Moving English Forward.... and Geography ?

One of the latest OFSTED subject reports is on English, and was published in March 2012.
I'm grateful to the LEARNING SPY blog for this post, and to @Geographer84 for tipping me off about it on Twitter.

I was interested in this section, which backs up what I keep saying to various people who are subjected to an unnecessarily bureaucratic set of lesson plans and structures...


Inspectors believe that the effectiveness of learning in this and many similar lessons was limited by some common misconceptions about what constitutes good teaching and learning. These include the following.

• Pace. There seems to be a belief that the faster the lesson, the better the learning. While pace is important – a slow lesson is likely to lose pupils’ concentration – teachers too often concentrate on the pace of their planned activities rather than the pace of learning. For example, a teacher told an inspector that they had been advised that a starter activity should never last longer than 10 minutes. While this may be a sensible starting point for discussion, the inspector’s view was that a starter activity, like any other activity, needs to last only as long as is needed to ensure effective learning. 
• The number of activities. As implied above, some teachers appear to believe that the more activities they can cram into the lesson, the more effective it will be. This is often counterproductive, as activities are changed so often that pupils do not complete tasks and learning is not consolidated or extended. 
• Over-detailed and bureaucratic lesson plans. Teachers are encouraged to plan individual lessons in considerable detail. Inspectors sometimes note that excessive detail within these plans causes teachers to lose sight of the central focus on pupils’ learning. 
• An inflexible approach to planning lessons. School policies sometimes insist that all lesson plans should always follow the same structure, no matter what is being taught. In addition, evidence from the survey suggests that teachers often feel that they should not alter their plans during the lesson. The notion of a three- or four-part structure to lessons with certain key elements, such as a lively starter activity and an opportunity to review learning at the end, is helpful to teachers. However, teachers need to have the confidence to depart from their plans if early indications are, for example, that the pupils know more or less than the teacher had anticipated. The key consideration should be the development of pupils’ learning rather than sticking rigidly to a plan. 
• Limited time for students to work independently. A constant criticism from inspectors was that pupils rarely had extended periods to read, write or discuss issues in class. Indeed, inspectors observed lessons where pupils were asked to self- or peer-assess work before they had been able to complete more than a sentence or two. No doubt, teachers feel that they need to be actively engaged when they are being observed. However, this shows a degree of misunderstanding as inspectors’ priority is above all to evaluate the quality of pupils’ learning in lessons.
• Constant review of learning. As noted above, in lessons observed, significant periods of time were spent by teachers on getting pupils to articulate their learning, even where this limited their time to complete activities and thereby interrupted their learning! Pupils need time to complete something before they can valuably discuss and evaluate it. To invite self- or peer-evaluation before pupils have had time to engage fully with learning is counter-productive although the principle of self- or peer-assessment remains important.