No 21 Rethinking Education with Professor Mick Waters and Neil Hawkes

In this podcast you will hear inspirational Mick Waters talk about what really matters in Education.  Mick is in great demand as a speaker at conferences.  He spends a lot of his time directly helping school think about their curriculum.  

A former head teacher, Mick Waters works closely with teachers and leaders in schools, MATs and local authorities in the UK, to support the development of teaching approaches and curriculum to ensure the best learning outcomes for children. For some years he was Director of Curriculum for England, based at the Qualification and Curriculum Authority (QCA), and before that held the post of Chief Education Officer for the City of Manchester. He is also invited to work at a policy level with government in different parts of the world. He has worked with the Welsh Government on their curriculum reforms.

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For more information about the transformational work of the IVET Foundation and its global Affiliates visit http://www.ivetfoundation.com 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello everybody, it's uh good to be with you again today on Noble Conversations. Uh my name's Neil Hawkes, and I've got uh a wonderful friend of mine and uh mentor and uh incredible guy called uh Professor Mick Waters. Uh hi Mick, nice to see you today. Hello Neil, and hello everybody else. Let me tell the listeners a little bit about you, Nick. Um uh Mick Waters has had an incredible career in education. He started off as a teacher in Nottingham and later became a head teacher in the 19th. He was chief advisor in Birmingham's education authority, and he then went on to be chief education officer in Manchester. Uh city that's in the hotlines at the moment for various reasons. Um person in charge of the country. Um, who knows? Anyway, from 2005 to 2009, he was director of curriculum at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, uh, based in London. And he's now a professor at the University of Wolverhampton. And, you know, teachers in Wales have quoted so much to me because Nick has been influential and continues to be on the curriculum in Wales, which I think is uh very enlightening compared with some other places that I won't mention. And Mick is a patron of uh the charity, the Ida Foundation and values-based education. Uh, he's a tremendous advocate of the foundation and comes to our conference, which will be held very shortly. He's a strong advocate for rethinking curriculum to make learning more engaging and inclusive. And I've known him and known his work now for many, many years, and uh I can only say Mick has influenced me and my thinking profoundly. Um, Mick, what inspired you to pursue a career in education?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Oh, Neil, that's a good first question. I'm not I'm not sure I was inspired. I I sort of drifted into education after school and uh trained to be a teacher, and it was in the training that I enjoyed working with children, finding out how schools could tick. And I think I was inspired by some amazing people in my course to be a teacher, and inspired again by people in the first school in which I ever worked in Nottingham, where I just met the most professional people who just they just made me think teaching was everything. And uh I've always believed it. I've seen the difference it makes to children, and every little bit helps.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah. Do you have a personal philosophy of education? Well perhaps philosophy is too grand a title, but uh, you know, way of thinking about education that's that's you've developed over the years.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Um my goodness, I I I'm not sure I've got a big personal philosophy. Yeah, I must have a philosophy in there somewhere, but I haven't got anything I quote. I think um I always start from the premise that typically countries work from the big picture on education, and somewhere inside that the child's likely to get lost. And what we have to do is always look at the big picture and the detail. What does this mean for children in schools across any country, not just UK? Uh I I think it's about education is about personal fulfillment, and if every child left school thinking that education's worth it and they need to keep on learning, I think it's probably schooling has probably done its job. And I I suppose in that I I'm thinking of my philosophy as a go now. I think um school is only part of education, and uh the better the school is the better the education, but there are so many other aspects of children's lives that fit with what schools do that create education for children. So I I wouldn't say I've got some sort of philosophy that I can quote, but I've got a very strong set of ideals, a strong set of beliefs, and uh I think I'm always thoughtful about new developments to think will these make the difference that we ought to be making, or are they just things that are passing through?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

