There is an old saying that “laws are like sausages – it’s best not to see them made”

As so many of us finish marking our internal exams, and carefully apply consistent and coherently produced grade boundaries to inform our students’ progress, to what extent is that aphorism still true of examining?

In some mythical ‘ye olden days’ kind of time, examining was thought of as a wonderful route in to a secluded club of “experts”, and an insight in to writing textbooks, glory, riches and perhaps even the god-like Chief Examiner status. While it is often claimed that examining is excellent professional development – and indeed, I’m guilty of saying to people that it’s the kind of thing that they ‘should do’ if they aspire to middle leadership roles – what are the considerations and implications of whether this is still true?

• The marking process has changed

In days gone by, exam scripts would arrive in the post, and you would mark a whole script. There would be a simplicity and consideration to it, but I always hated the time-consuming administration and adding up of marks afterwards. It was fairly straightforward, I know, but I always found it desperately frustrating – the false hope of ‘having finished’, only to then spend time counting, checking, double checking, and asking someone else to do it too.

Now, scripts are marked online. This has the benefit of reducing all of the administration, and indeed, it improves the marking experience for the student. Papers are far easier to review, it’s likely that at least two examiners have seen their scripts, and it’s a simpler process in terms of exam security. But for the examiner, perhaps it does tie you to a computer and inside on days when you might perhaps be glad of fresh air and a little July sunshine! For some people, it is a disadvantage – they dislike reading online, and find it harder to concentrate and review, particularly if it’s a long essay-style answer!

I think this is very much about personal preference – some people won’t mind it, but for some, the online process will mean they won’t want to do examining.

• The standardisation process has changed

Previously, all standardization processes were done face to face. This enabled you to discuss and debate with the key members of the exam board – you’d be on nodding terms with your Principal Examiner or Chief Examiner – and the element of round table challenge really did extend and deepen your understanding of how this process worked.

Now, many boards are moving to an online training process. Clearly, it saves costs – those long lunches in London hotels of lore are not cheap – but it also diminishes the experience and value gained for examiners, I feel. I am lucky in that I still attend face to face meetings: they are long, and brutal, but I come away having learned so much – having sharpened my understanding through challenge, debate and persuasion.

For me, this is one of the most significant shifts in the examining experience – in my opinion, it significantly reduces the amount you can really learn and understand if you’re just following a webinar. If your exam board does online standardization, then it wouldn’t be worth it for me.

• What do you get paid?

Inevitably, the answer to that is “too little”. For some people, the meetings fees can be valuable – unless your school takes that money to pay for cover – but the per script fee tends to make you sad when you calculate it as an hourly rate. It is understandable and unexpected that exam boards choose to save costs this way – but I do not think it is a coincidence that examiner vacancies remain high, and increasingly desperate adverts circulate in to May and even June. I am not aware of any exam boards paying recruitment or loyalty bonuses – they rely on the fact that plenty of people regard the process as professional development. However, this does lead to relatively high turnover of younger examiners – perhaps institutional memory is important? – but a core of examiners who have retired from teaching and regularly will mark at crunch times.

I think no one should go in to examining for the money. Inevitably, the opportunity cost is not worth it – hopefully, it softens the time it takes, but it won’t be profitable and “easy money”.

• What can you learn? How can it help you?

I think this one is inevitably much more personal – the first few times that you do examining, you learn an enormous amount about how the papers are constructed, the way that levels are built, and the precision or details of certain approaches. I know that the learning curve and analysis process of “what can I apply for my students?” is highest in that first 2-3 times of examining. But realistically, that learning all comes in the standardization processes: marking is just applying it.

Many of my colleagues regard this as a lost opportunity cost, however. You can probably learn similar amounts through forensic review of the examiners’ reports, and chatting to colleagues who have examined. All that, without spending hours in front of a computer to mark lots of papers!

Personally, rather than going on an INSET, I’d happily pay money to sit in and be part of the marking and moderation meeting. Done well, and pitched right, it could be incredibly powerful for teachers to share that discussion – and to understand the board. It could also offer very interesting insight in to the process, and may well be encouraging for new examiners to step forward and give it a go!

