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?

Rafals

For what it's worth, the report says:

Note: We report progress to parents in NC levels. We acquire this data through rigorous, externally standardised national tests. Data is also available in SAS, NPR and stanine scores.

I don't know anything about those scores, though.

But it is ludicrous to suggest that that level of progress will be sustained or will happen to most children.

They've over-claimed there - if you look at the charts in the report, most children have progressed between 4.5 and 5.5 levels, so only a few would have made 6.

I don't know about that progress being sustained, but certainly in reading I think you may be underestimating the effect of the sheer quantity of stuff that the kids read aloud together in school every day. After all, I believe it's widely accepted that reading lots is one of the strongest factors in increasing reading ability, and also in predicting academic success. I do think they're on to something there.

They're not just talking about Reading though. The sublevel/whole level thing would be an holistic assessment of the students' abilities in English and Maths. Yes, Reading is important and they do take a great approach but that in itself would not provide sustained accelerated progress in English across the whole of KS3.

For a start, even a "below average" child would simply run out of NC levels if they made 6 sublevels of progress every year.

I can't speak for whatever tests they are using but the KS2 optional tests were notorious for up levelling. About 2 sub levels higher than a child's level would be about right. And a level gained from a single test is usually less reliable than using teacher assessment.

Do they give a reason for why they are still using NC level.

I agree, Evil. It's why I asked about quantitative data up thread because I suspect they are over stretching stuff quite a lot. There's a lot of stuff about some pupils/many pupils/pupils etc and what they do for them but very little about how many in any year group that might refer to.

Rafals There are charts in the Financial report linked to above that provide some of that information, divided by gender, SEND status, able status, etc.. I will see if I can find anything about how often they test, or why they are using NC levels.

From the report: Nationally, pupils are expected to make 2 sub levels of progress per academic year. At Michaela, they make three times more progress than expected in English and Maths.

Then directly below is a table that disproves this. The only group making 6 sub-levels of progress is SEN children in Maths. The table only refers to yr 7s too.

Yes, as I said above, they over-stated when they claimed three times the expected level of progress. To be accurate, they should have said two to two and a half times the expected level.

The report was published in August 2015. The school only had year 7s at that point.

Found it. Will have a look through it.

On this blog, the Senco says she recommends using the New Group Reading Test by GL, and also the WRAT test.

tabularasaeducation.wordpress.com/page/3/

Lots of schools use NGRT. Not sure what your point is. That is unrelated to national curriculum sub-levels and levels for English, and even more removed from Maths. Reading is only one strand of secondary English.

I was responding to Rafals who said above: I can't speak for whatever tests they are using. Thought she might be interested.

Yes but those are both just reading tests which simply give a reading age not an NC level. Rafals was talking about the tests from which they get their sublevelled results.

RWI fresh start isn't only a reading program through. I would expect it to have an effect on both reading and writing. I know we had also had a small bump in maths scores too at ks2. Mostly, I suspect, because the ability to read the question fluently and accurately gives children an advantage.

I'm intrigued by the reading age results. There's a very similar average gain for all groups children. And while +20 months in a 10 month period is good, I'm not sure it's as good as it could be. Which is odd given the emphasis they have put on reading and reading intervention. I would have expected it to be higher, but maybe I have an unrealistically high expectation

Yes, I was specifically talking about the sublevelled tests.

Many reading age tests do have a tendency to be on the lenient side so shouldn't be relied on as a one off (and there are concerns about ceiling and accuracy when it comes to phonics). Where they tend to come into their own is as a comparison when given at the start and end of an intervention. They can be an indicator as to whether one intervention is more successful than another.

From the GL document "A short Guide to Standardised Tests":

NGRT and National Curriculum levels

"The NC levels given in NGRT are based on teachers’ assessment of their students’ level of performance in reading at the time the test was administered. Based on a large standardisation sample (n = 11,640) an analysis of these data was carried out and levels assigned based on the
raw score for the whole test. This can only ever be an indication of a student’s NC level as NGRT tests just two aspects of reading: sentence level reading through sentence completion and reading comprehension based on one, two or three short passages."

It would appear the NGRT does give NC levels, although with caveats about their accuracy. Presumably these levels are the ones being used in the "Reading" (as opposed to the English and Maths) sections of the table. I still think Rafals might be interested to know this.

Thanks, Rafals, that's interesting. It's especially interesting that reading ability would influence maths scores! As far as maths itself goes, I would imagine that 3.5 hours of homework online practice per week, every week, plus an emphasis in class on practice (managed by not wasting time with trying to control behaviour or use groupwork or enquiry methods), would also do a lot to increase progress.

Yes. And a good quality maths intervention scheme helps too. That's what eventually made most of the difference. And higher expectations of what children are capable of.

I'm not sure about the group work and enquiry based learning. I think it's possible and even necessary for some things to have a balance. It's part of the reason I probably wouldn't choose Michaela as a school.

Hang on a second. Only 3% of children with SEN were working at 4c or above in English and 9% in maths. Does that seem unusually low to anyone?

Given that the definition of SEN would normally include children that might be attaining at or above expectations in one or both subjects.

3.5 hours a week online maths practice :(

Rafals well, it's quite a small sample, I suppose. The whole cohort those figures apply to is only 120 children. I'm guessing from the 3% and 9% that they're maybe talking about 33 children being considered to have special educational needs? (So 3% would represent one individual.) As you know, my main interest is in reading instruction, so I don't know that much about SEN in general. Are there particular kinds of SEN where you would expect to find children working at or above expectations in English and/or maths? I mean, I'm thinking about ASD for example, but in a cohort that size you would only expect to see one child with ASD, on average, I believe.

Could be. It might just be that I'm used to primary schools that have high levels of SEN and high results.

I think they may have truncated their data about closing the gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged too. Firstly, given that the expected standard changed to 4b at the end of KS2, I'm not sure 4a does represent expectations at the end of year 7, it certainly doesn't represent 2 sublevels. Secondly, if your non disadvantaged pupils are all working above 4a, and your disadvantaged ones are working at 4a, then you haven't closed the gap. The number of disadvantaged pupils who attain higher levels is a big problem.

That report still doesn't give the actual numbers of pupils that need extra reading help or who are reading at least a year below chronological reading age.

but in a cohort that size you would only expect to see one child with ASD, on average, I believe.

That would depend on whether more parents whose DC have ASD apply to the school. Small schools with silent orderly corridors and classrooms are going to appeal to those parents over large, more boisterous schools.

I'm not sure how the lottery admissions thing works though.

Michaela, caring about every grape.

Michaela accounts

Worried about teachers being 'harmed' outside of school? How strange.

What do you make of the advert over the weekend for a Director of Detention (at £35K per annum)?

Any raised eyebrows have been met with at "what? Why shouldn't we hold detentions" shout.

Yes, detentions are normal. Having a dedicated Director of Detentions on that salary is not!

I saw it EvilTwins

It's one of the best job titles I've ever heard. I intend to use it while teaching dystopian fiction.