Hello everyone, welcome back to the episode of Teachers Step
Repeat. My name is.
Dylan and my name is Hayden and I'm getting quicker and quicker.
Yeah, I was gonna say you kind of mumbled that, that it was
like, hey, you repeat imaging people loudest or to like,
what's that? Ohh, it's been a long week.
Imagine, Yeah, alright mate. He's having one of those
migraines I had. Imagine if people do listen to
it on times two. Hmm, I'm already going at times.
Two times. Four.
Ohh. Anyway, got some really good
feedback from last time. Yeah, probably the most amount
of messages I've ever received about people laughing at how
funny it was. Yeah, including us.
Yeah, we messaged ourselves, yeah.
I was told that the episode was unhinged.
Unhinged. I get using that word, and when
I described it, it was completely unhinged.
I think we just we just lost the plot.
I don't know what it was. If you haven't checked out last
episode, please do go and check it out and let us know if you
like it or not, because it was a little bit different to normal.
We weren't as serious. Well, there wasn't really a
serious Wait, sorry, when was the last episode?
No serious. We usually have like one bit
that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, we just, we just lost the plot
because I don't know if you know, but Dylan's just moved
house. Ohh sorry.
And he said that as well. I think, yeah, it was just like
I had a lot of people messaging me saying who'd have kids,
saying it took them back to that time of newborn.
And they were just like, yeah, it is just like, unlike anything
you've ever experienced. And I was like, yeah, because I
wasn't. I don't think I was like,
conscious in that last episode. I think I was just still
classed. As well, give it four weeks and
we'll have another episode exactly the same where I am in
that position. I am looking forward to that.
But I'm also thinking, I don't know how this, like, equilibrium
is going to work when we both have essentially what's gonna
happen with our like organisation.
Because you've been really good. You've brought us food you like,
you know that, done bits for us that just keep us sane, and then
suddenly you're be there. Yeah, and you won't be doing
that. I know it's good.
You're being a conversation over there.
Like, I don't know how we're going to be as helpful.
We're we're fully, fully not expecting.
Good, because that's good for you.
But I feel. I feel a bit more human this
week. Yeah, I feel a bit more with.
It you look a bit more human. You had a haircut.
I've had a haircut. That's one of the things we talk
about. My week.
I literally managed to get a haircut.
It's in fact looking at your notes.
You know, I noticed there it's the only thing that's not to do
with your child. So I don't know if This is why
it's gonna be like, every episode now, we're usually recap
on our week. Rory Ohh, Rory.
Oh, that's about all that one about your child as well.
Well, when you're within two week old, it's all you.
Do is up, then literally back to work next.
Week. Ohh.
I spoke to just quickly. Ohh.
Slight tangent, but maternity now.
Ohh. Yeah, we don't do that.
Yeah, we had the midwife round yesterday.
Yeah. Community midwife.
And she was utterly shocked at what teaching maternity leave is
like. Oh yeah, like genuinely she
couldn't. But she didn't believe she was
like, oh you must get it wrong. Isn't no two weeks full pay for
women and then 90% for four weeks.
And we explained that going to cost to 50% pretty quickly and
then nothing. She was like, what I said, what
was it like for you then? She was like, well thinking.
Ohh. It's another job that's very,
like populated by women. I think that's probably equally
rubbish because that's why teaching so bad.
Yeah. No, six months full pay, Yeah,
mentally. And then and then it goes to 50%
for a bit or something like crazy, crazy.
How is it not consistent underneath government
departments? I know it's public service job.
Yeah. It's like for some reason you're
not worth that. Yeah.
I'm sorry. Yeah, mad.
But the police have a year, yeah.
We're on the same pay scale. Anyway.
I'll go. Haircut.
Yeah, so that was good. I went the guy I got my haircut
from, his brother works there as well.
He just had a kid. Ohh.
And it's about babies as well. Sorry, I thought this was the
one thing that carry on, you'll know soon you'll.
Know. OK, I'm not there.
And yeah, he had a kid and we were chatting and we just had
this like you know, proper 5 minute frank chat about how hard
it is basically. He was just like he was really
relieved he went, ohh, I'm relieved you've said that.
Yeah, because he kind of said the same thing around people.
That it was tough, like was basically like negative
basically, and everyone might turn their nose up at him.
Apparently the most magical thing in the world.
It's like, yes, it can be amazing whilst simultaneous
being really tricky. Yeah, I'm not gonna go over what
I said again last week, but like, it's not easy.
It's not an objectively nice thing to be doing to get up
every 2 1/2 hours and changing poo off a piece of fabric.
That's not really what I want to do.
With my time, is it? Yeah, like it.
It's a lovely and I love cuddles and stuff and he'll grow up
into, you know, our child, which is.
Amazing. Our child give it a couple of
years with no. But yeah, it's not nice.
Like, it's not how you would choose to spend your time.
Yeah, like we were trying to watch a TV show.
A TV series, right. So on Netflix, there's a TV
series called Bodies. It's just like this Detective
Ohh Yeah, but it's like across Time Zone.
It's really cool. We've watched two episodes now
and we've been trying to watch it for about 10 days.
So that sums up my point. Is that the Times?
Not that's the issue we're watching in four different time
zones. By the time he goes to school,
would have finished this. But I hate, I don't know about
you. What's your opinion on watching
shows? Because I hate not watching an
entire episode. I mean, you mentioned this.
I. Think I'm sure we've had this
conversation. I am weird ohh.
I don't mind. I obviously, I would prefer to
watch a whole episode because generally they're constructed in
a way that they they leave the big thing.
They are literally. But quite often, I think it's
become so ingrained that you have to have a cliffhanger at
the end that's so ridiculously, like, unfulfilling that you kind
of have to watch the 10 minutes that the next episode to find
out the actual ending to what you were hoping that episode was
going to be. So quite often we'll we'll be
like ohh. Well, we've got 20 minutes.
Let's just watch the next, see what happens, and then we'll
pause it. We'll pause it when the new
scene starts. You're just basically
reimagining the whole structure of the.
Show. Yeah, because it's got so
ridiculous. You'll enjoy having a child and
being able to watch it in 5 minutes Snippets, right?
Yeah, because yeah, we're trying to watch this show and we
managed to watch two episodes in literally about a week and a
half. Because every single time we try
to watch it, it's like he knows, he's like, ohh, I'm so peaceful
and he hears a TV going because I'm not looking at.
Him. The old pig, they're getting
back at the head. So that's that's tricky.
And apart from that, look at my notes.
Yeah, Rory, Rory, Rory. Yeah.
Anything else you want to talk about, Rory, but well, this is
one thing. There's Rory.
Sorry, Rory's my Ohh two things, right?
That's all I want to say about him.
And one, he's a boy. Yeah.
Two. Every every time.
Every time we change him. Hmm.
He had a fountain a week like that.
Honestly. To the point where I'm actually
impressed. And I kind of want to get in
touch with general Records because the height he gets on
his way when he weaves, I swear to God, it's impressive.
Yeah, it's like over a metre. Has he got has he got you
covered in what you presume? Yeah.
Ohh. Yeah.
Completely got everything covered in me, right.
Like the other day. So what you do is when you're
changing them right, you get them undressed and you get the
button. He keeps his top on here, so
just lift up the bottom. So I wouldn't know.
Yeah, did it. Didn't happy.
And before you did an apple you get a cold wet wipe, you just go
across his tummy and the idea is that it's meant to stimulate him
to wee. So if you do that, he'll then
wee and then when you change him he's got no where.
Does that work? Yeah, most for the most time.
Apart from the odd occasion where you don't do it, and every
single time you don't do it, he wears on.
You. So the advice is actually don't
do that, then no. Do it.
Well, it doesn't work. I'm saying every time I don't.
Do it, He wees, Yeah. So every time you don't do the
white that's supposed to simulate him wearing, he wees,
Yeah. So the white one is not doing
much when I change him. I see what you mean, right?
OK, what? Who's unhinged now?
So you do it and you're we and then you change.
His name, right. So you don't do it.
You change him, You gets a bit cold.
He pisses everywhere. You're right.
OK, so just go, like literally covers you, gushes you.
Other day you did it. It's just changing.
He cries every time you change it, alright?
And I took off his nappy, yeah. And he weed up himself onto the
mat right on his on his side here.
So he's like, he's like that in a puddle of wee.
And I moved his head and it's all wet here.
Yeah, he's just got a wee all over him and I was just like
straight. Up.
Yeah, Do you write? Are you supposed to rub their
noses? That advice?
Ohh no, it's dogs. The dogs.
Also, he absolutely stinks at the minute.
Like, absolutely stinks. Where I'm like, has he pooed?
Like I think he's pooed. I checked.
Nothing there. Just fighting.
Constantly, constantly fighting. Farting.
Disgusting, horrible. So I got my.
I got my own back now. Ohh yeah, yeah.
So every time I feed him I let one out.
Right? Disgusting.
I might actually answer. Yeah, smell that, mate, Because
I get the whole of you and you're pooey nappy and pooey
bum. So I hold it in until I feed.
Him. It's like it's like a human
centipede, but just changing numbers.
I'm changing. I'm changing his nappies.
Has become. I don't know what this podcast
has become. Sorry, you probably started this
thinking educational. Yeah, they talk about serious
topics every now and then. God, that's what love, I think
my mum went away. Sorry, it's nothing to do Rory.
My mum went away really quickly. Get Your Week.
My mum went away this week and was with like she's she works
with Mencap which is a charity right with adults with learning
learning needs and stuff like that, supporting them in the
community. And she's currently working with
the University of Kent like professors and stuff and it's
something to do with like work experience for the people or
something like that but with these academic people.
And she went to a meeting in Birmingham right with her and
some people from charity and lots of professors and stuff
from like obviously social care and all that kind of thing.
And she just happened to mention the podcast because she just
listened to my podcast last week about the ohh I'm a bit I guess.
So I've just become a Nan for the first time and listening to
my son's podcast, right? And apparently all these, like,
you know, highbrow educators. Like ohh what's the what's it
about And I'm like ohh primary education like ohh let do let me
know what it is. Ohh yeah, imagine what it's like
educators. But ohh, that's all the pedagogy
and the learning. And the most recent episode?
Click Human Centipede for nappies.
So if you're listening, Doctor Hiya.
Welcome, welcome. How was your week I?
Did well. I don't want to talk about what
I've got now cuz I need to be more eyebrows.
Gonna talk about my ear canals. You know what?
Has anyone ever used right and get out the packet?
Has anyone ever use an ear candle?
Not doing it live. Boy, no, I'm just.
I can't do these things where you fire.
It. Yeah, fire it where you where
you fire, where to put the fire, Yeah.
So it looks like this. OK, remember, some people do not
watch. The podcast.
If you're not watching then you missing out.
So describe it. OK, describe it.
It looks like it looks like a McDonald's straw that's been in
the. Describe.
Looks like a, yeah, big, big soft straw.
And you put it in your ear, so it's all on your side, in your
ear. And then you light the top and
it takes about 10 minutes and it burns, right?
