Category: General Interest

I wrote this over a year ago, after having a discussion with a colleague about why I don’t think we should use the term ‘ability’…

I have definitely been wrong in the past by claiming that ability doesn’t exist.

This is an interesting article which sums up current understanding quite well: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-innate-talent-a-myth/. It’s interesting to read some children were taught to acquire ‘perfect pitch’, often cited as an example of pure ability. However, it’s pretty clear that some children are able to learn some things more quickly than others.

So innate talent / ability exists. Why do I think that we should avoid using these terms, as teachers?

Because we can’t measure or judge them accurately. 

We can (at least try to) measure / judge a child’s ‘attainment’: how good they currently are at a specific field. But this is brought about by a combination of their innate ability + their prior experiences.

It may be that I am exceptionally talented ballet dancer, but I have never practiced it so my attainment is low! Similarly, I feel that I have low natural language ability, but I’ve worked very hard at learning languages so I can speak a few reasonably well.

In short, we shouldn’t assume that someone is not able, just because they are not currently attaining highly.

This is related to why I think setting can often be unfair. Pupils are set by attainment, so some pupils who are actually very able but have little or no prior experience are placed in low sets. This then compounds their previous disadvantage. Of course, there are advantages of setting too, especially in Maths – being able to tailor teacher-input more precisely to the class.

John Hattie has quite a balanced perspective on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6czhy6kPpc

Further reading…

Dan Nichols Blog on Attainment vs Ability

Claire Taylor on labelling by ability on the Times Higher Education Blog

Evidence on setting from the Institute of Education.

I really enjoy Freakonomics, and I thought the latest episode I listened to was particularly useful.

How to Make Meetings Less Terrible (Ep. 389)

I want to listen again, but here are a few of the ideas I picked up from it:

• When surveyed, most people say they would like to attend more meetings, but paradoxically they don’t rate the meetings they do attend as very valuable.
• The leader of a meeting always rates the meeting as more successful and valuable than the other attendees do. I know that I definitely suffer from this one!

And here are some of the tips to make meetings better…

• Make the agenda a list of questions. If it isn’t a question, what’s the point in meeting to discuss it?
• Think carefully about exactly who needs to be at the meeting: if you’ve written the agenda as questions, this can make it easier to work out who needs to be there. Different people may attend different sections of the meeting.
• The average length of meeting in the world is one hour. This is due to scheduling tools such as office, but in the case of teaching it is particularly driven by the timetable. It’s better to think about how long is actually required. Leaving a shorter time than you think it will take may be a good idea: see Parkinson’s Law.
• Most human gatherings suffer more from unhealthy peace than unhealthy conflict. The most transformational meeting participant is both a “smoother overer” and a “troublemakers”.
• Start a meeting by telling someone sitting near you about a good part of your week (a rose) and something that hasn’t gone well (a thorn). This introduction of the ‘thorn’ can help to encourage people to be more open in sharing their opinions.

I really do love podcasts. Since discovering them, I now hardly ever listen to the radio (at least live: many of my podcasts are radio shows) and have pretty much completely stopped listening to music. You may see these as negative consequences but personally, I feel so much more positive about time spent travelling now I have a convenient form of audio entertainment which keeps my attention.

So, inspired by Caitlin Clock on twitter, I thought I’d publish my current list of favourites. They err very much towards the informational side of things, representing how much I love learning, but there are a few pure entertainment ones in there too. I’ll answer Caitlin’s questions for each one:

More or Less is BBC Radio 4’s program which investigates numbers in the news and everyday life. This is my go-to easy listening and it keeps me well informed: so many things which feature in this come up in day to day conversation. I am planning to use some episodes as part of my teaching next year.

Episodes to try: Women, the Oscars and the Bechdel Test, Trump tells the Truth, Grammar Schools. But probably the most recent episodes are most interesting because they’re topical.

In Revisionist History, Malcolm Gladwell ‘goes back and reinterprets something from the past: an event, a person, an idea. Something overlooked. Something misunderstood.’ I’m not hooked by every episode, perhaps because my lack of knowledge of history means that I never misunderstood in the first place, but when it works it can make you think about things in a completely different way. Above all, I find Gladwell to be a great story teller so even when I’m not completely sold on his point, I enjoy it nonetheless.

Episodes to try: The Lady Vanishes, Blame Game, The Satire Paradox, Mcdonalds Broke My Heart, Free Brian Williams, Malcom Gladwell’s 12 Rules for living.