So I don't know whether that answers your question, but I think it does, yeah, indeed. In about 1967, I think it was, the Plowden report came out and uh it you know created quite a stir at the time, and it was based, I think, a lot on what some authorities, Oxfordshire at that time and others were doing with first-hand experience. Uh, but it got a lot of stick with the phrase, you know, child-centred education. Um, what's your take on child-centered education and what that actually means?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Well, the Plowden Report picked upon what, as you say, a lot of schools were doing, which was trying to lift schools away from uniformity and to looking at what children could do and how the teacher's role needed to shift and how the school's role needed to shift to they they talked about becoming a guide to children's learning in the Plowden report, and it was from that report that we talked about child-centered education. It wasn't the first time that had been used, by the way. It's been used, it'd be previously been used in other reports, as we had in those days, those royal commissions. Um, but you have to ask if the child isn't the centre of it, what is? And I I think even though it got a bad press, it only got a bad press from the people who were thinking that education was about conformity, uniformity, compliance, sifting the best from the worst, sifting the worst from the rest. Um if you if you've got that view of education, that's different from it being about personal fulfillment for every per every every individual. And um over years we've seen that battle playing out, haven't we, between the so-called progressives and the so-called traditionalists? And back to philosophy. I don't think I'm either of those, but I think I'm a balancer of everything. And I think most people in education are balancers of tradition, convention, progression. Who wouldn't want to progress? I mean, it's a progressive education gets such a bad name, and yet are we saying there's something wrong with progress? I mean, medicine progresses and transport progresses and commercial life progresses, but education sort of would be a problem if it makes any progress. So I think the child is a centre of education, that's the point of it. Uh, and each child needs probably something different, and therefore, we've got to work out how to make education and schooling flexible, manageable, and to touch the to touch the conscience of every child so that it wants to keep learning when it when it leaves the school system. Whatever it wants to learn, and wherever the learning takes it. But every person should have that wish, I think. If you if you when I was ahead, I had three rules, three um not rules, three um maxims for our school, you know, three aims for our school. And one of those was that when children leave, they will want to continue to learn. We haven't done our job if they think they've finished. So I think child centered is central. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, that's interesting. You talk about your headship. I was going to ask you about how your headship actually informed your later thinking in education. Did you have any occasions or wow moments or in your headship that you thought, yeah, this is really important. I'm going to take this forward.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Well, I think um I was I was a head teacher too young, I think, looking back. At the time I didn't think I was too young. I thought this was this was probably too late. I should have been doing this for years. But uh I I took over a school and uh started to try and run it. And at the time, people were talking about things like progression and continuity for children, which which I agreed with. I thought, of course we need progression and continuity in learning. So how silly that we have six weeks off in the summer. And and it it sort of dawned on me that the system that I'd always taken as read through childhood and training and through my first years in a career. When I became ahead, I thought there's so many things in this system that don't make sense. And you're almost, when you're leading the school or leading a school system, even leading a classroom, you're almost trying to make the best of the job you've been given, aren't you? You're trying to cope with the system as it is and trying to change it as you go. That whole thing about building the airplane in the air, you know. Um you're trying to move the system forward. And I think from very early in my headship, I thought the education system, the school system needs to change, and it needs to change in so many ways. And I've always been an agitator for shifting the agenda, getting more from the system, addressing what I see as the sort of daft things we do that we wouldn't do if we were normal. And and schools aren't normal places. The idea that if you're born on August the 29th, you go in a different room from somebody born on September the 2nd, because those four days separate you forever uh into two different age cohorts, and you you grow up separate from that person, I just think it's just so weird, you know, and that you all have to take an exam when you're 16 because that's the appointed hour, you know. And exams are like um trial by ordeal, the sort of version of running over hot coal and seeing if you survive. Whereas in real life, we meet, you know, it's better if we mix with people who are very different ages, and we learn a lot from people who are older and younger than us. And we take exams and tests when we're ready, not because somebody said it was your birthday the other week and your your time is up. You know, we there are so many things that are so bizarre about the education. The idea that 610,000 children all have to sit down at the same moment and do a test, because otherwise we don't know whether they can read. Well, most of them read anyway. It's so funny. Uh, but we have to do these things because that's the system. But I think I've always thought there are so many things that are just plain silly, and uh whatever we can do to change it. So so in any any job that I've had, you work within the constraints, but you're always trying to push on the push on the limits a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, yes, I agree with you. It's it does seem bizarre that we've got this factory model of education that's related to a different age, and we're going into a sort of new world, which is so different, but we still hang on to the same old systems. It's just funny.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