And the idea is it creates a vacuum and it's so good.
I mean, if you're one of those people.
But the idea of, like my ears being clean is just is divine to
me. I've never really thought about
it. It's just like the idea of then
nothing, nothing in there. I mean a lot of people are the
same, like you just want to get it all out.
And yeah, they're safe. They're safe.
So you put it in your ear. You said you set your ear
online. Fine.
Yeah. Yeah, I I feel bad saying the
next sentence after saying it's safe.
Yeah, it's safe. You put them in your and you set
it on fire and then you lay there for 10 minutes and it does
it cause paper doesn't go towards your ear.
Yeah, but really slowly. Really slowly.
And get to the red line. That's me.
Take it off. How can you see that?
What's in your? Ear.
You need someone else, or by or buy a mirror.
You just be near a mirror. How can you see?
They paid draws all the backs out and I tell you, where does
it go? Just in this in but it's being
burnt. No, but like, it just sucks it
up and then but it all kind of goes to there.
Well, after the first night, yeah.
OK. So and honestly, sorry about
this, it's unreal. It is.
You should do it, because this is amazing experience.
OK, if I do it, we'll make it into a real.
OK, we're gonna do it. You can use.
So that was the first thing this week.
Unbelievable. Like I can hear better now.
Never, ever known about me talking about my son again.
If that's what you can't do. Candles.
What else have I got here looking at?
My name's Roy. Roy.
Roy just got past the rorys. Ah, so we had parents evening.
Obviously you don't know because you got out of it.
Mr Paternity out of it. I had a child.
You had your own parents evening.
I sat with him. He could do better on the poo
front. The smell quite a bit.
Stop weighing on your face. Yeah, that'll be a good one.
Next step. But good.
Good effort, but just a quick thing, really, really nice for
both of us I guess. Obviously I teach year six and
we had a lot of parents saying that they really enjoy our
YouTube videos, that their last year when their kid was like
preparing for the 11 plus and things like that, they were
watching our YouTube videos and yeah, it was just really nice.
I felt famous because three parents, Three parents.
You felt famous. Yeah, because people in whose
children are in your class know who you are.
Yeah, OK. Yeah, that was nice.
Parents evening was very positive.
Yeah. Long.
Yeah. As always.
Always long. It's a long good this
conversation threads. What's your overall thoughts on
parents evening? Is it towards the positive or
the negative? Yeah, yeah.
I very rarely have a. There's always this one.
There's always no, I don't, I don't.
I don't even mean are the parents positive.
I mean, do you think it's an objectively good thing for us
to? Be doing Ohh 100% because it
needs to be done with marking and time.
I'm like that's almost never useful.
Yeah, but your parents evening on.
It's a slog, but I think it's really.
Good, yeah, if it was that. If it was a choice between do
this six hours like 2 * a year. Or we don't do that.
But you just constantly need to catch up with the parents after
school all the time, like informally.
Or they can just make a meeting with you whenever.
I think I'd hate that. Yeah, cause that would become so
just unmanageable and big thing in schools, isn't it?
Like, you know, parent calls a meeting and you just do it.
Yeah, you could just get a parent and calls a meeting every
two. Weeks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I tell you what, I was gonna do
this later, but can I can I do a roll you up thing?
Because you didn't beat or we doing it right.
No, we're doing it right now. OK, I'm changing the format of
Ohh, My gosh. It's not like I like things in
order and knowing. Exactly.
I know I can see you tweaking out, so I was gonna do this at
the end, but it just relates to this conversation, so I'm gonna
do it right now. It's called riling up Dylan.
Let's Ryan up Dylan. I forgotten the Jingle.
How does it go? Give me a Pringle.
He is. He has lost it.
So someone wrote this. I'd screenshot it cause I
thought, ohh that will make Dylan mad about that's what goes
through. Your head?
Yeah, I do. I literally read Ohh, that's
such a good one. So this is what it says they
put. I literally can't do this
anymore apparently. As I did on that point, replies
going well don't then thinks he's probably the answer to
that. Yeah, stop it then.
We all need to band together. And telling the school no, I'm
not doing it. That's his answer.
That's because it might well be. So I literally can't do this
anymore. Ohh Apparent emailed me asking
for my lessons and resources up front so that he could decide if
he wanted his child to participate.
What? No in what?
I don't know. It just says lessons.
It's gotta be something. I don't know.
Genuinely, I think it's everything.
This must be like PSHE or something.
I don't know. I get the impression all of it.
He was referring to me. Oh, here we are.
He was referring to me reading books and having conversations
that are all inclusive and talk about differences that exist in
our class and everyday life. So classic parent who's scared
of someone saying that people are.
Different. Yeah.
OK, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't.
I don't want my child to believe in differences.
I'm sorry, but OK And we're gonna come in right now because
this, like, when someone's like, I don't want my child to be
exposed to different things. Like, I I do actually think
there is a point to have when teachers preach stuff to kids.
Yeah. Yeah.
And like for example, I'm quite political myself.
Hmm. I have views on religion example
for myself, but I really passionately believed that as a
teacher, my job is to teach children facts and say this is
what people believe, this is what other people believe, this
is what other people believe. Here's how they show that
through their practise and what they do.
And when it comes to inclusivity and stuff, there's nothing wrong
with saying these are people who exist.
Yeah, yeah, like you. You don't.
It's different to saying this is how you should live your life,
kids ignore your parents. You should lead this life.
No. Yeah, simply just saying that
these people exist in your society and it's good to know.
That, and that's again, slightly different as well to the other
argument we've had before about books, which is these are people
that exist and we don't like them or we're going to say
negative things about these people.
Like the whole David William stuff that we talked about.
Roald Dahl, all that in the past.
It's like, that's a bit different.
Yeah. But then people take it as if
it's not negative. Well, then it's celebrating it
and it's pushing it. Yeah, I'm sorry.
These people just exist in society and we're gonna read a
book which involves them. Umm, and yeah, that's that.
Sorry. Sorry that it doesn't say that.
The horrible. People and you know what happens
normally when we're not aware of people that don't exist we we
tend to as humanity be really really horrible to them and
cruel. So anyway back to this.
So it's clearly about that and and this teacher said I asked my
admin for support in replying. Like this every single week, of
course. Obviously you can't provide your
planning. You don't even need to provide
your planning to your school, yeah.
Ohh, it's unsustainable. This is what they drafted for me
to reply with, which goes against my boundaries because
when I leave the building for the day or weekend, I have
communicated to families that I do not respond to emails in
order to have a healthy work life balance.
Very good. Good for this person, right?
And those boundaries, now I haven't.
Got the screenshots. I've got the emails open, but
essentially the e-mail that was drafted by her manager to send
to this parent was like really nice at the start.
It was very much like, ohh, thank you so much for taking
interest. Bloody blah.
What's wrong with that? It was fine.
It was, you know, worldwide. Been very careful clearly of how
they worded it to this parent and then it says.
The teacher will try her best to send you a list of the topics
that we will be covering on a Sunday Ohh specifically.
Says on Sunday, On Sunday, once the planning done, they'll
they'll e-mail you the staff so that you can from that
conversation, yeah. Yeah, whoever her manager is.
I don't know, that's like or whatever.
Yeah, but someone who's supposed to be looking after you just
think. What?
Yeah, that's crazy. Like, firstly, like this, it's
it's in its own right. You could have a discussion
whether it's right or wrong to dictate that your staff send
planning home to parents every week.
Hmm, that's a really weird standard to live by and not
something that we should remotely be promoting.
I I always think maybe I'm wrong here.
Maybe someone in HR can write into Word or Admin can tell us.
I feel like HR and Admin's job is first and foremost to be
protecting your colleagues, to be protecting the people who
work in your establishment. It sounds here like we're
protecting the parents or protecting me.
Image of the school. Yeah.
It's like you need to have certain things you do, certain
lines you do not cross, and that's not dictating work
unreasonably beyond what even the school asked for.
I tell you what it's. Hard though, and I've always,
always struggled with this, is having a bit of a backbone when
it comes to talking to parents. Definitely it's hard because I I
really feel the pressure of a parent wants something, I don't
let them down. That's like the worst possible
thing you could do, have an argument with someone at work
about like a colleague about something, just because I think
we have that professional discourse.
But when it comes to parent, yeah, the idea of upsetting them
or saying something. You wanna hear?
It does make me feel horrible. Yeah, well, I get that pressure.
Yeah. No, it's a tough one because
like you said, it's easier to bow sometimes, isn't it?
It's easier just to be like, OK, we're.
Doing anyway. OK, they can just send it
somewhere, but you can't tell someone to send it on a Sunday,
no? No, Like, I don't understand
what these people go. I really want to get one on the
podcast. We've got guests coming up by
the way. Side note coming up on the
podcast again, restarting now back on our feet for a couple of
weeks until you're off your feet and we'll have some guests. 2
guests. Booked in, two guests, booked in
and more that I know absolutely want to come on and I would love
to have them on. But yeah, I mean, yeah, you have
Rob up a bit. It's the same old, same old, but
I want to get on a HR manager or a CEO of a mat or I really,
really, really want to get them on and just talk to them.
I want to get into the head because I'm sure there are so
many leaders who have the absolute best of intentions.
We literally work with some. Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, even the ones who seem to have these kind of
reputations of a bit much million people too hard.
Militant. I want to pick their brains,
yeah, because I'm sure they have an amazing rationale.
But when like I don't understand how you can be in charge of a
school. Where firstly, you can't read
the room that everyone is absolutely on their last legs
hating it. Because I've heard of many
schools like that where the teachers absolutely hate it and
imagine, I can't imagine being in charge of that, not being
able to see it and being like, oh, we should do something about
it. That's what good.
I think they know it though. Like just thinking.
Back I want to pick their brains.
Think about one of my experiences in a previous
school. I think that's exactly what it
was like. I think they knew that if they
just got NQT Asian and got rid of, got rid of the staff that
were moaning and wanted genuine change for good reasons, they
can get in anxieties, they're cheaper and they're malleable
and they'll just do what they want for a couple of years and
then they need to get rid of them.
You're. An M4 Bye.
I think that's. I think that's a conscious
effort. Yeah.
I don't maybe not for everyone.
I just think for some people I get to that position, they think
this is the best course of action that will get the best
outcomes for these kids at the sacrifice of these adults.
So I just think people make that decision would be interesting.
I wanna just talk to them because I don't know, I can't
see anything more important than well-being of your staff
because. Is first, how do you get good
lessons to children? You staff are on it.
Hmm. You staff are feeling good?
Yeah. That is the first port of call
to me. I've always, always said to have
life. I've ever lead a school and
we've got this imaginary school that we sometimes come to.
I would absolutely go in with the approach of staff first.
Yeah. And probably people be like, oh,
no, kids first, no start first because I guarantee that that
will have better outcomes on the kids.
If you, if you treat your staff like royalty, like they are the
most important people there, that's great.
But that's what I think. That's just my.
Don't be surprised if you don't see that as a real thing.
