Teaching at the Langton: our expectations
It is our expectation that all our teachers constantly seek to improve their teaching and our professional development programme is heavily biased towards our commitment to improving professional practice.
We avoid using standard models of accountability such as Ofsted criteria or examination statistics to judge our teachers. Rather, we recognise that teaching is a complex activity and a teacher may have significant skills in some aspects of professional practice, but may need to improve in others. Furthermore, we acknowledge that teaching competence is not something which can truly be reduced to a uniform definition; there are, for example, very different strategies which work for Key Stage Three students compared to those which work with A level students.
And, of course, teaching only boys in years 7 to 11 requires appreciation of the psychology of boys as well as the psychology of adolescence.
The definition below provides a very general idea of our school-wide expectation for exceptional teaching, a standard to which we believe all our teachers should aspire. It should also be noted that the school has minimum expectations for teaching and teachers who fall below our minimum expectations are provided with additional professional support through a programme led by the Director of Learning. An outline of this support programme follows later in this document.
Exceptional Teaching
What does exceptional teaching look like?
Common definitions of outstanding teaching refer to:
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How your teaching promotes learning and progress
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The way you use assessment
 The impact of your work and the work of your department on students’ social, moral, spiritual and cultural development
In addition, at the Langton we are concerned that your teaching promotes the ethos of the school and embraces the Langton Curriculum. This means that your teaching should:
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Set high aspirations for all students such that university entry or a career requiring university standard qualifications are academic and professional goals for all students
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Routinely encourage students to work outside and beyond the formal curriculum and syllabus to stimulate authentic interest in and commitment to you subject area
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Encourage students to achieve the attributes outlined in the Langton
Curriculum such that they display the independence and maturity necessary for success at the next level of their education
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The following notes provide a guideline of the Langton’s expectations for your teaching. These combine guidance from Ofsted and our own values about education and may prove useful in considering your own work.
Teachers should have consistently high expectations of all students
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You are intolerant of lateness and do not allow students to waste time
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Your questions make effective use of challenge and silence
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Praise is qualified and specific. Mediocrity is not rewarded
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Students are aware of the minimum standards expected of them
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Students are encouraged to think and work beyond the routine expectations of the subject
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You regularly model high academic and intellectual qualities in your subject
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Your marking and assessment are regular and appropriate
Teachers should plan and teach lessons that enable students to learn exceptionally well
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Your lessons should be well prepared and should include all students
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You should be sufficiently expert in your subject that you can deviate from the lesson plan if doing so is meaningful and challenging for students
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Students should be encouraged to challenge the teacher
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You should use assessment data to identify and respond to the needs of individuals or groups
Programme of Professional Support for Teachers
The programme of professional support for teachers is primarily aimed at teachers who are eligible to pass through the threshold (the standard for satisfactory teaching outlined in the school’s performance management policy) but who have not. In addition, teachers making less progress in their professional standards than considered satisfactory and teachers experiencing professional problems are also considered for the programme. Furthermore, teachers preparing for Threshold Assessment may also request support through the programme.
Note: ‘Threshold’ standards are considered the minimum acceptable standards for teachers who have completed six years’ service in the profession.
Teachers for whom the programme will apply will be identified through the process of performance management, through consideration of professional development and classroom observation records and/or through the scrutiny of examination and assessment results. Responsibility for selecting teachers to follow the programme will lie with the Headteacher, the Director of Learning and the Head of the faculty of
Support and Guidance. In addition, individual teachers can nominate themselves for the programme.
The programme of support will include the following:
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An initial professional dialogue with the Director of Learning leading to a professional development needs assessment
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An additional professional development entitlement to enable the teacher to take part in activities focusing on teaching and learning
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The opportunity to observe best practice within the school
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A weekly meeting with the Director of Learning to review lesson plans and materials for the forthcoming week
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Regular classroom observation and feedback by the Director of Learning and other senior staff
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A half-termly review with the Director of Learning or the Head of the Faculty of Support and Guidance to review progress whilst on the programme and to identify ongoing professional development needs.