The Life Scientific, also by Radio 4 (yes, a theme is developing here) features Jim Al-Khalili interviewing famous scientists to ‘find out what inspires and motivates them and ask what their discoveries might do for mankind.’ A bit of a mixed bag (not all top academics are good at explaining their work to lay-people!), but I really enjoy most of these and feel that I learn something along the way.

Episodes to try: Tim Birkhead, Eugenia Cheng, Daniel Dennet, Sadaf Farooqi, Nick Davies, Peter Piot, Carol Black.

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy is created by Tim Harford, the regular presenter of More or Less, so I was bound to like it, but I even ended up preferring it. Again (a bit of a theme) it takes simple ideas but tells you something quite surprising about them. In one of my favourite episodes, Tim starts the show calling up a bookmakers to try to place a bet on his own death. “William Hill won’t gamble on life and death. A life insurance company does little else. Legally and culturally, there’s a clear distinction between gambling and insurance. Economically, the difference is not so easy to see.”

Episodes to try: All of them. I’ve listened to them all 3 times.

Coffee Break French and Spanish. Seasons 3 and 4 are great for intermediate level speakers: there is a lovely interaction between the hosts (the regular presenter Mark, and a native speaker) as they discuss a “text” which is read out at the start of the episode. My wife and I make this even more valuable by listening through the text a couple of times and asking each other questions about any parts we don’t understand, before listening to the discussion. I’m not so sure about the earlier seasons for beginners.

Episodes to try: Spanish Season 3 with Alba, French Season 4 with Pierre-Benoit.

Desert Island Discs is a classic Radio 4 program, attracting high-level celebrities to discuss their life and work, whilst choosing the 8 tracks they would take to them on a desert island. I think that Kirsty Young is such a great presenter, she’s very kind and her warmth encourages the guests to open up about their lives, but she’s also not afraid to delve into sensitive issues if they’re being cagey.

Episodes to try: Tom Hanks, Nigel Owens, Sir Anthony Seldon (crucial listening for teachers), Sir David Attenborough. Really, just whoever interests you most.

A History of the World in 100 Objects (and, if you like that Germany: Memories of a Nation) is presented by Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum. It has got me interested in a subject which school lessons completely failed to; I particularly like the chronological approach, there are some nice themes running through several episodes and an attempt to cover the whole world.

Episodes to try: All of them. This time, just because the chronological approach is important. My wife hates the music: don’t let that put you off.

I feel that there is almost no point in mentioning Mr Barton Maths Podcast as anyone who reads this blog will probably already be an avid listening. I absolutely love these two-hour+ episodes in which he interviews interesting people from the world of education. This pretty much takes up all my teacher-focussed listening, but I sometimes find time for The Education Research Reading Room by Ollie Lovell, which follows a similar (usually not quite so epic!) format.

Episodes to try: Jo Morgan, Dan Meyer, Jamie Frost, Greg Ashman part 1, Daisy Christodoulou,, Dylan Wiliam part 2, Harry Fletch-Wood and of course the Slice of Advice (because I feature for a couple of minutes!) From the ERRR: Adrian Simpson and John Hattie.

 

Special mentions go to…

I suspect that Freakonomics Radio will make the main list in a month or two but I’ve only just started listening.

Friday Night Comedy from Radio 4 (of course) interchanges between Dead Ringers (a classic impersonation show), The News Quiz and The Now Show, all of which are solid political-focussed comedy panel shows. Think of it as the podcast version of Have I Got News For You.

Serial which I remember reading was the most popular podcast ever, and for good reason. Season 1 is a gripping murder mystery with a twist: it’s a real life story.

In Our Time which is often a bit too intellectual for me, but I still enjoy it. I know that some people find Melvin Brag annoying.

No Such Thing As A Fish which is basically QI in radio format, minus Stephen Fry.

Reply All and  This American Life can sometimes be great, and I like the way they give me a bit of insight into the US, but I find them inconsistent.

I feel that I should love The Infinite Monkey Cage but I’m not sure the mix of comedy and science is actually that great. Brian Cox should stick to ‘Wonders of the…’ but it’s still worth a try.

 

So… what am I missing? Let me know what you listen to and why I should join you!

As a teacher, I have been asked to make predictions as to how my pupils will do in GCSE and A-level exams more times than I can remember. At my previous school, we did this three times a year for A-level students (which made up 80% of my teaching).

I questioned the value of these predictions, especially after reading in Thinking Fast and Slow, about the illusion of expertise: the example given was of stockbrokers who consistently thought that they could out-perform algorithms in making good predictions. The data did not support them.

I had a database of several hundred A-level students from my school so I decided to calculate how accurate our predictions were and compare this to my super-hi-tech algorithm for predicting A2 performance: AS grade + 8 UMS points.