Just edit it so it's like, I don't think kids are good.
I think I want the staff to be better.
OK, yeah, but hopefully you understand what I mean.
One minute. I didn't say that.
And now Ohh man, people lose their careers, You know, deep
fakes. Because we're so big people.
Deep fake. But you just said it.
You just said it. Yeah, because we we've actually
not remotely touched upon what this episode is called.
No, because I'm excited for this.
Yeah, let's talk about deep dives, baby.
Let's do it. So yesterday I was supposed to
go and see. In fact, we were supposed to go
and see Mr P He's tall and we're invited, which we were really
excited to go on. Obviously you couldn't make it.
I. Really wanted to but I can't
leave. You got baby.
He's got a baby. And I had full intentions of
going. In fact me and Lauren were gonna
go and we got to the train station yesterday and was like,
ohh trains been cancelled. So right another one in 18
minutes. Waited 18 minutes, It's been
cancelled. Waited like another 20 minutes.
Was it strikes? I don't really know.
I don't think it was. I didn't hear it.
So when when I was on the platform we're waiting for the
third train, we looked sort of look to the left and noticed
there was a train on on the line and and I was thinking the whole
time like trains not gonna come if that's there though is it
Because that is literally on the line the only one the the the
the train track that we need to use thinking I don't know what
the plan is here and sort of spoke to the guy and he was
literally getting live updates at the time and he was and there
was basically saying yeah we're going to cancel all the trains
to London because we can't get any drivers to come and move
that train. Ohh, because there's loads of
things. There's loads of like emergency
maintenance happening in Faversham.
I don't really know the full details, but in the end we're
there for like 45 minutes, an hour and was like, yeah, so The
upshot is never was. Ready to see it?
So never want to see him. Really sorry about that, missus.
Smashing. Apparently really good pitches
are amazing. He's fully, fully booked out.
Unbelievable. That's really good.
So he he was. 17 in all Podcasts on Apple Podcast the other day
Ohh yeah I saw that it all podcast it was above like some
massive ones. Well, I saw it was like annoyed.
And that was down there when I was thinking, yeah, I think we
were #2 two. Yeah, I think we were.
Thousand. I think just behind the other
one. Yeah, it was Joe Rogan than us I
think. No, you're listening.
Thanks. But anyway, the point here was I
also spoke to Lee Mr P and said to him when we had Ofsted last
week and and his words were just kind of made me laugh.
And it is something he says a lot, which was he said good luck
and it is mostly luck because it depends on the inspector you
get, he said. That on our we interviewed him
and he says it often in his roles and things as well.
He's quite strongly opinionated about the reform of Ofsted.
He's not against Ofsted, he's just thinks it needs to be
reformed as far as I'm aware. So I thought that was
interesting and I thought it'd be quite nicely into a
discussion about our experience of Ofsted.
And obviously we have to be careful because there's no
official report out yet. So we're not going to talk about
any kind of grade or anything like that.
But we are just going to talk about our experience through
Offset because we were deep dived and we were deep dived in
maths, which is our subject area.
So Dylan, yeah. We'll start with an overview, I
think before we get into it. I mean a lot of people
listening. How does talk a lot about Ofsted
in the past? Emotions run high.
Don't know, especially after. Big time, Perry.
A lot of controversy across, you know, and the amount of stress
that an Ofsted visit can induce over years, you know, not
knowing when they're going to come is a really bizarre factor
in my opinion, because schools are working hard constantly.
I don't think we need that layer of mysterious and like it made
no difference to us, did it? Mysterious, mysterious ISM.
It's a new word. Nice.
But you know, I think giving schools a slot in the first half
of this year, even, I don't think that's going to make
practise well, when obviously the whole stuff with Ruth Perry,
yeah, was horrendous. You don't know much about it,
just look it up. It was horrible, had a bad
outcome for the school and she lost her life because it was, it
was horrendous. And then they went back and and
decided to grade it good few months later or something.
It was just such a it's. Situation because it's very easy
Ofsted, and I've said this before, to fall into the trap of
negative, negative, negative, all these objective facts about
Ofsted which you think need changing, I think that needs
huge. Overhauling think.
We both do, yeah and but it's very easy for us to come and you
have a positive experience with them to kind of forget all that.
But ohh, we're alright. Yeah.
And I'm really, really passionate passionately against
that because you're about to hear a really positive
experience. We really did have a positive
experience boosted and I don't want to hold back on that.
In fairness Ofsted as well. I think if we're going to be
picking apart things that we need improving, I think we need
to praise them when they get something.
Because actually Mr P was right in terms of it is a bit of
lockdown to down to the inspector because it is just a
human being doing a job at the end of the day.
And we happen to have a really good human being.
He was doing his job really well.
Because ultimately, I'm ask you this question.
Do you think Ofsted should exist?
Yes. OK.
So we and I agree, like there needs to be something to monitor
schools and hold schools accountable, I think.
It's really, really naive to suggest that with no
accountability, things wouldn't slip.
Yeah, I I think that the current method of accountability is not
in the right balancing scale that Ofsted.
It flips the other way with Ofsted in its current form.
It's way too much pressure, too much worry.
And I think staff would do a fantastic job without even 110th
of that scrutiny and and and pressure that they're on.
I think we, I mean to summarise something I'm sure we've said on
the previous episode of an opinion that we came to was that
the main problem is the fact that the school gets summarised
with a word at the end of it. And on a really, really
arbitrary scale, like a small scale as well, like you have a
rubbish good or great. It's like really?
For some reason you've gone for different words.
I know you're. Right, though, because it is as
simple as the bottom line. And then there's five
categories. In the leadership and yeah
education safeguarding. But it is just you know headline
outstanding headline good yeah And and it's it's very much like
when we talk about the children maybe they reach expected
standard. OK, two children who happen to
be expected standard in maths can have very, very, very
different ability in maths. Very different strengths, very
different reasons why they've got to expect a standard.
One could be really close to a greater debt and being really
top level, one could have just got into the expected standard
because their athletics really good or something like that.
And and the same has to be applied to schools where it's
not very useful to put two good schools next to each other and
assume that they're the same. Yeah, yeah, absolutely not.
And the same outstanding as well, yeah.
And then there's the last element that comes into play
here, which just makes the whole thing a fast, which is that it's
a game and you can just play the game.
Like some schools are really good at ticking boxes and
they'll get the good or the outstanding and not even be
remotely comparable with another school that's good or
outstanding at the same the same level.
So I I. Personally, think before we dive
in very quickly. I really do.
Believe that there can be an outstanding school and a good
school where the good school is doing things and getting much
more out of the children. And the children are loving
them, living their lives and getting lots of quality
education every single day. Better than the outstanding
school who happened to have played the game.
Yeah, high staff, turn around. Yeah, yeah.
Look at staff turnover. OK.
If the school's outstanding, but the turnover of staff is
extremely high, don't go there. That's going to tell you.
Something about it as a teacher, as a parent, yeah, maybe they
get a fantastic deal. As a teacher.
Don't go near it because there is that is that clearly they're
getting an outstanding grade through jumping through boxes
and be able to put a big banner up to say outstanding at the
detriment of the well-being of the people who literally deliver
that outstanding. Yeah, so that's my disclaimer
Ofsted. Nothing changes.
But we've said offset before, but we've now had our experience
of it. We have and.
It's the first time we've gone from Ofsted.
Both qualified. Well qualified in 2016.
Yeah, Qualified in 2015, Yeah. We joined schools which had just
had Ofsted and then we joined another school which had just
had Ofsted. Yeah.
So this is the first time I've worked with three schools, and
the first two schools I worked at got Ofsted Eva just before I
joined or immediately after I left.
And it was like, oh, I just missed those two.
Yeah, so. First experience of state and we
are middle leaders in terms of where intelligent maths and I
never know middle leaders sounds weird.
I don't feel like a middle leader.
I'm a teacher who does. Yeah, yeah, yeah, subjective.
But subject leaders and yeah, first and foremost, we got the
call. Obviously, I was off and you
were in school and the overview was that we were getting just
one person because we're a good school.
So again, just one inspector, it's not a fully blown
inspection. He simply comes in and there are
4 outcomes. I can't think of the name of it,
but there are two types of inspections, 1 to give you a new
grading and one just to basically renew the grading
around just to see if you're still at the standard which we
learned on the day. Interestingly, if if the
inspector decides that your school either way, there's more
here therefore. Quickly.
So I'll take the four, then you can tell the outcomes of each
one. So the four options the guy had
when he came were number one, you're a good school and you'll
remain a good school. Done.
Yep. He doesn't come back.
Yeah. Option two, you're a good
school, but there's evidence that you could be an outstanding
school and then that would trigger another Ofsted within
the next two years. So not even close of three day
full inspection to come back and see if you are at that
outstanding in our opinion more. Stress.
Yeah. Third option.
You were good. But there are there is some
evidence that you might have slipped down the grade.
Same outcome. Ofsted will come again within
two years and check to see if that's the case.
But you're making good. Until then, you remain good and
in the 4th. Outcome the one no one wants,
which is serious usually to safeguarding.
Yeah, serious issues that will trigger an inspection
immediately, the next day, within 48 hours, he said.
If, yeah, seriously, like you said, usually with safeguarding,
but it could be anything. If there was loads of evidence
across all of the areas he looks at like leadership curriculum,
all those sorts of things. Well, they.
Wasn't really looking at leadership too.
Yeah, the the, the big thing in these ones is quality of
education. Yeah.
And safeguarding.
We had a one day inspection with one guy So what we wanna do two
sorry because I had a school trip the next day with a 2 day
inspection with with one inspector and what all we want
to do really for the next 1015 minutes is just kind of running
for our experience. Because you might be someone if
you're if you're in the teaching world that's never been frosted
or expecting it soon or maybe had it recently and you want to
compare or we've got lots of listeners that are in the
teaching world what they just. Want to know what happens?
I think we should give a really quick overview of actually for
two days. Structure and then we'll go into
real detail about our own experience with maths, sure.
So in terms of what happened was he did 3 dives explained that.
So deep dive when it is an inspector comes in and obviously
even 2 days we cannot check every single part of the
curriculum. We can't go through music and BT
and art and history and geography and science and maths
and English in detail. So what offers they do now is
this kind of deep dive scheme. Where they will pick a certain
number of subjects and spend half a day diving into that
subject tends to deep dive. So our deep dives were in maths,
yeah, History and reading. Yeah.
And offset inspectors tend to go towards reading.
Always something to do with that because it's such a vital part
of the curriculum and if there's one thing we want children to
finish school doing, it's reading.
And interestingly we were allowed, and I think this is
normal practise, we were allowed to pick a subject to be deep
dived in as well. So it's almost like a chance for
the school to say look at this subject because we feel strongly
about this one. We picked maths because it's a
well developed area of our curriculum.
Not, not not saying because of us, but just over the years it's
been a well developed, it had really strong.
Leadership even before there. It's been good place.
Yeah. So and obviously we've hopefully
maintained that reading like you said.
