that appears to have arisen because of DisIdealist's blog, and now DK's blog where the phrase that caught my attention was "As a parent".

As a parent and as much as I'd like Y9 DD's Middling Comp to be more 'knowledge-rich' and better behaved etc., given a choice (none here) I wouldn’t have picked MCS because I think they emanate a bit too much contempt for parents/family-life. I can only assume parents with 11+ years-old children are a bit thin on the ground given that fondness for the 'wisdom' of Amy Chua. Some of the younger not-parent teachers may well get to do some interesting erm.. discovery learning down the line.

Yes, they may all be lovely up-close in real-life, but some aspects of their “battle”, that MCS vs. World thing, seems to be a bit out of hand. If you’re not Us, you’re a stereotype of Them.

Another bit of data I've just stumbled across in the book: they've only had one permanent exclusion (at the time of writing).

Kesstrel they're pretty open about the fact that a few parents have removed their kids though so that's hardly a surprise - if parents don't fit the MCS ethos and don't support the school, then they are welcome to take their child elsewhere.

20 hours teaching a week is lighter than a FT teacher at my school who does 22. But if she's spending 2 free periods a day marking then she must have other non-contact periods where she is doing her HOD stuff? Didn't someone upthread post something about 13 teaching hours a week?

Does anyone know how much teaching time they actually have?

20 hours teaching a week is lighter than a FT teacher at my school who does 22. But if she's spending 2 free periods a day marking

But she didn't say she spends 2 free periods a day marking. She said, IIRC, that she can easily get her preparation for feedback done during those free periods. There was a strong implication, as I read it, that she was also doing other things during that time.

Didn't someone upthread post something about 13 teaching hours a week? Does anyone know how much teaching time they actually have?

There was speculation based on the number of French teachers and the number of French lessons in the timetable that some would only have - was it 15? - hours a week. The trouble with trying to work it out on that basis, however, is that, as far as I know, we have no idea of how many, if any, of the teachers are part time.

kesstrel - The trouble with trying to work it out on that basis, however, is that, as far as I know, we have no idea of how many, if any, of the teachers are part time.

Does the following information help e.g. Total number of teachers and Number of full-time equivalents?:

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/140862?tab=workforce-and-finance

There are way more than 8 teachers on the 'teaching staff' page. I've just noticed that most of their maths teachers studied PPE which is a bit weird.

Maybe Michaela, as a new and unknown quality, got more parents who were "desperate", or were attracted by the emphasis on strong discipline?

I think you're clutching at straws now. The sort of parents that would be attracted by that would tend to make the school less disadvantaged as their children tend to be the ones that would do well anyway.

I'd love to see the official stats, because I can't really see anything that would explain the very high number of children the school claim are working below age related expectations in maths.

Looking at the link to Brent admissions, there's quite a difference between the number of children allocated places under SEN/EHCP criteria at Michaela and other schools in the area.

No, not clutching at straws, just speculating .

Second part of Debra Kidd's blog here:

debrakidd.wordpress.com/2016/12/09/battle-hymn-of-the-tiger-teachers-part-2/

Very interesting. What she has written about SEN if she has represented the book fairly is very concerning. Conflating SEN with academic weakness suggests a total lack of understanding of SEN.

Incidentally, how can the school promote that they have no computer lessons, laptops or tablets, then make heavy use of Times Tables Rockstars which is a web-based game?

What do you think of Debra Kidd's very positive views about the virtues of being a smaller school, Noble? As a parent, I've felt that smallness was a real disadvantage at dd's primary (around 16 per year group) and is still to a certain extent at secondary (80 - 100 per year group).

I think pastoral care and a sense of group identity could be amazing in a small school. My school has about 1500 students and I don't know most of them. When I teach a group where I've taught some of them before, it is so much easier than starting from scratch with a new group. You know them and their strengths and weaknesses, and the kids feel more comfortable with familiar teachers.
It would be much easier to pick up on kids who are struggling - becoming more withdrawn or disruptive, getting thinner, work sliding. Also you know stuff about the kids that just doesn't get passed on - that kid's mum committed suicide in Y7, that one has an alcoholic dad and so on. It's all useful to know.

However having a big school has benefits too, the ability to provide more facilities, more likely that a child will find their niche and so on.

That is true about knowing everyone, and I can really see the advantages - even more so here in that it's a very small community, and so the teachers do tend to know the ins and outs of families. (I sometimes find it a little alarming when I run into dd's teachers out of school and they recognise me & know who my dd is - I'm really not that parent, honest, and pretty much only go into school for parents evening and fairs!)
But I think if I was in a city, I would be quite tempted towards a bigger school with more potential friends, more resources etc.

I teach in a small school (only 500ish kids) and I think there are a lot of advantages. I know almost every child by name - the only ones I don't know are those who joined after the end of KS3 and don't take my subject. It also means we have hardly any bullying as everyone knows everyone and bullies have nowhere to hide. There is a real sense of community and we do have good facilities. I wonder how Michaela will change when it's full.

I love the idea of a small secondary
The one.i taught in had over 1000 yr8-yr13 amd now has year 7.

Similarly my kids go to 3 form entry schools while niche and nephew will go to a village school with mixed classes. I love the look of their school!

It's so difficult to generalise about school sizes, though. My DCs go to an oversubscribed eight-form entry school but the school has made a lot of effort to create a friendly and caring atmosphere. I know this isn't always the case. A friend with a daughter in a small private school said it was a nightmare for months because her DD didn't fit in with the clique - although things are much better now and she does have a couple of good friends.
I think DK sums up very well how I feel about Michaela - there are aspects, such as teachers giving each other feedback - that are really sensible but their attitude that they are right and everyone else is wrong is coming across as unbearably smug and rather cultish, to be honest! I also completely disagree with the SENCO attitude unless DK has misrepresented it, and the naming and shaming.

Well, here's the first misrepresentation in Debra Kidd's blog:

"Children are regularly asked to write postcards of appreciation to their teachers."

What the chapter actually says is: "Every half-term, we encourage pupils to write a post card to someone they'd like to thank."

This comes after a paragraph that says: "We remind pupils not to take their parents, siblings, kitchen staff, cleaners, tutors and teachers for granted", and a description of the way pupils are given the opportunity to give verbal "appreciations" at lunch to anyone they would like to thank, including other students.

It's this kind of oh-so-subtle distortion in favour of her own negative interpretations of that has made me very distrustful of Debra Kidd, as I mentioned earlier.