I then calculated the mean squared error in all of these predictions and you can see these numbers in the top right of the spreadsheet.

My super-hi-tech algorithm produced an error of 0.42. (note that I could have added anywhere between 6 and 11 UMS points and this doesn’t change much).

In January, the team of expert teachers (I’m not joking here: my colleagues were very experienced and effective teachers) produced an error of 0.64, in March they’d reduced this to 0.45 but it wasn’t until April, about a month before the exams that the experts finally beat the algorithm, with an error or 0.35.

This suggests that there was absolutely no point in making the earlier predictions. To be honest, I’m not sure what use the April predictions were either but at least they were slightly more accurate than the simplest model I could think of. Moreover, I think it shows how bad teachers are at judging students and why we shouldn’t use teacher assessment in reports, or school data generally. This point is also made well in Daisy Christodoulou’s blog: Tests are inhuman, and that is what’s so good about them.

Warning, this blog involves lots of numbers. Don’t worry, I had a historian proof read it and he understood 🙂

For the purposes of these calculations, I’m going to ignore inflation and talk in 2018 pounds. The teachers’ pension automatically takes into account inflation, so that makes this a reasonable thing to do.

The average teacher earns, according to the government, £37,400. Each year under the current ‘career average’ scheme, my average teacher, Sarah will earn a pension of 1/57th of her salary: £656 per year.

How much would this pension cost if Sarah wasn’t a teacher? At the age of 68, a pension pot of £100,000 will buy an annuity, which grows with inflation as the teachers’ pension does, of £3,600 per year (see note 1). Therefore, it would cost £18,200 to pay for Sarah’s pension of £656 p.a.

Where does this £18,200 come from? As a member of the mysterious teachers’ pension, Sarah contributes 9.7% of her income, £3,600. This means that each year the government contributes an additional £14,600 (39% of her salary: see note 2) that she never sees and may not even know exists.

My sister is a lawyer and her employer contributes 3% of her salary to her pension pot. Let’s say the government adopted this approach: it takes the £14,600 it currently contributes to Sarah’s pension, pays her £13,100 extra, sending her salary to a healthy £50,500, a 35% increase. It contributes to remaining £1,500 (3% of her new income: see note 3) to her pension.

I’m using Sarah as an example but it doesn’t matter if you think she’s not representative, because we could equivalently increase all teachers’ salaries by this 35%. I’ll say it again, 35%! Starting salaries for teachers shoot up to £31k (£39k in inner London) and suddenly look a lot more competitive. On the other hand, teachers’ pensions are now terrible, along with the pensions of lawyers, accountants and most other professions. But who goes into a job because of the pension?

Could this change help solve the recruitment problem?

ps. I make no comment as to whether or not I think this is a good idea. My wise father-in-law pointed out that it’s a very Conservative suggestion: let people choose how to spend, or save, their money.

Notes:

(1) I interpolated based on the figures given. This is actually a conservative estimate because I used the figures for a single pension: in fact, the teachers’ pension also pays 37.5% to a partner after the teachers’ death, so would be worth more than what I calculated. This all assumes that a private pension pot grows at the same rate at the teacher’s pension (CPI + 1.6%). I suspect that some pension schemes may do better than this, but they will be much more variable and may also go down significantly, for example in 2009.

(2) Officially, Sarah’s school contributes 16.5% (in the case of state schools, this is just the government shuffling numbers around on a page) but the £14,600 is actually 39% of Sarah’s salary of £37,400. I understand that the government doesn’t actually ‘save’ this money as teachers’ pensions are unfunded, but it does have to pay it eventually. In the short term, this policy would cost the government quite a lot of money, but in the long term, it wouldn’t make a difference.

(3) My wife thinks this paragraph is confusing, because she is eagle-eyed and noted that 3%+35% does not equal 39%. Why doesn’t it add up? These percentages are of different numbers (3% of the new salary, 35% of the old salary), a pretty classic tricky idea with percentages.

I spent my first seven years in teaching as part of an amazing department at Highgate School. For most of that time, my HoD was Dan Abramson and Robert Wilne (past Head of Secondary at NCTM) was Assistant Head. Robert had revolutionised the department a few years earlier with some radical changes: he introduced a scheme of work with great ideas, loads of links between topics and very specific approaches to teaching. Dan continued this tradition, bringing in many ideas from AfL and relentless energy. In the words of one of my colleagues Peter Davison, Dan could be prime minister if he wanted to.