And then the last one is supposed to be an area that you
want to show the Ofsted inspector that you're developing
at the moment. And we picked history and he was
happy to do that. So we had a lot of choice really
in in what areas he spent a lot and I think.
Again, this is the overall his kind of word.
His leading word was. Collaborative.
He said he really wanted it to be a collaborative effort.
Not him finding something out, not him trying to catch us out,
not him trying to find something that will degrade us.
Yeah, it was a collaborative effort where actually we go
through as a team and he might have questions, but it's because
he wants an answer, not because he's trying to trip us up.
And he said one thing didn't that really calmed me down
because I was, I was very nervous, obviously.
I think most people were quite nervous because you want to show
yourself in your best light and what was it that you said
specifically? He said really stuck with him.
Really start. Yeah, I know I'm gonna get wrong
because you make the make cause I'll get I'll get the wording
completely wrong. There's not one thing.
But he said that there's not one thing that will be bad enough to
to like to impact the overall grading or something like that,
if only you write down your notes.
Did I actually write it realistic?
No one thing. Did I write it?
Ohh yeah. No one thing will be enough to
ruin the outcome. I thought I wrote it.
I couldn't see it. And that made me feel really
good because I had this. I had this preconception of
Ofsted that if there's one area of the like 19 things that
they're looking at that's just unsatisfactory, it'll be like,
oh, oh that's it you're gonna nail down into.
That your school's rubbish, yeah.
And he and he said there's not one area, obviously.
I think that's excluding safeguarding because that always
has the highest precedence. If, yeah, if safeguarding is not
good enough, then that's it. You know your your schools well,
there's no. Safeguarding.
Not one thing, yeah, yeah. But in terms of all the subject
areas for. Example.
If he does, I assume if you looked at one book and there was
no evidence in that book of all of these amazing stars you're
saying you're doing, he's not going to suddenly think that you
are lying. And one thing I was really
worried about, and we kind of got over this a while ago
because we spoke to a leader from a different school, Ofsted,
that they'd recently had. I was really worried that if one
single child said just some negative things about the
school, like, yeah, I just hate it here.
Teachers are horrible, you know, for whatever reason.
Maybe they've had that experience or they're just just
being annoying, then then they take that super seriously.
But, like, there's a massive concern at the school.
But I learned from our Ofsted and also our friends Ofsted that
they're just, they're they're realistic.
They're human beings. They aren't.
They've worked in schools generally after inspectors have
a long career in teaching before.
And they know that it's obviously saying that sort of
stuff. And it doesn't always mean if
there's a pattern. Yeah, exactly. 25 children are
raving about the school and then one child saying I don't like
it, but they happen to also be the child doesn't behave very
well in class. You know, they're usually go,
OK, I can understand why that child might be annoyed right
now. So.
Yeah, around those deep dives as well.
And there are different parts of it where the inspector would
just go out on the playground, playtime, just observe the
children, talk to the children in that environment, just check
the children are safe. Things like that.
He would talk to staff. Yeah, talked.
To teaching assistants get their kind of view on the school and I
think what what we noticed and we'll talk more about our deep
dive in a minute. But with him talking to the
children and him talking to the star and him talking to the
teaching assistants, a huge thing for him was seeing that
what we say as subject leaders. Staff saying as staff, teaching
assistants say teaching assistants, children see that,
let's say that they they do in lessons every day.
Yeah. So it almost, I guess the
overarching message we've got for people going through Ofsted
is as long as you're delivering good practise, they don't really
care how you're doing it as such.
You can set, you can work from a scheme, you can do this, you can
do that. As long as you have a rationale,
you can back it up and it's consistent, then they're going
to be happy with it. You can't blag.
No, I think we learned very quickly, and I'm glad we didn't
anyway. But you have to be truthful and
honest because he was absolutely out there to see if the things
we were saying were true. Yeah.
And if they weren't true, I imagine that would have had
repercussions, I think. Us saying something wasn't true.
Would would have more of an impact negatively on us than us
saying we do something that he disagrees with.
Yeah, or even just saying, not being honest, like, yeah, we
don't really think this area has been very well developed.
We're gonna work on it rather than pretending that it is well
developed in any finds out that it's not.
Because then it's like the leaders don't know we're talking
about now. It's OK to have your own points
for development as long as you know them and you can explain.
Of course. Have action plan, right?
Every school has an action plan. There's always in progress.
No school was gone. Completed it.
We've done, everything's done. Our school is complete.
There's always action plan. Would be nice imaginary school
like that. Yeah, yeah, that was good.
But it would it be very naive to go in thinking that the Ofsted
inspector is, is expecting perfection from you, is
expecting a realistic approach like ohh, these areas are good.
In our subject. We're also class teachers.
We don't have, you know, crazy amounts of time to sort it out.
So we're trying to work on these areas.
This is our plan. And he was very much like that.
So should we run them through? Yeah, kind of like a in
chronological order I guess from the call.
So we had the call at about 10:30 the day before.
Monday. Tuesday.
Yeah, it's it was a Monday. Mom had the call.
Yeah, it was first day of the week, though, 'cause he came in
Tuesday, Wednesday. And so I guess the first thing
to talk about is that time between having the call and him
being there in the morning that sort of prep because so 24 hours
basically. Yeah, The first thing I did was
I messaged you because obviously Dylan was at home on paternity.
And I was like, you'll never guess what's just happened
because we joked about the idea, one of us being off and officer
coming in and you were like, no way, no.
And I was like, seriously? We're going for having a quick
emergency meeting. What?
Happened in school, yeah, so after that.
Ohh yeah obviously you said that one of the office staff kind of
goes around the school and tells all the yeah just told us all
and then what happens. So luckily it was it was
literally right before our assembly slot that we were told
so that so they offer staff just said having a quick meeting in
the staff room during assembly. Our deputy head's going to run
assembly and and the head teacher just wants all the stuff
in there so you can tell everybody that officers coming
in and just kind of what the rough plan is because Ofsted.
Currently I'm wrong. They have like almost like a
phone interview, don't they? Yeah, on that day.
So at the start. So our head teacher would have
been called like an hour before this, right before we found out,
yeah, to have the call. And they just asked, I think a
series of questions on the phone to the head teacher to get an
idea of the school, to get an idea of the head teacher.
I think the deputy and the assistant head are in there as
well on that call. And they also explore like what
they're going to deep dive and all that sort of stuff.
So they sort out all of that first.
Then the head teacher comes and sort of tells us all that this
is what's happening. And then and then we were kind
of left to our own devices. And I had our schools super
chill. Like it was actually really nice
environment like. I was probably the most panicky,
yeah, like anyone really. I'm thinking about what I was
doing and going. Around being funny, we've done
enough. We're ready.
I know. And that's what it turned out
like. I felt fine within a few hours,
but our head teacher at no point, at no point, came round
instilling any sort of fear or panic at any point, which I
thought was really good. If anything I.
Thought he became super chill when he was happening.
Yeah he was like finally let's just do this show them what we
will be because we've been waiting for ages frosted and it
is it is just an annoying experience.
But in terms of prep though so obviously we spoke a lot and
them very, very kindly I will say because it was really nice
of you did say I'm going to come in and help you prep for a
couple of hours and then I'll come in tomorrow as well.
And to do to do the actual bit with the inspector because we
were being deep dived, which I massively appreciated because I
was starting to get a bit like ohh God, I've got to do this
stuff now. I think it's more.
You would have been absolutely fine.
But I think it's more having years of knowing it's both of
us. Yeah.
To suddenly the day before being like ohh God it's just what have
I forget there what have I do this exactly and we normally
quite good at one of us is talking just thinking about the
next thing to say as you can yeah so prep that evening and
that day all we did really was #1 get all of our documents
together. So we had our progression
document. We had our action plan.
We had any kind of lesson monitoring and pupil
conferencing evidence that we had of our lead of our subject
leadership. And we just kind of printed it
all because normally we're all very digital.
But I just wanted a hard copy just in case you wanted to see
it which he didn't by the way at any point really.
We just talked about those things unless the structure
policy. Yeah, because he's.
Not trying to catch you out like you said.
You know you are allowed to look at your policy on a piece of
paper. Don't be afraid to print that
stuff. And we wrote notes as well.
Yeah, and it's fine to read notes.
I was sat there with my bullet points of things I want to
mention to him to show that, you know, because he's a human
being, he knows that people forget stuff and get nervous and
again. We could have made that up and
he would have found this out within one hour.
Yeah, so he wasn't made-up exactly, was just organisation.
And the 2nd thing we did was just sent a very, very, very
short summary e-mail to staff, just outlining the kind of key
points of the mass curriculum that we've been developing.
Just just as a reminder, because at the end of the day we love
maths and we live maths as, as an also, as a teacher I don't
have that level of like involvement in every single
subject right where I can just remember off the top of my head
all of the things we've done for the last four years.
I do need to be just reminded. But straight.
Yeah, exactly. And it was really useful when
when I saw just a couple of notes on the things we've been
doing in history like, yeah, of course we have been doing that.
Oh yeah, of course I've been. I've implemented this already.
But on the spot, if I was asked by the inspector, I probably
would have frozen, like I don't know what we do and of course I
do. I just needed that reminder.
So I sent a very very short summary e-mail to to start
script. Really.
No, it wasn't. You hear some?
People say they send out scripts and they're like, you will be
found out. Yeah, like I know schools where
staff have been given scripts and questions and answers.
If you get asked this, answer this.
How are you? How?
What? No, it was, it was actually
just, it was a bullet point list of things like this is where our
progression document is in in the, in the in the Stafford
area. This is where you're going to
find this document if you need to have a look at it.
Our vocab progression is here. Just stuff like that, where it
was like people might want to have these things on hand
tomorrow if they're being asked about it.
So that was that. Was that because?
Very quickly I think maybe you can address this.
There is a feeling sometimes and someone outside of school might
think, well, if you're told the day before, can't you just fudge
it like you know, what do you mean prep what, What prep is
there to do? Yeah exactly.
But it's it's just organisation I would say.
Yeah, more than anything, I suppose the nice thing about
them is a nice thing. But from their point of view,
from Office's point of view, about that's good for them
coming or telling you 24 hours before they come is you can't
really forget. It would be very, very hard if
you were genuinely genuinely, like, not in the right to be
able to, within 24 hours, fix all of those things.
It's not going to happen, Not when you.
Factor in he talks to the kids and stuff like exactly because
the blagging is out the window. Yeah, through through their
approach. So I thought it was a very good
approach to, you know, stop. I guess as much of the fudging
of the system as possible I wanna talk about.
Our leadership team, because we got a lot of people writing in,
it's very easy for us to jump on the bandwagon sometimes.
But like, how ridiculous are this leadership team?
Yeah, yeah. I don't think our leadership
team could have done any better for us in that process of making
it as chilled out as trustworthy and positive because they
trusted us. They they really did.
And I'm talking about as a leader and a teacher.
I I felt completely trusted when I went in there.
There was no. None was under my back.
None. So make sure you say this.