I mean, if if you're a secondary child, you you've got thousands of channels that you can download to watch on the television or or even on your handheld device. And at school you get one timetable. You must be there at this moment to learn you know uh a specific fraction because if you miss it, you'll never see it again. Whereas you you can watch films over and over again on the on television, you can you can watch them morning, noon, and night, but you you can't watch you never see a lesson again. You never get you don't get blockbuster lessons, do you? Or or um, you know, reruns of lessons. I I think it'd be great if I if I ran a school, I'd ask every every child which was the best lesson and see which one they'd like to see again.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

What a marvellous idea. Let's put that one out, I'm sure. Yeah. I have a granddaughter that's just been taking GCSEs and uh has practically near nearly had a nervous breakdown, I think, poor soul, you know, and uh I think she's done quite well, but uh, you know, the pressure that she's felt has been absolutely enormous.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Well, these children get the idea, you only do exams when you're very, very hot. You have to do all in a row, you know, you can't do one month and one. It's like you've got this this image of a sort of cooker hob with all these different subjects boiling away, and they all have to come to the boil exactly the right time, all together.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

You can't you can't sort of strain one and eat it and extra why is it that we collectively as people support a system that's so daft? Why what why did we support it? Because there's obviously masses of support.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Well, I think um there's something odd, isn't there, about grown-ups who sort of have this attitude that well I had to put up with it. So the next generation can. It's um I I don't you wouldn't do it, would you? I try if you told grown-ups they all had to wait until July the 27th to do a drive-in test, but if everybody had to do it on the same day. Um I I don't know why we put up with it. I think I think there's something inherently good about the school system. I think we know the school system is all, you know, it's okay. I I just think we know there's something inherently good about having shops, but we we don't do what we did 50 years ago in shops, do we? We don't behave in the same way. And the school system can't see if the school system does something new, it can never seem to push itself through that newness. Whereas you know, when shops brought in um the sort of self-checkout mentality of about that was about 10 years ago now, when the first self-checkout began, people said we're not doing that, we don't like it, or all the sort of angst about it. Nowadays, there are more cues at that bit than the bit where people are putting the stuff on a conveyor belt and one person sitting there doing it for you. Uh and there's a case of getting used to it that we never seem to manage in school. So some if a school somewhere does something different, somehow that gets in the media, social or otherwise, and it becomes freakish or odd or weird, and and that school then is under the spotlight for being messing around with children's lives. We don't talk about messing around with shoppers' lives, do we? And but children are you know, children are we think they're there to be protected, because that's that's the image of childhood. So if anybody changes what we've always known, there's an assumption that'll make it worse, not better. Yeah. Um because some sometime at some point, everybody must have convinced that schools were good. I don't I don't know, but we're all told they are, aren't we? Because Ofsted tell us in England, 91%, of course, must be all right.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

I can hear uh, you know, many of the listeners, well, so many of us are are parents, and uh I can almost sense in the ether that some parents are jumping up and down with alarm about what you say, Professor. Um, you know, can you sort of give them some hope now, huh? What's your view of what a a really good? I don't like using the word good, but you know what I mean, a good uh school uh would have actually should actually look like now. What would they do in the curriculum? How would it be organized? What's your sort of view on that? Where what should we be aiming for as a society in terms of the school or or that concept of schooling?

