Selective View – Why lesson observations don’t give us the full picture
Is it fair for teachers’ salaries and professional prospects to hinge on just 0.35% of the contact time they have with pupils? Ian McDaid argues not… Most teachers in the UK will probably have face-to-face contact with pupils for around 22 hours a week. Over a year, this adds up to 858 hours. Throughout that […]
- by Ian McDaid
Is it fair for teachers’ salaries and professional prospects to hinge on just 0.35% of the contact time they have with pupils? Ian McDaid argues not…
Most teachers in the UK will probably have face-to-face contact with pupils for around 22 hours a week. Over a year, this adds up to 858 hours. Throughout that year, teachers will at most have to endure three one-hour formal lesson observations for the purposes of performance management.
The introduction of performance-related pay has increased the pressure placed on teachers during these observations. Now, let’s just take a step back and have a rethink. Is observing 0.35% of a teacher’s lessons really a fair way to make a judgement on the quality of their teaching?
What’s your ‘default setting’?
Who do you consider to be a good teacher? If you have a name in mind, why have you chosen them?
Within my department I have a team of eight other teachers. I know who the good teachers are, and my perception has not been formed while observing them teach for a snapshot of just three hours. It is a judgement made by taking into consideration a wide range of factors that are assessed throughout the year – learning walks, drop-ins, work scrutiny and analysis of pupil performance data. I always make time to walk the corridors and pop in to classrooms, so that I can get a feel for both the activity and atmosphere. However, there is still a culture where teachers spend hours preparing for a lesson observation, resulting in rising stress levels and sleepless nights. The product of this culture is not the lesson I want to see!
We all have what I like to refer to as our ‘default setting’. On a typical day, with a typical class, a typical amount of planning and typical resources, what do the pupils experience? When somebody walks past, or even into your classroom, what do they see? This is your default setting. This is what I need to see from the teachers in my department, and it is this focus on the day-to-day pupil experience that makes all the difference.
Your default setting goes way beyond lesson delivery. It also includes the appearance of your classroom, your ability to meet deadlines, your appearance and how you speak to both pupils and your peers. It defines you as a professional.
The teacher’s dilemma
Let me recall a system that I know exists in many schools. Teachers are graded from ‘1’ down to ‘4 based on formal lesson observations, and depending on their career stage expectations, have to reach a rolling two-year average of a particular score.
A teacher on UPS 3 would have to reach an average of 1.5. So over two years, you would achieve this by securing grade 1 three times and grade 2 three times. But what happens if a teacher unfortunately has a bad one-off experience and is therefore given a grade 4? Well, that means that their rolling average has now dropped to 2. They might be given a grade 1 another two times, but they will now only maintain their average at 2. Even if they successfully secure grade 1 on a further two occasions, their average will still only creep up to 1.7.
Can you see the dilemma? One bad lesson observation can cause a whole year of pressure, where a teacher is desperate to achieve grade 1 multiple times just so that they can bump up their average. Yes, this is an extreme situation – but it’s real.
Change the mindset
It is time to lose this unnecessary obsession with lesson observation grades, particularly in circumstances where schools use them as ammunition to hold back on pay progression. It is time to shift the focus away from this 0.35% of a teacher’s lessons and look in much more detail and greater depth at all the other evidence of a teacher’s teaching that is available in schools.
Is the teacher whose classes achieve the best results in school, but who folds under the pressure of formal lesson observations, not eligible for pay progression? What about that teacher who has excellent behaviour management skills and is subsequently picked to teach a particularly challenging class? Those lessons may be brilliant, but if those students do not take on responsibility for their learning and reach their target grades – the suitability of which may be open to question – does this mean that the teacher has failed?
No matter what stage you are at in your career, ultimately there needs to be a change in mindset. We have to acknowledge that it is impossible to deliver ‘outstanding’ lessons every time. Yes, make your default setting high and realistic, but do not attempt to set it at the very top of the scale – it’s not just unsustainable, it’s actually unachievable.
Ian McDaid is Head of Science at Balby Carr Community Academy and an author for Bloomsbury’s ‘100 Ideas’ series; his latest book, 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding Science Lessons, is available now in paperback and as an ebook.
For more information, visit ianmcdaid.wordpress.com or follow @IanMcDaid