Make sure you say that. Yeah.
It was No. No.
You got and the only thing SLT repeatedly said to us you guys
gonna be absolutely fine. Yeah, they're really nice.
Our assistant head is just so involved in our school.
She's amazing. And it was really, really nice
actually, to see her super positive, like buzzing around
the school and she wasn't even feeling well that week.
She was really poorly. She's amazing.
And she stayed in school anyway, and she wanted to be there.
And she was so positive. And I think she made everyone
feel good because, yeah, our school is good, you know, And we
did, we did everything we needed to do on that day.
So let's go through the day, shall we?
Yeah. This is exciting.
So, you know, I think a lot of people.
Here, deep dive. If they're teachers, they hear
deep dive and and it gives me a sense of dread.
It really did like, what do you mean deep dive?
It sounds horrendous. Yeah, I really enjoyed the
process. Me too.
I didn't think they dived as deep as I thought they would.
Well, yeah. There's a lot of accountability,
a lot of straight questions. You've got to know your stuff,
but if you know your stuff, if you know your curriculum and
your intent and why are you doing things, it's really
enjoyable because you're basically we love maths.
Hmm. And we love, we, we think maths
and our school's great. We got to show off to an expert
for half a morning. Yeah, this is what we do and
This is why we do it. That's all we were doing all
morning. So for his first question was
interesting. We had a meeting with him.
We were the first deep dive. So it was like 9:00 and we had
about 2 1/2 hours blocked out with this guy, which at first I
was like, Oh my God, that's so long.
But it went no so quickly. The 1st 20 minutes, Thirty
minutes of that. Yeah, I think it's a bit longer.
Maybe you might think about half an hour in the end, because
about half nine we were out, we were gone round round
classrooms. He just met with us and just
asked us questions and again that time went so quick and the
first question was, do you remember it?
I think it was what's the intent of what's the purpose of your
curriculum? Yeah.
The intent what is really broad question.
Yeah. And we, we almost felt like,
ohh, that's caught off guard. But it was quite simple really.
What is the intent of your curriculum?
And you, I think you jumped in straight away of like the intent
is that every single child makes progress at this school in
mathematics and they love the subject.
And I was like, yes, still go online, but it's true.
That's exactly what we do do it for.
And then from there, he just kind of dictated his questions
to go in this sort of flow because he just wanted to find
out what we did, I thought. They were blocked.
The questions, it was like a theme.
You answer. I asked a question about it.
You answer a question, Answer a question.
Yeah. New thing.
Yeah. So the first thing about the
intent was really cool because it really opened up the whole
curriculum because we could talk about fluency, problem solving,
children from different backgrounds, children from
different abilities, staff making sure they're, you know,
really good. And I feel like that question
was a really good one to open with because it opened all the
avenues I thought. I thought he was very equally
interested, which should be in just your average child, but
also children with disadvantaged, from
disadvantaged backgrounds and children with additional needs.
And he was very, very like on it all the time about talking about
those three groups of children very equally and wanted to see
evidence of, you know. And and also I think maybe from
COVID especially, it's been exacerbated also children, just
just children in general who have gaps in, yeah, you
mentioned it a lot, didn't he? Gaps, how are you plugging gaps?
How are you plugging gaps? How are you catching kids up?
How are you? Ensuring in a class where
someone understands something someone doesn't, that you don't
leave anyone behind. And he didn't try and catch us
out like we'd give an answer. And if he, if he got the gist of
what we were saying, he wasn't being like he wasn't trying to
catch that thinking all. They didn't use this word so
I'll write down they've not got the right answer.
He was just, it was very collaborative.
He understood what we were saying.
And every now and then he'd even put words in our mouth a little
bit where he was trying to summarise what we were saying to
make sure that he agreed. Yeah.
Not in a bad way but just so you are you so you're saying this
and we're about. Yes.
That's what we're trying to say. And and he was very trusting
that that, you know, is truthfully what we were trying
to say wasn't, you know, we weren't, I thought.
A good a big thing, he said. A lot of was, you know, OK, what
are we going to see? You know because we had that we
had that discussion together knowing full well mass was going
on. So like he, I think he almost
said it one in in as many words he said OK so if we if we went
round now into a classroom what would I see in every classroom
And that gives us a really good opportunity to kind of show off
what we've what we've given staff as development, what we
expect from maths lessons. And it felt like every time we
asked the question I was excited to answer it.
Yeah there was no dread it was ohh no.
We do this at this school and we've worked really hard on
making sure there's a lot of children talk.
Yeah, we've we've worked really hard at making sure that.
Actually, if you walked through the school you'd notice that
we're all using a scheme. But if you walked through a year
group you might notice varying abilities, working off the
curriculum in different ways. You might see one class with
manipulatives out doing maths at a level that's appropriate to
them. You might walk into a next
classroom and they're doing problem solving from the offset,
really securing their maths and wherever you go.
I think the point we wanted to make was what you should see is
children in their zone of learning.
Now, whatever that is for them, you're not gonna walk into every
classroom and see them doing the same thing, but you are gonna
walk into every classroom and see each child stretching
themselves. Yeah, learning basics or seeing
what they can in zone of proximal development zone
approximately. But it was really passionate
because I want you to talk about now, Hayden cause another big
part. Big controversial thing in in
maths is whether you should set from ability or not.
Yeah so huge thing. Do we simply have a mixed class
mobility? It's just as it is and you teach
maths to them and you support children who struggle or stretch
children who do really well or should you set them?
There are pros and cons to both. The flavour of the last few
years has to been to not set and almost some people turn their
nose up at setting. Like, no, Everyone should be
doing the same thing we set in our school.
Something we've thought about for a while that would be
flagged up of Ofsted was flagged up.
Hmm. But how did you find that
process with him? I thought it was really
interesting how he had maybe maybe he had a slight
preconception about the idea of setting because he was a little
bit concerned about the idea and he really wanted to see how he
approached it. But I loved that through our
justifications and we'll talk about that in a minute.
By the end of our conversation with him, like a professional
dialogue and going around the school, he was really pleased
with the way we approached it and thought that it was
absolutely acceptable and fine. So even though you had a bit of
OHH setting, I don't know he didn't let that get.
In the way didn't. No, no he didn't.
He didn't just have that preconception.
And then and then that was the end result as well and I think
sometimes. That's what Mr He's alluding to.
If some inspectors have this preconception of what they
expect is good, Yeah. Anything diverting from that
doesn't match up with the idea that Ofsted should be not
looking for certain things, but looking for consistency.
And perhaps they're not confident in that area as an
inspector, so they just kind of stick with what they know.
Yeah. But this guy, you know, he was
very interested in hearing our reasoning to everything.
Hey then why don't you tell people at home?
Yeah, in our school you know, what do we do in maths?
What is in terms of? How do we set?
Your could we have three form entry, so we have four adults in
the morning where we set teacher, where we can split
children, 96 children however we like.
We could just stay in classes. In English it's completely
mixed. What do we do in maths?
I think it'd be really interesting to see what you guys
do if you're in the teaching as well and how it compares to us.
But we have quite a simple procedure I think really and
that is we look at the data at the end of the previous year, so
our summative data of that cohort of children and we simply
use that it's bespoke every single time to divide them into
sets as we see according. So we have four teachers in each
year group and we just look at the data and go right, what do
these kids need? What should we put in place for
them rather than what a lot of schools do is they have an
approach of like ideological. The sets already exist and we
put the kids into the sets. Yeah, rather than let's look at
the kids and make sets based on that lately.
So that's what we do. And that really, he really.
Appreciated that. Yeah, he does something, he
said, which I thought was almost like a tagline I wanna take from
him. He was saying you're responsive,
not reactive. Yeah, and I spent the whole time
thinking, what's the difference? Reactive is like ohh God we
didn't think this through and we're gonna just put a a plaster
on that and fix that and change it.
Ohh God no, no, this isn't working properly.
Ohh we need to really quickly change that and that mindset
school's getting which is like ohh gosh we've got to fix these
things within 3 minutes and and not have a plan.
His point was we're responsive in that we look at the data, we
have a well thought out plan and we just roll with that.
Yeah, respond to the needs of them at the time and then we put
things in place. It's.
Thoughtful. It is based on what he sees, but
it's not reactionary. Really.
Quick Gosh, let's change. Just change that, Yeah.
We have a rationale that we stick with.
I think if we said we just set, that would be really weak
practise and I think could have easily picked it apart.
Yeah, but we explained why we set, we went and showed him the
classes and in every class children were doing something
appropriate to them and it backed up.
And he even said I can see how this works.
I can really see how this works here.
So there's one more area that he was really interested in,
because I don't know where this conversation is going on Forever
One. People on this podcast, podcast,
but you know so the other area he was really interested in when
he was going was our intervention group.
So he was very interested in how we plug gaps via some, you know
additional groups and things. Now most schools will run some
sort of intervention group at some point in the day.
It's the magical group. So intervention group is that
magical thing that's supposed to happen but also not supposed to
happen in during the day. So what is it?
Well, intervention group is just when some children may be a
group of six group of eight children are taken to plug a gap
in their learning. Basically, they don't quite get.
Something some extra help you might remember in primary
school. Some kids might go off with an
assistant. Teacher and just practise
something again. His his first question about
this, and I knew it was loaded because I've heard about this
question before, was who runs your intervention groups and it
was very loaded because he was because I know it's seen as a
negative practise if the only people that are running your
intervention groups for the children that need teaching the
most are your least trained teachers, which are generally
your teaching assistants rather than the teacher themselves.
Fortunately for us, you know, we have both.
So our teachers run our, which is best practise intervention
groups and we also have our teaching assistants and in
groups as well. Yeah, so when we say main.
Intervention groups. We mean for example in maths if
children didn't get something that day, in maths most of the
time in the week we have a slot where as the teacher we can keep
them for 10 to 15 minutes and explicitly go over that again
the same day. Whereas we might have teaching
assistants sometimes do something similar but they'll be
doing something more pre planned, maybe like a
handwriting scheme, maybe reading with children, but that
direct teaching that we have delivered the children didn't
care. It's important that you can
justify. Ofsted that it's the teaching
themselves who are plugging the gaps as well.
Exactly. He also asked how we assessed
the children, which I thought was a really interesting
question because, and it was really.
That was that vague, wasn't it? Yeah, it was.
Most of the questions were, so my fears were very much that he
was gonna be really unpicking stuff and just like trying to
get to the point where he catches us out.
And it wasn't like that at all. He was just asking genuine
questions. So if you remember our response
to assessment, yeah, well, you. You jumped in with.
It was good. It was about testing for
success, yeah. So I mean.
You started off very quickly. You can talk about testing
success, but the general spiel, you might not know this.
We do tests 3 * a year, but we do ongoing assessment from
lessons, from feedback, from marking, from talking to the
children, from doing groups, all that general stuff.
But then you really went into detail about something I thought
was good. Yeah, well, we've recently, one
of our most recent things we've introduced, I guess, and we'll
just put a bit more training on, is that when we do weekly
arithmetic tests, which not every school will do, but in our
school we have sort of just identified that 10 minutes, 50
minutes every week, once a week where we just, yeah, just go
over some fluency. It's not the only.