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Well, I think the first thing in any in any country is to say what's the purpose of our school system, and that's what we haven't got in the UK. We have it in Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland. I said that wrongly, really, but in in England, we don't have anything in statute about what's the purpose of schools. And if you I think most people agree what we're there for, but we never sort of come to define the purpose of school. If you really sat down and thought about it, you would come up with a set of aims for children individually, not entitlements. At the moment, it's about entitlement, which sort of gets turned on its head and says we're going to inflict all this stuff on you. What we're about is entitlement, and you'll have a right to. So often when I in my jobs, I've been asked, Do you believe in the basics for children? And my answer is always yes, I do believe in the basics. I believe every child should have opportunities to enjoy art, dance, drama, music, science, uh, physical education. They should have the opportunity to enjoy cooking, uh, they should enjoy uh using the outdoors, they should enjoy understanding the way the world evolves geographically, historically. And if they're going to do all those things, then it makes sense that they learn about reading and writing and speaking and listening, that they learn about mathematics and they learn how the digital world works, so that they can enjoy those to the full. I think the basics are not a narrow set of things that you do in order to open doors to the other things. I think all children have a right to a rich experience where they do things that matter and make sense to them at the stage of maturity that they're working, so that they they're rounded individuals and everybody has a core of uh learning which is supported by maths and English. Not that that's the core that if you haven't got that, you're a failure. I think I think we're using maths and English are there as tools to help other things happen. Now, some people listening to that would say, well, what about beautiful literature? I absolutely agree that children should enjoy beautiful literature, beautiful poetry. Um, but there's this we get very quickly in England, particularly in England, into a functional outlook on learning. So this there's nothing wrong with children learning to read, knowing their phonics, learning to write, expressing themselves well, learning to write in different genres, learning mathematics, understanding how maths works, but they ought to be also excited about mathematics, excited about writing, excited about the way people have written over the centuries. And I don't think we do enough of that. I think too often children see learning in all subjects as a series of hurdles that you keep jumping until you knock one over. And and I, you know, there are many, many things that I gave up on at school that I've thoroughly enjoyed in the you know the last 30 years, having thought, having wasted 20 years missing, you know, because I didn't think I was any good at them. And I I'm always saddened when I hear adults saying I'm no good at things, I'm no good at history, or I'm no good at art. I think, well, you are, aren't you? You've just been told you're no good. And you don't have you don't have to be good at everything, you just enjoy it and find fulfillment in it. So so I think a good school is about fulfilling children, giving children fulfillment and opening doors for children, never closing doors. You know, every time you hear a child say I'm no good at something, I I see that as a failure. They don't have then they're never no good. They might not be the best. And one of the things about our society is that if somebody isn't the best, they often say they're no good when actually they're probably all right, Tati. You know, I'm I'm not the best runner, but I'm not I can run.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I'm no good at walking, you know. Yeah, well, we have this rank order thing, don't we? That and once you put people in a rank order, unless you're at the top, you think you're a failure.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Well, you're an also you're an also ran. I mean, that notion of an also ran is a is a terrible one. Fulfilling, I think the best schools know every student for something really good, not just know every student, they know them for something that the student is proud, proud of, and believes in and thinks about. Uh the best schools care about parents. I mean, it's so you know, it's that Plowden report you mentioned highlighted the way that parents need to be part of their children's education. And made such a big difference. The best schools, secondary and primary, know that, and they really work with the parents. So there is something about uh the way a school operates that operates that's deeply personal, deep, deeply to do with the person. That's why values education is so important. That's why values matter in a school. And you know, Neil, you know this. When you're in a school, and pretty well everybody says this, when it when you're in a school, you can feel what sort of school it is. Yeah. I think what we've got to do is help people, and I I think the people who can most feel it are the pupils themselves. They can feel what sort of school they're in. And what you want are children who feel they're in a school that cares about them, that opens doors for them, gives them opportunity, helps them to do things, picks up where they're struggling, helps them when they're striding, really pushes them along.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