I do still examine, despite having been a teacher for ten years. Having relatively recently changed specification, I think it’s worth the learning that I get out of it. I am fortunate in having a highly professional exam board, who still believe in the value of face to face meetings (with online marking of papers), and the conversations I have still help me change my teaching. But it’s a close-run thing, I think – there wouldn’t have to be much change to make me consider it far too costly for the learning I get.

And this is critical for the whole system – we need examiners, and we want the value of the professional development. Too many boards are taking an economic approach to this: focusing on where and how they can save costs, rather than where and how they can improve quality and product – part of which involves bringing the teachers in to the process, so they fully understand and are on board. Creative solutions – perhaps paying to sit in the sessions is too far for confidentiality and other problems? – to this dearth of experienced examiners need to be found.

Now, I need to get back to my marking…

Sparked by a comment from Kate Stockings (@kate_stockings) earlier this weekend, I was gently surprised to be able to reflect on a fairly shocking thought. This summer will mark the first year in five that I have not been preparing for significant syllabus, specification or staffing change.

Change is good. Change can be powerful, exciting and necessary. It’s empowering and enjoyable, and makes us think and wonder and work anew. But too much change can be challenging – keeping up with all the new things can take away time, effort and energy from the day to day reality of teaching awesome Geography.

I moved to my current school four years ago. So, that first summer, I was leaving good friends and my first job behind, and getting ready to teach and lead in a completely new setting, as well as moving to co-educational from single sex. Since that time, I’ve:

i) Changed GCSE syllabus twice, and A Level syllabus once. We’ve gone from old spec AQA GCSE to the Edexcel IGCSE, then the updated version of the Edexcel IGCSE as it moved to 9-1 and split the paper. I’ve gone from AQA 2030 A Level to a new syllabus.

ii) Helped to rebuild our entire KS3 offering. A completely new curriculum, designed in collaboration with some incredibly smart people, and willing support from my SLT, has had significant impact on our take up and engagement.

iii) Had eight different colleagues in what is normally a three person Department. One maternity leave (and cover), and then the changes and challenges of temporary staff to cover long-term sickness, together with a retirement.

iv) Changed VLE, school management and data system.

v) Changed from a one week 40 period to a two week 50 period timetable.

Phew! No wonder we feel a little whirled and exhausted at times! Now, pretty much all of these changes have been environmental or school-generated – rather than caused by me! – and the circumstances where they have overlapped and happened at the same sort of time been merely coincidence. And, perhaps on reflection, all of them have been pretty positive for the Department and the Geography we teach.

But this summer, we’re able to have different conversations. We have the same team, syllabus and curriculum in 2019-20 as we do this year, for the first time in five. We know each other, now: how we think about ideas, what kind of teachers we are, and are trying to be, what kind of ways we like to think as a team and as a Department. We have the same parameters – timetable, and how we get the data out of the system, email home, and find information about our students. We know a bit more about what we want to do together, and what kinds of things we can build from.

Our expectations, therefore, are adjusting – not “how do we survive the year?” or “how do we make sure we can all deliver what we want to this year?” – but “how do we do this to the best possible standard?”. How can we aim for operational, curriculum and Geographical excellence?

It feels exciting and challenging at the same time – it’s a real challenge to integrate all of the reading, blogs and books, ideas and discussions in to a coherent narrative whole. How can we do what we want – as effectively, as powerfully, and as efficiently as possible? Can we pull all the threads together to make something wonderful?

I’m coming to the end of my fourth year as a Head of Department, and feel that perhaps for the first time, I’m starting to really understand the nature of my role – both in terms of what I want it to be, and what I can feasibly and realistically do. I can’t claim any sense of knowledge about how this applies to pastoral leadership – would Heads of Year, or Housemasters feel the same, I wonder?

In the academic leadership context, middle leadership is often described as the “engine room” of the school: it’s where policy and practice intersect with the classroom, and where the vision of the school is translated into real outcomes for students. But I think that engine room isn’t what I expected it to be from the pre-Middle Leader days – and I was reading Tom Sherrington’s “Learning Rainforest” – and considering what I have learned from my leadership so far.

Let me start with my fundamental assumptions about the academic experience, which can be challenged!

