It’s been a long day. I’ve been in and out of lessons throughout with a range of staff. I’ve grabbed a minute here or there for individualised feedback and did a working break and lunch with middle leaders. I’m now in the head’s office, and I have ten minutes or so before running a group session for all staff looking at some of the things we’ve observed and learnt today. The head asked me how the day went and what kind of thing we will be discussing in the session.

“It’s been a great day. Really enjoyed it. There’s a bunch of T&L stuff on the agenda that I’m going to narrow down but before I get to that I have to point out one thing to you: in every single lesson I was in today – I think that’s around 15 – on at least one occasion a student called out, normally more than once. On no occasion at all today was a student meaningfully challenged on having called out.”

The headteacher looks annoyed. He says “you mean nobody got a warning, or a C1 or a C2 or anything?”

I look back and say “sir, this is the first time today that I’ve heard those terms. Until five second ago, I didn’t even know that was your behaviour policy.”

He looks even more annoyed “that’s very frustrating”

“Why?”

“Because we’ve told staff about it so so many times, done training at least once a term…it’s frustrating that it still isn’t happening”

Here comes my difficult bit. “Right, I get that, and it is frustrating to be sure…do you remember earlier this morning when we first met, I made a commitment to you that I would be 100% honest, 100% of the time? Ok, so I think it’s really important when we get frustrated by stuff like this that we realise our staff aren’t idiots. They aren’t stupid people. They also aren’t lazy or deliberately non-compliant. You have some fantastic leaders and teachers in this school, and a really positive culture and that’s to all of your credit. So it’s probable – and we can explore this in a sec – given that you’ve said you want people to do it, if staff aren’t doing the C1, C2 thing, it’s not because they are lazy or deliberately undermining or stupid, it’s because of something else, something that we can potentially fix.”

There’s a bit of a pause. I have this conversation with leaders a lot. Sometimes, leaders fight back. Often, they take a second, and then ask me to continue. These are the best leaders, and the ones most able to improve.

“ok, so let’s take the C1, C2 example. You have a document that’s got all the things that people get a C1 for, right? ok, and how many things are there in that box?…right, about 8. And in the C2 box? Another 8 or so? Yeah, so straight off the bat maybe we need to be worried that that’s a lot of things for teachers to think about. You’ve got a summary poster of it? Does that have calling out on it? No? It’s got stuff like ‘low level disruption’? So, I’m a teacher, and I don’t know what that means or what it includes without more information. And when you do training about the system, is it more procedural, like how you give a C1, where you enter it on Arbor, what you do when you give a C2, when you have to call home etc? Right, what that means is that you aren’t focusing on the specific events. You’ve barraged your staff with about a million things to think about, one of those things is calling out, but you haven’t spent any significant time saying ‘ok, and today we are going to talk about calling out. We’re going to talk about why it’s a problem, how we prevent it happening, and what we do it a student does call out.'”

The head takes the point, and nods. I continue: “I’ll give you another example. Let’s say a student calls out in my lesson. I give them a warning for a C1. They do it again, and I give them a C2. They do it again. My next step is a C3, which is a removal from the lesson. Now, I don’t know this, but can you guarantee to me that if I were a teacher at your school, and I removed a student from my lesson – with all that goes with it, detentions, potential isolation etc – can you guarantee to me that I wouldn’t receive any push back from a head of year, head of department, deputy head or parent?”

The head thinks. Again, he acknowledges the point. “I’d like to think so, but I don’t think I can guarantee that.”

“Right, so what that means is that I’m just less likely to do it. I’ll sort of say to the kid “oh please don’t call out”, but I’ll never escalate to a point of actual consequence. And if I’m less likely to do it, the teacher in the next room is too, and before you know it nobody’s doing it. Trust is hard to build and easy to break, it only takes one occasion of a teacher not being properly supported before you can lose your culture.”

***

I have conversations like this a lot. Sometimes behaviour, sometimes Teaching and Learning. My intent here isn’t to beat anyone up. School leadership is an incredibly difficult task, and I have the strongest admiration for those who take it on themselves in the spirit of collective development and improvement and in the service of staff and students. But it’s hard. Really hard.

When it comes to initiatives and improvements, there are all sorts of reasons why you’ve said something but that hasn’t resulted in any meaningful or concrete change. We’ve seen some already:

  • Giving too much information in one go
  • Focusing on abstract policy and administrative procedures rather than concrete practice
  • Not fully supporting people in implementing the policy

There are plenty of others too, for example:

  • Trying to do too many things at once
  • Not explaining to staff the full WHENWHYBY (i.e., when does this thing apply [and when does it not apply], why are we doing it, and then how – in minute detail – do we go about doing it)
  • Not providing/facilitating the physical means (e.g. asking for miniwhiteboards to be used but not buying them centrally)
  • Not sustaining focus on something until it is embedded
  • Making blanket policy based on a small number of staff not doing the right thing
  • Building policy without local (e.g. departmental) consultation
  • Not giving people time to practise new strategies within training sessions
  • Not checking that staff understand what you have said

And so on and so forth. It’s a big list, and there’s lots that can go wrong. It might not occur to us at first, but whenever we see that break between what I’ve said and what they’ve heard, we need to go back to it. Think back. Without beating myself up or feeling embarrassed or ashamed – what could I have done differently such that it would have landed better?

The EEF’s full guidance on professional development can be useful here (don’t just read the summary poster). I am also delivering training on topics like this later in the year, more info here. For more on calling out in particular, click here.