And that's what good schools do. Oh, a worry I have is that often children that have been in, and with every generalization, it's not accurate what I'm saying, but uh as a generalization, you know, when secondary school children have spoken to me, there was one talking to me in in Cornwall last week, and uh he had just left school and and we were talking about politics, and I said, Who are you gonna vote for? And he said, I'm not going to vote, he said. And I said, Why am you gonna vote? And he said, Well, I just don't know enough. You know, I know what my mum and dad voted, but I just don't know what they're all about. We were never taught any of that in school. We don't we didn't have any specific training, so I'm I'm blowing out, and I'm he was just an engaging young man, and I thought really fun. I thought, oh, he's someone that could be the bedrock of you know, good things happening in our society, and he won't he won't enter the depending because he didn't he know anything. And I thought, and then that's the other thing. Well, you know, I I sometimes amount to go to independent schools, and I've always been pro-state schools, but then I discovered that these kids then are often more um confident. And I think, why in the heck are these children more confident in front of them? State schools. And I have a friend who's a headhunter, and she said, we so often we can't appoint state school kids because they can't articulate, they're not they're not confident because they've gone through a fodder-based curriculum that's just getting them to pass tests. So, you know, there's some massive problems of equity and uh in the system, you know.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Well, the the the independent sector has got uh fewer accountability measures applied to it, so they they've got more scope and they use that scope well. I I think most of the independent schools I know do achieve a balance between filling children ready for exams and giving them a rounded experience. Your lad in Cornwall, who's not going to vote, this is really worrying, isn't it? Because 16-year-olds are going to be given the vote at the next if it goes through parliament uh in the near future. Uh, they are already voting in Scotland and Wales and other countries around the world. Uh and I I think children do need to be taught how to make decisions. And my worry is that there'll be you know a series of 10 lessons on what an election is, why we have elections, and and they need to know those things. But um how you how you operate in an election booth, you know, when you go in the polling booth. And and actually what they need is to understand over time issues of civilization, how justice works, what fairness is, what we mean by representation, who has the opportunity to represent what you do to achieve democracy in a in a fruitful way. I mean, one of the sadnesses for me is the number of people who don't bother voting. I mean it yeah, I I'd have some rule that said if a constituency didn't achieve a certain level of votes, it didn't get a member of parliament or a I mean it would only happen once because people would be out to get a voice in parliament or on council if their people didn't if somebody you know if you if you you couldn't be bothered for somebody. I I you know when you you look at the voting levels for European well, the European Commissioners used to be really low. Um police commissioners, the voting for them is a really small proportion of the population, and and they're the people who are you know dispersing resources on behalf of all of us. So we've really got to wake up to civic responsibility and feel for your lad because what if there are an exam on civic responsibility? Would it feel better for that? If we've done the exam and got level three, would it be alright? No, it's it's it's about understanding that argue secondary where you feel you're involved in the way the school runs, where you feel that you've got a voice in that school, where you feel you've got an influence in that school, you'll leave with a different outlook from if you've been told what to do every day, if you haven't done it, and treated in a way that says you just do what you're told. So there's a whole thing about how we run schools, about uh educating, genuinely educating our children what life is like in adult circumstances. And if we're saying they're gonna be adult when they're 16 because they're going to vote, which is about the biggest prize you can have as an adult, uh then we've got to equip them with that. And you know, pseudo-school councils where we we pick the ones who agree with us in schools to the way we can help children, we don't we don't need a a one-hour lesson every week on how to vote. What we need is to think about how we organise the place to give children an understanding of some of those big, big ideas that matter for adult life. Yeah. How do how do I how do I fit in? How do I make a difference? How do I benefit from? How do I support others? They're really big things for society.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah. It's being actively involved in your own learning and the running of the school. Uh I've always been a great believer in uh don't treat children like children, just treat them as people that haven't quite had the experience that we have, but give them some experience so that they can blossom and uh then they do all sorts of wonderful things. Yeah. Um I was gonna ask you, Mick, you you are a patron of of values-based education. Uh what why are you keen about values? What does it mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Oh, well, Neil, I mean, I got I got to know values-based education a long, long while ago, and I it's back to where I was. I uh where I was talking a little while ago. I think there are things the school system needs to really embrace in order to keep evolving. And the work on values-based education ought to be at the heart of it because we want people, surely in society, we want people who get on well with each other, uh, contribute, support, uh question things that are unfair or unjust, think about their effect on others, act for themselves and think for them think think for others. I think they're really important areas. So if we want we then have to work out how you best help them to evolve for children, how do how do you get children to experience the power of those values in in learning? So I I've been involved in values-based education really to try and do what I can to help it move along. Um and I do know the schools that embrace values-based learning are really strong. And it is interesting that people want academic success for children, and that's fine. Um that start from a values base typically have the better outcomes anyway, in academic senses. They have the better outcomes in social senses, they're the better outcomes in emotional senses, as you would expect because of values. Uh, and so my my sort of hope is that gradually schools get to realise that values are fundamental, but they are anyway. Of course, some people think other values are fundamental, and that's that's where you've always got the challenge. But if we had purposes, we'd be alright, wouldn't we? Because people in our society would want really strong values at the heart of their school, at the heart of their child's experience. They want that. That's the consensus. It's just that too often they're sort of parked while we get on with other things. But I I really I've seen values-based education have a fundamental impact in individual schools, and once it's had that impact, the school never goes back. It's really fascinating. Um and it affects not just the children but the the staff, not just the teaching staff, but all the staff. And it affects the families connected with the school. So anybody listening to probably like values-based education, but anything you can do to encourage a school to think again would be really worth it.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