Time we do athletic. It's just something where we can
do what you're about to say. Yeah, gives us a bit of data and
we call it testing for success because the idea is it's
cumulative. We're not, we're not chucking
loads of content in these tests that the kids haven't done yet
just to see if they can do them so that we can track progress
over time. It is literally just for
formative assessment straight away.
Here's, here's 10 questions, You have taught you all of them,
Let's see if you can still do them.
And then from that we can gap analyse that very, very easily
and go, ohh, look, 50% of the kids are still getting question
9 wrong. What of that?
Ohh. OK, I'm going to do a bit more
of that. I'm gonna teach a bit more of
that then because I've taught that they're not getting it.
Yeah, so we're gonna do it again.
Whereas. Sometimes in a test where taking
off the shelf, you might get loads of getting question 9
wrong and loads of getting question 5 wrong.
Well, question five was column addition with two exchanging.
We've just done that. That's a worry.
Question nine was fraction. We haven't done fractions yet.
Yeah. So on paper, those 20, gosh,
we've got these two gaps. You haven't.
You've got one gap. You've got one gap really,
because now for testing with success, you walk into a
classroom and I think you really liked this as well.
It's another thing that we can say what we set as well is you
will see children doing a repetitive test where every
single child in the school that aim is to get 10 out of 10.
Yeah, so it's a really clear goal.
It's like everyone can get 10 out of 10 every week.
If they don't, they get help. If they do, they get celebrated.
Simple as that. So as soon as a negative
practise just for those thinking about maybe even a maths deep
dive, it's seen as negative practise to be regularly
assessing children on content they haven't even been taught
yet. It's not seen as a good
practise, so yeah, we did. The walk, you suppose there was
a lot. There's loads of other stuff
there. I mean, if if you guys are
having a deep dive, you want more, you get in touch with us.
Yeah. You spoke to kids.
I've got the kids, yeah. We talk about that, but in terms
of our walking around with him, I meant that as well.
Just just going around chatting to kids.
Ohh yeah. Walking with him, that was a big
thing I thought was really cool as well.
I liked that he had the same sort of two questions, didn't
he? Yeah, yeah.
What are you? Learning.
Yeah. What have you been?
Learning. What are you learning?
So children being able to articulate, and it's a really
good point that if a child in your class doing the task can't
see what they're doing. Yeah, there's a missing link
there somewhere. Yeah.
And the other one was, you know, how's your teacher helping?
Yeah, well, I thought that was really good question because if
a child doesn't know how your teacher can help you, that is a
huge gap or what they're learning.
Yeah, I think he was kind of doing them in pairs for a
reason. If they couldn't answer those
questions as a bit of a flag of like, OK, something's not quite
right here because it's mid lesson, so that was interesting.
Luckily, the kids were great 11. Question quickly before we move
on, I suppose was he asked very briefly about parental
engagement. Not something that's really high
on the list, I think when you're preparing it.
Deep dive because you think about the quality of learning,
but as long as you have ties with your parents and their
efforts and through open evenings and things like that,
that was an easy enough question to battle.
Yeah. But the thing that I found
really interesting again was he obviously the pupil voice.
So he spoke to children. He asked for eight children, 2
from each year group were Junior School. 3456 And he just said
eight children, please. I want a few children who are
people. Premium, yeah.
I want a few children who are additional needs and I want a
few children who aren't a number of registers.
Just mix them up, send them in. He didn't.
He didn't ask who was who. He didn't ask for names.
He didn't ask for anything like that.
He just wanted to know that in that group of eight children,
there was a broad variety of children from different
backgrounds in school. And we weren't in that
conversation with them. Yeah.
We sort of let the children in, thinking we were being in the
room with them as well, just just to be there as a familiar
face really. And he was like, OK, off you go.
Yeah, we're like ohh, OK, bye obviously.
Safeguarding thing, Yeah, yeah, he kind of stuff that maths.
So, yeah, we just, we just sort of they were in there for a good
half an hour. Yeah, good half an hour.
We just kind of lingered outside with their books.
Books open. Yeah, they took their books with
them and I thought it was a really nice experience in terms
of it was a bit, again, a bit more holistic.
I was a bit more confident that the children had everything they
needed with them to be able to answer these questions as well.
So I imagine just from experience of talking to other
staff that have been for offsets.
That the approach is very much like if he if he says what we've
been learning recently, the kids are allowed to open their book
and be like this is what I've been learning recently, like
that That is OK. It's not a memory test.
Well, a big. Part for us was we talked about
our starters and it's a really big part of how we're plugging
gaps across the school is that we have that unmovable, almost
like a lesson, that 20 minute slot at the start of every day
which you go to your math set and you're with your teacher and
you recap stuff you need to or completely free for staff to do
if they want. And those starters are in the
back of their book. And I just had this vision of
him asking that because we said to him.
We do this starters. It's in the back of the book.
Yeah. And he was like, oh, have I
going, will I go and see that? And like, yes.
But we missed that time because we have the meeting so we can
see the stars. Yeah.
But there's a really nice vision of him saying, ohh, so do you do
any starters and the kids, like, yeah, in the back of my book and
they open the back of the book. Really visually show them.
And each kid has something different even in the same year
group cause they might be from different sets like Oh well look
I've been doing loads of times table practise and whereas this
child I've been to reasoning and problem solving stuff in my my.
Start time. It was just totally positive.
I think it was good. I tell you, it's just thinking
of that, if you're maths lead or whatever, that was a really
positive change and an easy thing we did with the school.
Because the reason that kind of idea got born of having the back
of the book for the starters was because when we were looking at
books a couple of years ago, it just wasn't very clear.
When looking through the books, kind of where the main objective
of the lesson started, because we'd often do starters and we'd
write things in our books as well.
And the kids also struggled to say this is what I've been
learning in this lesson because they're looking at their own
book and there's maybe that maybe it was a mixed starter of
a couple of recap things that's right there in that book.
And then immediately transitions into their main task.
And they were a bit I forgot what I was learning.
I was learning fractions. I know that was a recap cause it
might say. We are learning to add
fractions, yeah. And then underneath for six
questions of short multiplication.
Yeah. And shape.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So putting it in the back of
their books is really clear for us and it's really clear for the
kids as well. This is your main objective and
this is. Learning the learning journey is
really clear in there, and it's not.
We don't write things down in the book just for Ofsted or to
show. We write things down in the book
for starters. Because actually, again, this is
my personal thing. I think it's way better than
whiteboards, yeah, on a whiteboard there's no squares,
there's no presentation to practise.
Yeah, presentation is hugely important in maths and I think
it's overlooked sometimes because the amount of marks
missed or questions wrong. Because children can't read
their own writing because it's a line up that columns properly
doing. It in the back of their books.
It's on paper. It's on squares constantly.
And getting the children to write down their working hours.
It can be very tempting to print sheets and just write their
answer on the sheets it's already laid out for them.
Get them to do it every single day.
Just a slight slightly higher level of accountability as well
for the kids. I think with whiteboards I do
like the white boys have their place but when it comes to
starters that I do actually care about, like recapping something,
I want to make sure they've got it.
I think when they if if I if me as a kid right lazy as anything,
if I knew that in that in 25 seconds the thing on my
whiteboard is going to be rubbed out.
No pride. I'm putting no effort into that.
I'm not going to write anything cause the other it's won't even
notice, I say to the kids. It's in your book.
I'm gonna check through these after.
Yeah, I'm gonna check through. These after I'm gonna take a
look so you know and and I walk around every day cause on your
four so team points still matter and I walk around with my huge
tub I've got a huge tub of chambers and I walk around
shaking. I'm like any anyone I see who's
doing 1 digit power box. Really neat.
Yeah, for a team, point on that and they're like, oh and they're
all doing it, but it's any way to get the kids to do work
neatly, practise, do as much as they can, practise, speed,
practise, writing it down. You're going to see a benefit in
the long run. Kind of separate what we're
saying, but the kids could show that.
Yeah, and. And that's the expectation of
all children, of all abilities. They're proud of their work.
It's neat. They're doing their best.
They're doing loads of it. They feel good in the subject
exactly, which is part of the cumulative cumulative testing.
And get anything about that kid that finds maths really hard.
And 90% of the content they can't do not feel good, Not
gonna feel good for them. But anyway, so that was kind of
our 2 1/2 hour experience. We had the meeting, we had the
walk around the school, we had a lot of questions and talking to
kids, and then he specifically took kids away and talked to
them and looked for their book for about half an hour.
And that was kind of the the chunk, wasn't it of time with us
the only. Other thing extra that was still
to do with maths was he spoke to teaching assistants and and
staff at the end of the day, yeah, but he did that talking
about history as well, yeah. Do you know what?
I don't. I ever spoke to you after this.
He didn't ask a single question about in the end, did he?
Not to the staff, No. He said he would, but he
obviously didn't. In the end, he focused on
something else. Yeah, I think he's responsive as
well, yeah. And I think not to jump the gun
or anything, but I think he was quite pleased with what he saw,
the way he spoke to us. And you know, we'll see the
report soon, see how it came out.
Yeah, but I think probably. He'll use that.
He uses his time really well. He was very, very organised,
very strict state his times and I think they're trained really
well in actually OK if this popped up, that's where my time
needs to go to. Yeah.
So potentially a good. Thing maybe.
And then in the afternoon he then deep dives histories, which
obviously wasn't really to do with us.
Hilariously, I was teaching history.
So he came and observed my lesson.
I was thinking I can't get away from that really.
Like, yeah, that's fine because the next day, yeah, yeah, 61
school trip. So we went on a school trip and
I was like, we see everybody. Reading I'm Off to the RAF
Museum. Yeah, we got a lot of history,
but yeah, that. That was, you know, that was our
experience of Ousted. Yeah, we get the report soon.
But I would say that, you know my my overall kind of idea to
anyone who's got Ofsted coming up and is a subject leader.
If you know your stuff, if you have a rationale, you can
justify it. And if you're consistent, Hmm.
You'll be fine, yeah, Unless you're unlucky enough to get an
inspector that just isn't of the same standard.
So that's, that's where, you know, going back to Mr P's
thing, right the start there is, you know that that's where the
reform is needed in Ofsted. Still think it needs reforming,
even though we had a fairly positive experience personally.
Cool, sweet, sweet Jingle. Yeah, that's Jingle, right.
I hope you're really enjoying this extended episode.
We're not finished. No, we're not finished.
That's that's not the end. We've got more to do because
we've got a Q&A section because last week they forgot to
actually ask. The questions on Instagram story
out and didn't look, you were like no 30 minutes till the
episode. If you got a burning question,
get it in now didn't ask questions.
But before we do that, there is another thing we're going to do
first, which is talk about politics.
Because Dylan hasn't had the opportunity to talk about
politics for seven whole days. I mean, I don't.
Know if, you know, I've had a child, so yeah, so.