The programme of support would normally run for two terms. In the case of teachers who have not passed ‘Threshold’ standards prior to receiving support, and for whom the programme has been successful, the teacher will be provided with the necessary statements to complete a Threshold application at the end of the process.
Where a teacher does not make sufficient progress on the programme, further support and possible intervention will be considered.
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Models of assessment and accountability
The approaches to learning outlined above do not sit comfortably with current models of assessment. The literature, whilst extensive, does not really address the distinction between ‘assessment for performance’ and ‘assessment for learning’. The Australian
Erica McWilliam suggests that the popular use of the term ‘assessment for learning’ is inaccurate and what we mean by the term is actually ‘assessment for performance’ which often is indistinguishable from ‘teaching-to-the-test’.
McWilliam stresses the danger of the ‘standard model’ of assessment which is completely focused on exam preparation. In this model teacher development becomes focused on a range of tactics, commonly called ‘assessment for learning’, which really only offer a variety of ways to encourage the activity required for success in future tests. Whilst the suggested classroom strategies often seem sensible on the surface, she is concerned that this approach promotes a) a culture where performance becomes meaningless (whether because students aren’t allowed to fail or because the students’ learning is restricted only to passing a test) and b) a culture which ignores the kind of preparation for the future that students require. (For example, it is often suggested that students should not be lectured as they are required to be passive learners, yet this approach to learning is that which the overwhelming majority of our students will experience at university.)
This cultural point is an important one which has only limited coverage in the directives and advice about ‘assessment for learning’. In the literature assessment is commonly promoted as a uniform activity and so fails to acknowledge the age, ability and academic context of learners.
We should acknowledge that too often teaching at the Langton is dominated by the teaching-to-the-test culture and it frequently runs counter to the learning aims espoused in the policy documents outlined above. We should also recognise that there are many features of the school which demonstrate the prevalence of this reactionary culture.
However, where assessment is concerned with performance our practice varies hugely and there is little consistency in terms of quality and frequency. It is of concern that the debate about assessment for performance in the school has become rather too driven by populist perceptions of the ‘Ofsted model’ (written work should be marked frequently and students need to be told formally what they need to do to get to the next level of competence) and so ignores other approaches to assessment which support independent self-directed and self-evaluated learning.
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Assessment: the educational orthodoxy
The Ofsted interpretation:
Marking is usually conscientious but often fails to offer guidance on how work can be improved. In a significant minority of cases, marking reinforces underachievement and under-expectation by being too generous or unfocused.
Information about pupil performance received by the teacher is insufficiently used to inform subsequent work.
OFSTED general report to schools, 1996.
The research into the issue outlines consistent difficulties with assessment. Yet this research presents an evaluation of educational practice which I find difficult to recognise.
1) Effective learning is prevented because:
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Teachers encourage rote and superficial learning
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Teachers do not critically review their approaches to assessment
2) Assessment has a negative impact because:
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Giving marks and grades are over-emphasised activities, whilst giving advice is under-emphasised
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Teachers tend to give marks and this enables students to compare themselves with one another and this, the research argues, is a disincentive for children.
3) Assessment is too managerial because:
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Assessment feedback often serves a social and managerial function rather than a learning function.
 ‘Teachers are often able to predict pupils’ results because their own tests imitate them – but at the same time they know too little about pupils’ learning needs’
 ‘The collection of marks to fill up records is given greater priority than the analysis of pupil’s work’.
The analysis above comes from Black and Wiliam Inside the Black Box
. It’s alarming that such a widely quoted book offers such a limited, distorted and bizarre account of the evidence base. No significant distinction is made, for example, between assessment techniques for students of different ages, in different subjects and of different abilities. Furthermore, the research doesn’t take us any closer to a solution for assessment. Black and Wiliam do present a coherent explanation of the purpose of assessment (albeit one directly lifted from Sadler):
Where anyone is trying to learn, feedback about their efforts has three elements – the desired goal , the evidence about their present position , and some understanding of a way to close the gap between the two.