I know my uh problem always with with what I call the left-brain people is that they often see it as some sort of soft option that's about making kids nice, but it doesn't have an effect anywhere else. They don't understand how it affects the brain and how the brain develops, how it uh is in tune with child development, all sorts of things. And as you said, the academic outcomes are more improved in a sort of because the children do something that you highlighted, uh Mick, is that they enjoy their learning. And once you start enjoying learning, this magic happens.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

Absolutely. I I think some people think values to focus on values means uh either an alternative behaviour policy. I think some people think it's soft option via behavior policy, uh, and some people think it's values on Wednesday afternoons or uh no, I mean that that we've got to do values, so it we'll do it for a little bit of time because then that's the mentality that seeks in with teaching a foreign a modern language, isn't it? Uh we'll teach you a language and we'll teach you for little bits of time in a room with people who can't speak it. When that wouldn't be how you learned it. You learn values by enacting values, living values, by taking part in experiences that let you realize the impact of good values. And part of that is a teacher or other adult talking with you explicitly about why values matter in that context. And that's why being part of values-based education is good, because not just the conferences but the other support enables people to think deeply about how values-based learning can grow and develop in their school, as opposed to being something that's a fix. It's not a fix, it's a way of being, it's a way of living, and it influences the way the way you run your school, the way you teach lessons, the way you organise routines, the way you manage big events, everything is driven around a values agenda.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

I wish Mick that uh people in power and others would realize that values-based education has been probably, uh, one of the most successful, bottom-up uh ways of changing education, or not changing, but uh creating a culture in which children flourish. Uh, it's never acknowledged in that way. Anyway, let me take you on to something more contentious, you know. You know, I've often heard you talk about Ofsted in some ways. Um, if you were the incoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, uh, would you keep Ofsted or would you let it go? And um why? Or what's the alternative, or what should we do? You know, what are the issues surrounding some something like Ofsted? And for those who don't know who aren't listening in England, Ofsted is our a national inspection system that uh is, in my view, quite draconian.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

I think um it needs an overhaul, it's needed one for a long while. Ofsted goes from crisis to cris every five years it has a crisis, uh, and then it spends two years addressing that crisis, and at the end of it, Ofsted solved its own problem rather than rather than the problem it created, and it does it every time. So at the moment in England, I'm sorry if people are listening elsewhere, but in England, people are coming to terms with inspections under a new framework. Goodness knows how many frameworks we've had, and yet again, all the reports back are about inconsistency of inspection outcome, inconsistency in the way that the inspection inspections are managed and so on. And I I think the problem they've got is that I mean the only thing consistent about inspection is that it's inconsistent, and and and yet they pretend it's not. I I think you could do various things. First, I I agree with inspection. I think if we've got uh national money being used to support schools, it's reasonable to say we want to check that schools are being run properly. So I I think schools are inspected too often. Um I I would have I would inv I would say to schools that they should invite inspectors to inspect the school at the point when they think is right for them. So not when they've had a big stuff turnover and they're getting back to normal again. But just we we invite the inspectors, you have to do that every seven years at least. So if you haven't been inspected for seven years, we'll come and see you. Uh, I think there should be something about the profession itself appointing the inspectors so that you you've got confidence from the profession in the inspectorate. I think there's something about uh teachers and head teachers from other schools being part of inspections, and I think reports should only say whether a school's good enough or not. If it's not good enough, I'm fine with dealing with it. But if it is good enough, we don't want a great long report pretending to know why it was good. We simply say it's good and we let the school tell the parents and the families and the community about itself. And I think every school inspection should identify some things of decent quality that other schools could learn from. I think pretty well every school does something that another school could learn from, and uh those areas that the school maybe wants to develop and needs to develop, I think they should be provided with a list of schools similar to theirs, which they could make contact with to help them to grow. I could give you another heap of things about inspection, but it starts from the wrong place at the moment and it tangles itself up in all sorts of ways, all on the bounds that it doesn't want to be caught out because it wants to be infallible and it isn't no inspection could be perfect.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

