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?

Conflating SEN with academic weakness suggests a total lack of understanding of SEN.

That's another misrepresentation by Kidd, I'm afraid.

Ashford's chapter refers to children with dyslexia, cognitive issues. developmental delay, and profound cognitive needs. It talks about how she believes the most useful strategy for children with these problems is to help them to focus, to work hard, and to get large amounts of practice in the things they find difficult. The school also does separate one to one tutoring to help children with these problems.

Kidd writes: "Not all statemented children are 'weak' as Ms. Ashford describes them."

No, Ms Ashford doesn't describe them that way. Ashford makes one use of the word "weakest" in her chapter. It is prefaced by the statement "more schools are moving...towards a way of thinking that will allow all children to make as much progress as possible... Quite simply, the weakest pupils need more rigour, more focus and more practice."

She quite clearly does NOT say "all statemented children are weak". What she is saying is that those children who are weakest - whatever the reason for their weakness - need more of these things.

I don't have time this morning to address all the other distortions and misleading arguments in Kidd's blog, I'm afraid. A good chunk of the criticism is for what Ashford doesn't address in this chapter, making the assumption that because she doesn't address it, she is ignorant of it or holds misinformed views.. But this is not meant to be a chapter on every aspect of SEN, fgs, and it is only 4 pages long.

Sorry, but I really think it's a mistake to take Kidd's analysis as a starting point for discussion.

Fair enough, I really should read the book! I have looked in detail at the school website and watched their videos, though.
However, 4 pages on SEN seems a bit sparse - is the book a series of very short chapters with teachers giving a sort of viewpoint? That's fine, if so, all debate is good and they're to be commended for giving their teachers the opportunity to do this.
I'm afraid, though, if the SENCO used 'weakest pupils' and 'rigour' when talking about SEN, then Debra Kidd and many others are going to seize on this and criticise her.

Currently discussing drama at Michaela on Twitter with one of their teachers. They "study" Shakespeare, various Ancient Greek theatre and Arthur Miller but as texts. Which I think is a shame and misses the point.

Although he has said that they do let the pupils rehearse/perform as an extra-curricular thing which is good as that's not mentioned on their website.

I like the gratitude thing. Our head of yr 7 asked the yr 7 students to choose someone in school to write a thank you note to at the end of the first half term. I had 3 notes and it made my year day.

Seams Yes, the book is a series of mostly very short chapters by lots of different teachers at the school. So it covers a lot, but it's not organised in the way that a more rigorous (and much more time-consuming to write) presentation of "this is everything we do and the reasons why we do it" book would be. It's more like a collection of blogs. Ashford has two other chapters in the book as well.

I agree that people like Debra Kidd will attempt to pick out anything in the book they can possibly misinterpret or misrepresent! The trouble is, it takes an awful lot of time to try to phrase things carefully enough to avoid giving critics anything they can misrepresent. And even then, there's no guarantee they won't just misrepresent you anyway. I suspect the Michaela staff are well aware of that, but nevertheless want to publicise what they are doing, because they believe they are on the right track, and want to get their message out there.

Ashford's chapter refers to children with dyslexia, cognitive issues. developmental delay, and profound cognitive needs.

But that is conflating SEN (dyslexia) with academic weakness. Because she doesn't think dyslexia is real. If she lumped ASD with profound cognitive delay and said that students with ASD just needed lots more rigorous practice at communication then would you understand what Kidd has said? Because if you think dyslexia is real, that's what Ashford has done.

I should probably read the book but to be honest what I've read is quite badly written so I'm not keen to spend money on it.

Actually, I'm rethinking what she wrote. Is she saying that someone with profound cognitive difficulties just needs to work harder and then it will all be fine?

I taught a girl once who'd had a brain injury which seemed to knock out her ability to do arithmetic. She couldn't add 7 to 4 in her head. She didn't need more practice at arithmetic, it turned out what she needed was a calculator. She passed GCSE by acing the calculator paper.

But that is conflating SEN (dyslexia) with academic weakness. Because she doesn't think dyslexia is real.

I would say you are oversimplifying her stance, and that your conclusion doesn't follow. Even people like Julian Elliott, who is the most prominent person to support the "there is no way of telling the difference between dyslexia and reading difficulty" argument (which is what "dyslexia doesn't exist" actually means), wouldn't say that reading difficulty is "just" academic weakness, or is synonymous with it. Many high IQ children who are academically strong struggle with reading.

Also, I don't think she is "lumping" anything together. Perhaps I have given you the wrong impression; she made the references to specific SEN types at different points in her piece.

Is she saying that someone with profound cognitive difficulties just needs to work harder and then it will all be fine?

No, she isn't. She writes about the special intervention sessions they have for children with SEN, in order to give them the extra targetted help they require. It's not her fault that the remedy for dyslexia and the remedy for low reading ability are the same. Clearly, the majority of the problems caused by SEN at the school currently are directly related to reading. So that's what she's used her 4 pages to write about.

