Interesting Times!

Tuesday, 6 February 2007

I read one of our school's OfSTED inspection report today and it is simply brilliant...

Perhaps Beecroft Primary School, and the many other outstanding schools across the city, can help us understand what are the jigsaw pieces needed to build brilliant learning places...

OfSTED visited Beecroft Primary School a couple of weeks ago and the report states that "Beecroft Primary fully meets its aims for 'all pupils to achieve high standards of work, behaviour and attitudes to others'. It gives pupils an outstanding education at the end of which they leave as confident, well-rounded individuals with a strong sense of their rights and responsibilities. It is a happy, purposeful school and pupils, parents, staff and governors are immensely proud of it."

The report rates the various aspects of the school... achievment is outstanding, teaching and learning are outstanding, the curriculum is outstanding, care,guidance and support is outstanding and leadership and managemnet are outstanding. A line in the report gives you a clue to the success of this wonderful little school... "absolute attention to detail is what makes this school work so well"... but the real key to its success is the headteacher June Turner.

We need to research and study our outstanding schools... our brilliant learning places... and remember that we have lots of them all over Leeds. We must bring together our brilliant practice and identify the jigsaw pieces needed to build brilliant learning places consistently across Leeds.
Chris

3 comments:

set said...: Jigsaws

I suppose in many ways I should consider myself lucky. Being funded as an 'un-specified administrative cost' allows a number of liberties beyond those of most staff down here. One such liberty is the setting of one's own agenda, one's own jigsaw if you like. I'm currently working on a particularly interesting project which appears to lack a few pieces.

Back in January a colleague; well more of a drinking partner really as to be a colleague I'd need to see some evidence of work from her; suggested that we recommend a quick review of our 'Books for Bridges' scheme. As you can imagine it would have been wrong not to support her request as the sharing of surplus educational resources to other countries is an admirable form of recycling. K approved this mission and so here we are. Sweating, sipping a very strange rum which I think is made with a root rsather than cane and listening to the world service once more. That's the context and here's the jigsaw.

'set, shut the **** up. You keep whinning on about education and you or anyone else hasn't got the faintest ******* clue what it is!' I would have said something but she continued, 'Every night we sit here listening to the daily agenda. If you did a crime scene thing and stuck post-it notes on a glass screen for each news headline you'd get what they make a work of education. So today there's a **** up with some kid's mum teaching history by mistake!' I got her point. The pieces of this jigsaw are cut on the newsroom floor.

Now it would be easy to dismiss her view as negative. It would be easy to fall in line with her and march right down to the trench warfair view of education camp. Maybe she has a good road map for discussion though. What do we think about cover supervisors? What figures do we have to hand about the extent and nature of their usage? What do parents think about this? What do the children think about this? I sit here listening to some wierd chirping insects, almost in shock at the the score in the cricket, and I ask... Is it important to discuss media stories about education? Your thoughts please.

Set; 7 February 2007 at 00:34
Oaf said...: Set,
I find your observations about Chris's blog both amusing and pleasantly eccentric.
Keep it up.; 7 February 2007 at 15:52
Chris Edwards said...: It's refreshing to know that someone reads the thing... it is also good to know that it reaches those far flung parts of the world.
Chris; 11 February 2007 at 13:58

Brilliant Quotes!

“I must accept life unconditionally. Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.”
Margaret Lee Runbeck

“Happiness is not in our circumstances but in ourselves. It is not something we see, like a rainbow, or feel, like the heat of a fire. Happiness is something we are.”
John B. Sheerin

“Most true happiness comes from one's inner life, from the disposition of the mind and soul. Admittedly, a good inner life is difficult to achieve, especially in these trying times. It takes reflection and contemplation and self-discipline.”
William L Shirer

“The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: If you pursue happiness you'll never find it.”
C.P. Snow

“Doubly rich is the man still boyish enough to play, laugh and sing as he carries and emanates sunshine along a friendly road.”
Charles R. Wiers

"Faith is not a shelter against difficulties, but belief in the face of all contradictions."
Paul Tournier

"Convictions are the mainsprings of action, the driving powers of life. What a man lives are his convictions."
Francis C. Kelley

"To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger; but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can."
Sydney Smith

"It is often just as sacred to laugh as it is to pray"
Charles R. Swindoll

"Things never go so well that one should have no fear; and never so ill that one should have no hope"
Turkish proverb

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself"
Chinese proverb

"Don't bother to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
William Faulkner

"In times of change, learners will inherit the earth,while the learned will find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists"
Eric Hoffer

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans."
John Lennon

"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
Robert F. Kennedy

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems."
Mahatma Gandhi

"Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way."
Abraham Lincoln

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Martin Luther King Jr.

"There is nothing in life so difficult that it cannot be overcome. This faith can move mountains. It can change people. It can change the world."
Norman Vincent Peale

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
Albert Einstein

"Life isn't measured by the number of breaths we take but the moments that take our breath away."
Anonymous

"Patience and perseverence have a magical affect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish."
John Quincy Adams

"Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and woman to win them."
Ralph Waldo Emerson