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Nevertheless, the directives and research are fairly consistent in promoting a view that assessment is an essential aspect of teaching whereby the teacher provides specific guidance to a student with the aim of the student improving towards a set of specified and usually mandated standards.
Agreeing our philosophy of assessment
The research, the advice from Ofsted and the policy statements about assessment range a great deal and, together, present a picture which is confused, often contradictory and unhelpful.
First, the various statements suggest the aim of assessment is to support students in moving from one level of competence to the next. However, this is not an aim, rather the statements describe the method of assessment and there is very little in the literature which actually promotes an aim underpinning assessment.
It is necessary for us to establish a working understanding of the aims of assessment:
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Assessment should support the teaching and learning aims of the school and so should aim to enable students to complete tasks without the intervention of their teachers;
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Assessment should encourage an approach to learning which recognises that learning should become an independent and self-directed activity;
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Assessment should help students to identify, formulate and articulate questions, to solve problems, conduct research, respond to and overcome obstacles, understand when, how and from whom to seek help and to evaluate their own performance.
Furthermore, our approaches to assessment should de differentiated; we should differentiate between assessment which is focused on performance, the syllabus and the requirements of the exams and that assessment which supports the wider learning aims of the school.
Assessment of learning
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Assessment of the wider learning aims of the school should be as light-touch as possible. However, these aims feature prominently in the culture of the school and so these activities should include a level and mechanism of public accountability and opportunities for feedback and support.
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In the additional opportunities in science we should ensure that students are aware of the approach to assessment, which is concerned with making the activity authentic and public (both within and beyond the school) and models the kinds of peer and expert review which dominate the work of the wider scientific research community.
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Activities concerned with the personal development of students involve selfevaluation and self-directed leadership. Some aspects of these are formalised
(D of E, Sports Leaders Awards etc) whilst the majority are less formal. The school has developed a very effective system of accountability through the
Metric of Success. This systems fits particularly well with wider aims of the school as, for example, the award of the blue tie in Year 11 has become a very
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significant event for each boy, whilst remaining an under-stated and underplayed public event
Assessment for performance
 We currently have a ‘code of practice’ which is included within of Assessment for Learning policy:
Code of Practice:
Each subject area in the school should:
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Have its own agreed set of assessment for learning practices.
Have clearly stated methods through which it agrees to help students at all levels to improve their work and make progress.
Provide guidance on how to set and use lesson objectives and how to build on existing learning.
State clearly how questions should be used in different ways, in different learning environments and with different groups of learners to monitor understanding, push learning forward and secure good progress for all students.
Consider the use of ‘instant’ assessment techniques to test students’ understanding at frequent intervals in lessons.
State clearly that they are committed to involving students themselves in the methods employed to promote good learning through self and peer assessment, where these methods are appropriate.
Have clearly stated procedures to mark written work, such that students are told what was successful in the work completed and informed about how they can improve.
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Devise a method by which comments on work intended to promote better learning, both from students themselves and from teachers, are carried forward, used to improve successive tasks and written work and not lost or forgotten.
Have a robust procedure to track the progress in the subject of individual students within and across years in the school.
Have a clearly understood process by which assessment in line with the stated subject policy at all levels, including the marking of work, is checked by the subject leader.
Each department has its own assessment for learning policy and these policies vary hugely in quality and effectiveness. Furthermore, very few of these policies make a distinction between the different techniques and purposes of assessment which relate to different ages and abilities of students.
If the goal of assessment is to enable a student to complete a task without the intervention of a teacher, then some form of ‘scaffolding’ should apply to the assessment processes of individual departments and there should be an approach
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which explicitly concerns itself with those moments when a teacher’s intervention is not required. Clearly this implies that assessment in KS3, for example, should be a very different activity from assessment in the sixth form.
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