Her piece is arguing against the damaging effects of labelling, and of reducing challenge for labelled children too far. This isn't an issue she's made up: I've seen plenty of blog posts by other teachers about this problem, that of SEN children ending up expecting their TA to do all the work for them: a kind of learned helplessness. While I don't agree with her that labels are always unhelpful, I think they often can be so, and that it's an important subject to discuss.

By the way, I've come across one explanation for the lower pupil/teacher ratio. They apparently are doing quite a lot of training of new joiners. The music teacher in the book writes about starting with only two lessons per week, then moving to four, than to six, etc. And of course since they are increasing in size by 120 children every year, they will need to recruit at least 6 new teachers per year.

I don't think the low pupil/teacher ratio is much of a mystery... there are only three year groups in the school.

I take exception to this Kesstrel:
It's not her fault that the remedy for dyslexia and the remedy for low reading ability are the same.

I teach, on the same day, a group of children who have very low reading abilities, and a Year 13 boy who is dyslexic but is on track to achieve A or A* in all of his A Levels. Good to know that I can "remedy" their issues in the same way...

With regard to "the remedy for dyslexia" I was referring only to intensive systematic phonics instruction, from someone who is trained to implement it, accompanied by lots of practice to increase fluency. This is the scientific consensus on what works best for dyslexia. (I did not intend to use the word "remedy" in the sense of "cure", by the way, but in its meaning of "treatment".) I should have said "remedy for dyslexia and for the decoding element of low reading achievement", to be fair, but my cat woke me up at 5AM this morning, so I am a rather fuzzy today!

the remedy for dyslexia and the remedy for low reading ability are the same

Weak comprehension and vocabulary difficulties need a different approach to weak decoding skills.

Thanks, Myyoyo - that's what I was trying to get at in my second post, but not being very clear about. So yes, there is a subgroup of children who can decode but have poor comprehension because of the reasons you stated.

A bit of further reading and yes, they do really punish kids who are having a tough time at home who fail to meet learning expectations. Apparently it's the kindest and fairest thing to do.

A child has lost a loved one and attend the funeral instead of school – instead of expecting homework from that evening, we do not set detentions. However, although it is difficult, we expect homework to be completed from then on, whilst offering emotional support, listening, guidance and stoical and Tibetan philosophy to help them overcome their grief and bereavement. We also preempt this by teaching them Eastern wisdom about mortality before they encounter the bereavements we all inevitably encounter in our lives.

One of my students lost a parent yesterday, quite suddenly. I would expect that homework is the last thing on his mind.

Do the school allow compassionate leave for teachers who have had a bereavement or are they expected to continue working?

Wow.

Joe Kirby says on twitter that they would give compassionate leave to pupils between the death and the funeral.

This blog post explains in much more detail their policies, and the circumstances in which they would make exceptions. The discussion in the comments is also very interesting and reflective.

pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2016/12/10/no-excuses-high-standards-high-support/

Joe Kirby says on twitter that they would give compassionate leave to pupils between the death and the funeral.

He said it would depend on who it was who had died. But really, a school is not in the position to dictate this. The apparent lack of flexibility and compassion is sad.

It sounds hideous. But then my youngest goes to a school similar to the 'most likely to succeed' model (film & book worth viewing/reading if you haven't already) - which sounds the complete opposite to this.

Looking at that blog post 'we expect 100% attendance' is just stupid & d&v must be rife. I hate schools where you're not allowed to be ill.

Found the bit about responsibility interesting as well - with so many rules how on earth do pupils develop personal responsibility (they may learn to follow the rules & expect a bollocking if they don't, but that's not really about personal responsibility).

Ds2 is at a grammar school with lots of rules (nothing like this though) & ds3 is at the school like the ones discussed in 'most likely to succeed' - what has really been striking to me since he started there is how much emphasis the - in many ways more relaxed (no detentions) - school places on personal responsibility. Ds3 is being taught to take charge of his behaviour/learning/organisation or face some fairly real work consequences. Ds2 is just learning to do enough/behave well enough/lie about forgotten equipment enough to escape a bollocking. It doesn't seem to translate into taking ownership your work & performance in the way ds3's school does.

Fairly real 'adult type' (not work) consequences.

'we expect 100% attendance' is just stupid & d&v must be rife

Joe Kirby's answer to this is 'we expect is different to we enforce'. I assume he means that they expect 100% attendance in circumstances where that is reasonable.

Ds2 is just learning to do enough/behave well enough/lie about forgotten equipment enough to escape a bollocking. One of the reasons for using a "no excuses" form of behaviour management is that children quickly learn that lying gets them nowhere. The best analogy is with a sports match: children playing sports learn that accepting the decision of the referee in taking a penalty, even if the referee is obviously wrong, is important and a good idea because it makes the best use of match time.

When Michaela teachers give a demerit or a 20 minute detention, they are trained to always give the reason, which is usually about promoting the maximum amount of learning time for everyone, or promoting the behaviour that will best help the individual child in the future.

Whether this will work to promote genuine personal responsibility (as opposed to being good at following rules) will, I suppose, be answered in the future. At the moment the children are all quite young (11 to turned 14 in September). It will be interesting to see whether and how Michaela gives them more freedom as they get older.