1. Most schools do best when there is a shared sense of structure and routine. This means that we can’t have ten different structures of learning, purposes of homework, classroom styles, in ten different Departments. There has to be some coherence and “whole school”, and much of this has to be directed by the vision and ethos of the school, as translated by Senior Leadership.
2. It is the job of Middle Leaders to be subject experts, and to fight for (or defend) what is best for their subject and their Department. They may choose to take on whole school thoughts and perspectives, but their job is subject focused.
3. Change is positive; but too much change is damaging. There is a sense of confidence and self-assuredness that comes from doing things that have been done before; and a sense of institutional memory – understanding what has happened, and how it can be edited, tweaked and improved – is important for the well being of staff, and the long term growth of an institution.
4. There are lots of ways to do education. These can be accessed in a variety of methods, including twitter, and blogging, and reading and engaging with post-graduate professional learning. These combine to bring professional experience and the generation of new ideas – everyone comes with their own.

These lead me to propose three models of “middle leadership”, ranging on a scale of autonomy and how welcomed it is.

Model 1: Leadership from the Middle:

In this model, the middle leaders are engaged, bright and enthusiastic about their role as leaders, and are supported to pilot, test and develop new ideas: to lead, and not just manage. They may do them quietly, within their own departments, or publicly, by leading CPD sessions and training for whole staff – but there’s a sense of ownership and collegiality amongst the middle leadership ‘team’. Meetings are purposeful and share great ideas and discussions without judgement. Good practice is brought in, and identified and shared at this level. Ideas that are thought to be valid for the whole school are then picked up, explored and tested, and – if successful – become school culture. This kind of cultural alignment is welcomed and shared, and middle leaders are celebrated for doing it, without generating an expectation (or demand) that they move to Senior Leadership.

Model 2: Swimming against the tide:

Middle leaders may be engaged, bright and enthusiastic, but their input is not quite so welcome. Some Departments may have autonomy to experiment with minor variations in their practice, but overall, they can only make small changes within the large school context. Suggestions are listened to, but not actively sought and engaged, and often the “middle leaders” are disparate and act without collegiality. Each Department does things slightly differently, and innovation is viewed as risk-taking rather than an expected cultural norm.

If this model is a long term one, then it’s likely that there will be high turnover of middle leaders – as they will seek to find a better cultural fit elsewhere, or will “burn out” their frustrations of having good ideas not accepted more widely. They may also feel that their only ‘solution’ is to be promoted on to Senior Leadership, which although allowing them more personal fulfilment and the autonomy to act on their ideas, does create the potential for a leadership vacuum or lack of institutional memory at the middle leadership tier.

Model 3: Executing a (shared?) vision:

There are two options here – but both come down to the same practical outcome. Middle leaders are not generating ideas, they are executing an overall plan that has been communally agreed. It’s possible that this is a top-down structure which is universally imposed without discussion, but it’s also possible that a group – whoever that might be – comes together and generates a single vision that is then uniformly adopted. This might be a cultural education landscape, e.g. “we all use booklets and visualisers”, or a shared behavioural practice, e.g. SLANT from Doug Lemov or similar expectations, but the individual Middle Leader is expected to manage the Department under a vision that is directed, rather than self-generated and experimental.

There are, I think, advantages and disadvantages to all of these models, and I think that people will recognise elements of each of them in their own school. To an extent, that’s natural – I don’t think all components of what we do can ever be exclusively one leadership model or another. However, I think there are big “names” out there in the Edu-Twitter world where the perception of the leadership structure would align with some of these models more strongly than the others.

What I’m interested in is the discussion of the following questions:

1. Is there any evidence that any one of these models is “better” than others? Is there a correlation between top performing schools/Departments and leadership styles, and is that genuinely causative, or just accidental? I know what I think the answer would be, but it might be anecdotal at best!
2. Should we, as middle leaders, seek out these different environments *before* stepping up to Senior Leadership? If I go from a Model 1 environment to being Senior Leader at a Model 3, then I will be wholly out of my depth. Would I be better off going from a Model 2 to a Model 1, and rebuilding my portfolio of skills? Is it helpful and beneficial for me to have experienced a different middle leadership culture, rather than transitioning to Senior Leadership as a way of ‘escaping’ a cultural misfit?
3. How do you learn about the culture of middle leadership from the outside of a school? What signs, signals and symptoms would you pick up on?

What have I forgotten or not thought about?