When you teach maths at Highgate, you feel like part of something special. The whole team, now over 20 teachers, is strongly encouraged to use the same approach to teaching. I remember that Craig Barton sounded pretty shocked when Greg Ashman described a very similar style of department; I suspect that it’s pretty rare and perhaps not for everyone.

The advantages: It makes for an incredibly coherent experience for the students. When you take on a new class, you know what models and vocabulary they’ve seen before and how they’ve been taught to think about every topic. You can be sure that the highest attaining will not have been pushed through more material than the scheme dictates and you can reliably call upon the standard models to help lower-attainers.

Outside of the classroom, the number of conversations about approaches to teaching was probably 20 times what I got at the (academically very similar) school in which I subsequently taught. I think that this is a great advantage of shared teaching methodology: if you wanted to change how you taught, you had to convince the rest of the department that your ideas should go in the scheme. Many teachers stayed in the office to work until 6 or 7pm; it helped that many were young and family-free but I like to think that it was partly because the sharing of ideas made it an inspirational place to work.

If I loved it so much then why did I leave? Mostly because my wife and I wanted to buy a house, which is not easy to achieve for a teacher in London.

What followed was two fairly depressing years. My new colleagues were passionate, highly knowledgeable, experienced, and interested in the success of their students. But there was no scheme of work beyond the chapter list from the textbooks and discussions about how to teach maths were few and far between.

Then I discovered Twitter.

I remember very distinctively one mid-winter run, I was listening to Jo Morgan on Craig Barton’s podcast, talking about how she found twitter and all the great ideas out there. I’d just been through a similar process and it made me feel quite emotional to be part of a community again: I think I almost cried.

Despite my improved mood, I still childishly felt a bit sorry for the people on twitter because I suspected that the reason they were online was because they lacked departments like Highgate. Over time, I’ve come round the view that twitter actually has some advantages over Highgate: I can draw from a much wider range of experiences and ideas, and it has exposed me to many more ideas from the world of educational research. There are negatives too: there are still times on Twitter when I ask for ideas or opinions and don’t get any. In the Highgate maths office it was harder for people to ignore me!

I can’t actually remember if I discovered edu-twitter or Craig’s podcast first, but if I hadn’t found either of these, then I think it’s quite possible that I would have left teaching. Two years later and I’ve just started a job in which I’m the only maths teacher in the school. That doesn’t phase me because I’m safe in the knowledge that I have my online community of teachers.

I started teaching at a new school 3 weeks ago. Overall, I’m absolutely loving it. My job is more varied than anything I’ve done before and for the first time in my life, I actually look forward to going into work on a Monday.

I’ve been writing the timetable. It has been really interesting to learn how our part time staff prefer to work and try to balance this with providing a balanced week of lessons, alongside management discussions about what proportions staff should work. I’m also excited to lead outdoor education: my climbers seem to be really enjoying our weekly indoor club and I can’t wait to get them out into the mountains proper. It has been great to be involved in discussions about the curriculum: how many periods per week should we give to each subject is not a question I’ve ever considered before.

More mixed has been my work as assessment lead. Inspired by Tom Sherrington, I’ve started with the theme of feedback as actions, sharing some of my own attempts to put this into practice, but I have yet to garner much response from my colleagues. Similarly, initiating the process of collecting pupil data is taking some time.

Despite the fact that I have very few lessons and much more experience in this area, probably the hardest part of my job has been teaching maths! Small class sizes mean that it’s been possible to personalise my teaching more than ever before, and I’m enjoying the opportunity to implement some of the ideas I’ve read about during my nine month break. However, a few issues are challenging me.

1. I’ve never taught mixed-attainment classes before and I’m struggling to find a lot of concrete advice on how to best deal with it.. Do I split the class by task or try to keep them all together? Let the children choose their own tasks or assign them myself? Do I provide extra explicit instruction to some? Should this be within, or in addition to lessons?

2 . How much to use technology? All my pupils now have a Macbook and iPad. This gives great opportunities, I’ve got them using Desmos, Geogebra and Quizlet, but am I going too far? It’s hard to tell when it’s genuinely educational and when it’s just more fun than pen-on-paper maths. And on that note…

3. I’m following in the footsteps of a teacher who sounds like he was much more fun than me! I’ve heard that he was a great teacher, very inspirational and played lots of games. My insistence on copying down worked examples and setting of written practice and extension tasks sounds pretty boring in comparison. To their credit, the pupils have generally been working very well, but I get a sense that we haven’t fully bonded yet.

Any advice? I’d love to hear it.

I’m taking a break from teaching (and blogging about it) to travel and work towards the International Mountain Leader Award.

You can read about my experiences at www.lukepearce.eu/travel