I was in my own little bubble and I thought, well, you know,
I'll go into the world of social media.
And he was going on, was positive about the world.
See what's going. Ohh Gillian Keegan, The
education she's she's tweeted ohh and there was a nice glossy
video underneath and I thought, I wonder if she's announcing a
new scheme to rebuild our falling schools or making us up.
You know how she got boost your attention by paying us a fair
way. Surely that's the job of the
education secretary, isn't it? To make it better to be, really.
Positive about teachers? Let's have a look shall we?
Ohh last year school strikes resulted in 24.
Let's talk about strikes. 25,000,000 school days being
lost. Cumulatively pointless.
Number really good. Use of mass.
There, my friend. Children should not have to
suffer repeat disruption. They shouldn't.
They really shouldn't. Yeah, it's your job.
I'm announcing that we will introduce minimum service levels
in schools so that pupils get the education they need and
deserve. I can't explain how much this
ripped me up. Yeah, because.
Anytime this Conservative government talk about what
children deserve, umm, I can't help but want to shout in their
face. We know.
That's why we're striking. Can we have some more money?
Please? Can we have the things that
you've cut for the last 13 years?
Children deserve to not be disrupted.
Children deserve to not have a roof fall on their head when
they're learning about maths. Children deserve to not be in a
porta cabin for seven years for a bit, but it's actually for
longer than they expect. Children deserve to have a
qualified teacher in the subject teaching them.
I'd love to know the cumulative number of the amount of maths
lessons that I've been taught and science lessons by teachers
who aren't qualified in maths or science.
So when she talks about what children deserve, can we just
sit down for a minute and actually you do your job and
give them what they deserve in the 1st place and not blame us,
the people who are delivering it on a shoestring?
Yeah, I mean, wow, why do you got really passionate there?
I fully agree, though I think I found it so offensive because it
was like what that we were striking for.
Minimum has to improve where the.
Problem. Yeah.
Mad, isn't it? What's minimum service do you
like? Minimum service to me is like
literally a building that doesn't fall down.
Minimum service to me is is that when the class happens to have
four children with additional needs in it, that they actually
get additional support. It's not just potluck, not when
you literally apply, apply, apply, rejected, rejected,
rejected. And this is the same government,
by the way, who are going to put a cap on how many EHCP's could
be granted, as if there's a magic number of children who
need extra help? The government didn't want to
feed children during COVID. Who needed feeding?
Do you remember when? Like, these are the kind of
idiots who go stick to football. Thank you.
Leave the politics to me. Who are these people?
What do you? Are they qualified in politics?
No, they're just spout rubbish. They spout stuff to get the
Daily Mail front page and just wind us up.
Gillian Keegan is the exact opposite of the analogy I gave
earlier about what kind of leader I'd like to be if I was
leading a school. It's the same thing if I was
leading the country of teachers. I'd put the teachers first so
that they do a really, really good job and improve the minimum
service level that the children receive if you're.
Going to be in charge of a government which continuously
strangles any form of funding or help, not only for the children
who need it the most, but for everyone.
Hmm. And instead spout statistics,
which are complete nonsense. We're investing more than ever
before to our Yeah, but there's more people than ever before.
Yeah, like, we have more teachers than ever in the
profession. We have more pupils than ever.
Yeah, and that's outstripping with teachers.
And we have done every single decade since.
Humanity like, of course think increasing.
I'm sorry. One government and one out of
touch MP is not more viable and trustworthy on this subject than
hundreds of thousands of teachers who do it every single
time. Get what they expect, They're
just soaking. Up to have the Education
Secretary demonising the education so.
Before this philosophy video, I don't know when they do these
videos, these Tory MPs, Sunak has a video every two days.
Go on your job, please. She did this video saying, you
know, we're going to the unions and we're going to ask them.
Are voluntary minimum service level.
Didn't ask these unions before she did this video and published
it. Didn't even go talk to unions
and then she said if they don't agree I'll just use my powers.
With the new anti strike clause we have to make sure there are
minimum service levels. So it's essentially just the
just bullying threat. She is a disgrace.
I've never been so angry listening to someone before who
was supposed to be in our corner.
And now I'm not the biggest fan of the Conservative government
and I've never hit that right. But if.
Education Secretary came in and was remotely on our side and
wanted to work with us. I'd be the first person to stand
up and say thank you. Let's do this then let's solve
this. Because I don't care about
political point scoring. Yeah, yeah.
I think you're rubbish. You're proving it, by the way,
that I was right. But your job to prove that
people like us are wrong. It's your job to be in charge
and come up with solutions that we can work together on and we
can be energised by. You're my boss.
What? You're looking at me on this
video going You made children lose their education.
Get in the bin. Yeah.
Winds me up. Let's hope that if I was, if I
was the unions being the bitter man I am and the spiteful man
that I would try and be in this situation, I would, I would
draught up a minimum service agreement that is 100% entirely
down to the government. But you're like, OK, this is our
minimum service agreement that don't leak.
And all the things, the stuff that only the government can
fix, because they're all the things that are actually the
problem with the education sector.
Because all they care about is that general average show
doesn't have their kid off school.
We haven't enough qualified teachers, so we're going to used
to pay to make the job more attractive.
Ohh there you go teaching. Pay more minimum service.
Of having the minimum amount of children in a school.
Yeah, that's the first thing we should do.
Yeah. Let's have the minimum amount of
qualified teachers in the building.
That would be a good minimum service level, wouldn't it?
Yeah, we're going to get more funding from the government so
we can employ staff to help the children that are most
vulnerable and most need that additional support who are
failing in our schools at the moment when they don't have the
support, Hayden. All of this requires money and
input. Ohh, look, the teachers want
money again. Yes, of course we want money.
Yeah, yeah. We don't even want.
We don't even want money all the time, right?
We just want other people in the building with us to deliver by
money. I mean, I mean, they're funding.
Yeah, funding. That's all I meant.
Don't care about this in my pocket or not really.
You know, truthfully, you know that that is quite low on my
list. I still want a inflation pay
rise, but if you were to tell me right, there's a choice between
you get 6.5% pay rise and every child who needs EHCP is fully
funded and gets the support they need, or I get a 12% pay rise
but none of the other stuff happens every single day of the
week. 99.9% of teachers would choose the less money.
But everyone gets support. Yeah, but.
That's a it's not gonna happen because she would rather stand
there and say 25,000,000 days were lost.
But what they'll do is though, and this, this is what always
happens, the rhetoric is or what?
No, you take 0% pay rise and we'll give that money to the
kids. And it gets to the level where
it's like, ah, but you've done that for 10 years and now people
can't afford to take a 0% pay rise anymore because you've
whittled it down to the point where lots of teachers who are
in, you know, everyone has a different family setup.
Lots of teachers in their family are on the absolute line of
every single penny is already accounted for each month in
their family, and they literally now can't afford to take any
more pay cuts. Yeah, because it's been cut and
cut and cut and cut and cut and and remember.
That 6% pay rise? Yeah, either pay, you know,
happened 10 years ago, they had the option take a 0% pay rise
and give the money to kids. Alright, do you have a nine
years ago that again you have eight years ago that just seven
years ago it happened for 10 years and now no one has any
money left so they can't take a 0% pay rise anymore.
That's all it's about, and. And simultaneously inflation
went to 10% or. But it's the war, is it?
Or is it literally? Or chronic underfunding and
maltreatment of this entire country.
Never mind this education sector.
Hmm. It's embarrassing.
You're blaming the wrong people. I can't wait until we get to
vote you out. But also Dylan 25,000,000 days
were lost. Oh, really?
Most of that is a number. How hilarious.
I know. How?
They got there but like that is peak government just absolution
manipulation of you know they they they never ever manipulate
numbers in a way that's like normal.
They always manipulate, manipulate to make their point
better. It's really, it's okay.
Every child must like four or five days.
So here we go. 25,000,000 days of school will also there are
more teachers than ever. Also, we're putting more money
than ever into schools. But when you literally dive into
those numbers. Yeah, they're all bad for the
government. Yeah, the more money than ever,
OK. But like, based on how much
money is now worth, right? You can't say in the 1970s we've
put 1 billion into education and today we put 2 billion in.
That's not how money works. Here are two facts that are
true. Ready Teachers now earn more
than teachers that ever and ever before.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. We got £30,000 starting wage for
new stuff. More than ever before is also
true, comparatively to the inflation teachers earn the
least they've ever earned. Exactly.
And you can say both of those sentences and technically be
true when you're the literal government it all they care
about is staying in power. Umm, all they care about is PR.
Not one of them cares about what good for this country or the
people in it. They only and every now and then
what's good for the people does overlap with what's good for
their PR and stuff. So they will do that every now
and then. The vast majority of the time.
It's just, well, what can be easier for us to fix all of
these problems or to point at the teachers who are at their
last rag? Of all these problems and say
your fault. See your fault, your fault.
You were off. And if you weren't off for then
four days, everything would have been fine.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Ohh this. Would Would the roof have not
been collapsing? Did we?
Did we spend months off school a couple of years ago and we seem
to be OK with that. We've plugged the gaps. 5 days
though. Terrible.
The worst thing that could ever have happened.
Like, let's not pretend COVID wasn't bad.
Like it was. It was awful, but it was huge in
comparison to the strike days, yeah.
Fix it? Honestly.
Let's move on. We're getting up.
Let me finish this episode. There's very, very long episode
with you and last week, So this Q&A I did ask.
It last week with half an hour, yeah.
I did also just immediately. Not look at it.
So I said I'll do it next week, we'll do it next week.
So my keynotes, here we go on my phone, yeah.
First one, Snickers. And no stop.
Sorry the first one. I've given Hayden one of them
because it's something I want us to pre do and again.
Gonna make this into a real Hayden.
You need to be on your ball Please don't do that thing where
I tell you we're gonna do a real needs to be less than a minute
and you go. And in the 1st place we have a
chocolate that I have sometimes one time and decided I like to
eat And I'm going to say about the chocolate, Hey don't I need
to cut this into a minute? Ohh reels ohh you'll see I asked
you cause someone said to us can you rank the celebrations?
In order, it's that time of year where celebrations start
appearing in the shops. We've already gone through two
boxes in our house, so celebrations, there's eight in
total. I want you to.
Break them. Hmm.
OK, From worst to best, reverse order.
I've ranked mine. Off you go.
Are you gonna guess mine or am I just doing it?
Pardon. I thought you were gonna play a
game. No, no.
I want you to go from the top. From the bottom.
Down in 8th place. Worst.
The best. I got it down.
You ready? Yeah.
Absolute worst. Disgusting Snickers.
Correct. Followed by bounty.
Absolutely right. Could eat it.
Twix.
Same. Nice, but Mars?
Correct. Milky Way, yes.
Oh my God that we're in the nice territory now.
Walk away is nice Galaxy caramel.
Swear to God I got the same Galaxy.
Nice one, Multi. Right on the screen I have
written this. You can't even.
See it I've written down, I've got the exact same order.
The exact same as Bounty Twix, Mars, Milky Way, Galaxy, Caramel
Galaxy. I Really wanted to call you out.
I thought you gonna say something Bounty second there.
You go, that's the definitive list.
Then if anyone disagrees with that, you're wrong.
Let us know in the comments. But that is 100% of people think
that. Do you know I wouldn't have to
say I thought we would because we eat a lot of sweets and me
and you will consistently eat the same ones and then be left
with the ones we don't like. So it happens a lot.
Man, I was really hoping to controversy, but we've just.
Decided the definitive list. Didn't know if anyone asks and
they don't say that. They're not.
The only one that's controversial is Snickers.
Because I know that people that like like nutty things will
often rank that quite a lot higher.
But if you don't like it, obviously it goes to the bottom.
Don't like nuts? That's this tends to be how a
list works. Or preference.
Yeah, if you. Don't like them?
No. Nothing like Mars bars.
Like, nuts are very like, nuts. Make something.
Yeah, especially if you're allergic to them.
Yeah, exactly. That's why.
Sneakers. Often at the bottom?
Yeah, I was actually gonna put Bounty bottom below Snickers,
even though I'm. Allergic to Snickers?
Really. Because I hate Bounty Bounty.
But I don't like them. They're just when they're there.
Yeah. And it's been 4 days of no
chocolate nothing left. Yeah.
I'll start picking up the boundaries we've got.
We've got the definitive list. Yeah.
I'm buzzing. I'm.
Actually buzzing. Definitive list.
My gosh, my microphone just came off.
What are you standing? Here we go.
Ohh dear. Right, Hayden.
Should we carry on with the Q&A? Ohh, no, I wanna watch you
struggle first. Ohh, it's back.
And he didn't quite easily. OK And what else we got them.
OK. So Q&A, let me get it back up.
We have got sorry to everyone, by the way, who sent one in?
I did answer a few. OK Claire, I went through then
just. For the notes.
OK, so roses, Roses. Ohh God ohh God, what do you
buy? OK, there's there's a quick one.
Here we go. Because the choice is
realistically, are heroes. Yeah.
Celebrations, Roses and Quality St Yeah, they're the four.
Honestly Roses and Quality Street.
But don't think. About, think about, these are
quite nice. No, no, no.
When you go into the shop, slide tackle them, slide tackle.
That pallet horrible quality St and rubbish.
But I would say quality St 4th Rose's third.
Probably this is where it's tough because I bought.
A celebration box, right? But I think heroes are better.
Yeah, me too. Me too.
However, I eat. No, actually, it's true.
I eat everything in the hero box and enjoy it.
Yeah, that's. True, but I think the individual
top tier celebrations are better.
Yeah, so Martiza, Galaxy Galaxy Caramel, Top Tier, Creme Egg and
Caramel though Cream heroes, you have them at your house every
day like very very quickly ate all of those good ones.
Yeah, honestly, in. Front of him was 3 creme egg
wrappers, 3 camera rappers and I was like, are you joking?
You only got 3 in the pack. Yeah, none.
None of this. I have one, unless someone no.
Anyway, question answer good. Yeah, OK, First one's advice.
It was a real one. OK, advice for someone who in
the school has been put into a year group.
They really don't want to be in a really long hair coming out
between your eyebrows and it's amazing nice thought the light
grow that we'll grow that grow that angler fish Yeah it's
really good Sorry got distracted Advice for someone in a year
group in school has been put there and they really don't want
to be in that year group quite common because the start of the
school year we need to move you to.
Be one if you're in a free school.
I found that if you just go to another year group and start
teaching the class, eventually they just leave you alone.
Would you just take someone else's class?
Just go and teach other aspect here?
No, I was put here. That's probably my advice to
just ignore it. I mean, you're 3.
I don't know what my advice is. Do you have advice for that
person would say is #1. It's unfortunate, but it's.
Completely legitimate, Yeah. Like I I would say in the 1st
place I'd be like unless a leader really has to.
That's pretty annoying because I think most good leaders ask what
your preference is and then would preface it with a
discussion if they had to put you somewhere.
I've been put into a year group that wasn't necessarily my first
choice, but I did what I was asked and I did say you know
what? Anywhere that's necessary.
Turned out I was the only one who said that I went to.
The hard thing is I don't know if this person is in that
situation. When you do have that
preference, but you say one thing so some sometimes the
teacher, head teacher come round and be like where do you wanna
be? I only wanna work in your five.
Yeah, it's OK. You're not really giving them
much choice now because if they can't put you in that one thing,
then to them, well, they're all equally bad.
So I'll put you in the worst one because you might have thought
year four would be fine, but God, no.
Year one. Yeah, I often.
Ranked ahead. No idea if you've got a
preference I think in this situation.
It was a primary school and the person had been put into key
stage one and they're very much preferring had donkeys these
two. My advice was a lot of this
stuff transferable. You know, put yourself into it.
Do it. You're good at.
Teach the children and build relationships quickly.
I think you build different types of relationships depending
on the age. Yeah.
But I think that's still the number one thing I would say for
me to enjoy my job. Right.
What I enjoy in my job is building relationships with the
children. I know them really well, and
then they can get as much out of me as possible.
That's how I feel good in my teaching job is when I feel like
I'm giving lots. I'd say do that and also speak
to the head teacher and just be really honest with if they can
see that you're trying your hardest and you're really not
enjoying that role and you think you could do a better job in
another year, make that clear. Show the evidence.
I think I performed better in this group.
I'll get better outcomes. Maybe next year I can, you know,
move back and just see what they say and don't kick up a fuss and
not give you all. Because that gives them a reason
then, to be like. Well, it's your fault.
Actually, you're not. You're not even trying to throw
yourself into it if it's not for you.
Hopefully next year. Your head will understand that
next one made me laugh was have you ever been tempted to join in
playground games on break duty when the children are playing
like you used to? Like you used to.
You know, when you were in school, I used to play Bulldog.
I really want to join. Ohh yeah.
Yeah. Well I I used to a lot and when
we started our career, I think you probably did as well.
I used to go out quite a lot at lunchtimes and just mingle with
the kids a bit like me. Yeah, it was.
I think it was like that, but I would.
I'd go and play football with them all the time.
I don't do it at all anymore. I just leave him alone.
I just realised I don't think they actually want.
You to Of course they don't. They don't want that teacher.
They wanna go and play. They'll be.
Nice to you. And pretend.
Ohh, Sir, I'll pass you the ball.
Really. They just want they're they're
they're mate. Who was gonna get the ball?
I could have, you know, scored whatever.
What age do you think that? People, when they get a break,
stop thinking that sprinting as fast as they can is the way to
have a break because it always makes me laugh.
When you're like, right kids, it's break time and they Sprint
and scream out the door and if you say to me it's breakdown
like, OK, thank you. Sit down for a drink?
Yeah. And what, at what point do you
think sprinting is not the first thing I reckon I've.
I think I probably did that. Like all that.
I was like, yeah, most because, yeah, yeah, yeah, all the
secondary school. I would say that the idea of
running around was like, quite good.
You imagine it like the staff room got a treadmill.
That break time. Yeah.
Ohh it just makes me laugh. Although, although, if that was
the culture. As in if there was a culture of
imagine it what break? No, just just hang on, right.
Imagine it. Break time, right.
It was just the thing that all the staff and outside and played
like a really funny silly game of like tag or like dodgeball or
something and that was the option.
Or you can go and sit in the staff room.
I think I'd probably choose the dodge I think would be quite
fun. Just can't get English prep.
Then yeah, what is break? And it would be one time, then,
the novelty. Aware of.
OK, so I guess the answer is yes.
Tempted. But I'm like, no, I've got other
things to do, but I do see them play Bulldog and it's such a
simple game. I'm like as you watch them trip
over on I always get banned. And yeah, I know why people get.
That time where people, sort of people who are, you know,
classic people who aren't in schools, hear a story.
I think it's almost impossible. People thought British Bulldog
was being banned because it was called the British Bulldog.
Like because ohh British, Yeah, yeah.
And this whole thing, ohh I can't even have.
British things anymore in the stores?
No, it's just because the amount of kids who fall over and graze
their knee, Yeah, we don't have enough ice packs to match their
faces. It honestly, it's horrendous.
I've seen it first hand multiple times, yeah.
Then we stop playing this game. I'd love to join in, but it's
not safe kids, so yeah. Safety first.
Also, just one quick one, Deputy Head said to us a long, long
time ago. You got to be really careful
because you're responsible. If you're playing Bulldog with
the kids and you actually ran into one of them and seriously
hurt them, you're losing your job.
Like that's gone. So maybe just don't put yourself
in the situation situation next one.
I thought this was a good one. Do I know?
I think I know your answer. And this is someone from someone
who we're gonna have in the podcast soon.
We're gonna have more of a discussion there.
Do teachers need to be readers? Ohh, I think we should.
I'm gonna answer it very simply, but I actually really wanna talk
to Yeah, the guest about that question.
That's a really good one. Yeah, here we go.
This will just be a prompt then for the conversation.
No, that's interesting because I think like.
Every good question. We're gonna have to clarify what
we mean here. If I said yes, I would be
telling myself I'm a bad teacher.
So it's not the same as Do teachers need to be able to?
Read. Yeah.
Do teachers need to be exposed to lots of books?
That's all different questions. Do teachers have to be readers?
I think my really really short like summary answer that's a bit
more than no would just be. I think statistically you're
more likely to be a much better teacher of if you of of reading
and writing if you read a lot yourself.
But I don't think those things are mutually exclusive.
I don't think you have to to still be able to be a good one
way to be able to say you're a good teacher, I'd.
Like to think I'm not. Yeah, and I don't get into the
conversation. We'll do it next time, TuneIn,
when we're not next episode, whenever we have this guest on
soon, which will be the next guest, I presume.
Maybe, I don't know, one of the next guests?
We'll see. We've got a few lined up.
How exciting. Yeah, that's the end of the Q&A.
I enjoyed that. Ohh cool.
That's really abrupt. That's the end of the Q&A.
Bye. It's been a long episode.
I've enjoyed it. Yeah, hopefully people get
something out of that. He was unhinged, though.
Wasn't unhinged. No, it was quite serious today.
I do have. An unhinged story about my son.
I've got a son. Ohh yeah, we'll save it for next
time. OK, that's good.
TuneIn next week to teach the repeat.
Where can they check us out, Dylan, before we go because
we're terrible at plugging our Instagram teach repeat podcast
on threads. Teach, Podcast and you can
e-mail us.repeatpod@gmail.com We had a lovely couple of emails
this week from listeners. Not even giving us stories.
Just when we say we wanna hear you say hi.
Yeah, we literally do love to hear you say you say hi.
Yeah. If you can rate US on on all
your podcast platforms, that would be really helpful.
If people ranking up share it as well.
Yeah, share the podcast with someone.
It's half term. Share it.
But we are trying to grow an audience, so we do appreciate
it. Thank you.
And we love you all. OK.
Well, most of you, yeah. OK.
Bye.