No, I think that's a real tour de force given us on inspection. Um in your friend of mine, Sir Tim Brighouse, sadly past. You know, I remember working with Tim many years ago what he called OSEO, which was something he started in Oxfordshire to try and get collaboration. And I was one of the head teachers then that used to go to another school and vigorously, you know, look at what they were doing, and then there'd be a conversation and we'd learn from each other and improve in the way. But that sort of model was never appreciated because there wasn't trust in the profession. Uh they said that, oh no, you lotter or lazy or left wing, whatever, and you're not sort of delivering the goods. And I thought that was very sad. Um we desperately need a market of trust in professionals. And yes, we might have the bottom pulling the barrel, and we all need to do something about that. But in my experience, over nearly 50 years now, uh, you know, most people that I come across in the schools are doing their damnest, they're doing their best. Sometimes we need guidance, sometimes they need analysis. Uh, but there are better ways of doing it than giving a little bit clear. But so many a friend of mine who's been the head teacher said, Neil, he said, I'm going. Um I'm I can't, you know, before three years. And I said, Why three years? He said, I just cannot go through offstead again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

The the I I mean the two bits of our conversation link together, aren't they? We've just been talking about values, and one of the top values you can work on is trust, understanding where to be trusted and where not. And too many in the teaching profession have lost that trust in their own profession. And Ofsted's problem is that they they believe they see schools normally and naturally, and they don't. I mean, head teachers are on tenter hooks for months at times, waiting for the next inspection call. And you know, multi-academy trusts have teams of people waiting to swoop on a school the minute the inspectors are due to come. I mean, they turn up and they'll be there overnight getting it ready. It's just a bizarre thing. And back, you know, it's again, it's where I was all those years ago in my career thinking, why do we do this? It's really silly. Um, and they think they can see through that and they can't. It's just crazy.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

The menu of academies then, again, forgive us uh listeners if you're not in the English system today, uh, but there may be things that apply to you. But uh, I wanted to ask Mick, you know, do you feel that academies have been a successful addition to the menu of schools? This grouping together of a small group of schools. In the so-called old days, we had local authorities. Mick, you were responsible for one in Manchester, and uh then we broke them all up and had these little academies with fifths and things, you know. Has it has it really improved things, or uh is it just another way of organizing?

SPEAKER_01 41:40

Well, we used to have variability in terms of local authorities now, which were run by local councils, and and now we've got variability in terms of multi-academy trust. So what you've also got is fragmentation. You you've in some places you've got a lack of a feeling of place because the there's no logic to the way the academy trust is assembled, and I think there's a growing recognition that uh what you've also got is is increased cost. I mean, the the amount of money spent on the the central team for each to each academy is way greater than it was for the central teams for local authorities uh 15 years ago. And into that comes the thing that when you've got a CEO plus a deputy CEO plus a director of something, um director of primary, director of secondary, and all these various people who are not in schools, they're the people who could be in schools making a difference to children. And and so what you've done is you've lifted another swathe of people out of the profession. In in England, we're talking about a recruitment and retention crisis. One reason for that, only one reason, is that there aren't enough teachers because a lot of them are now looking at schools through another lens, but also a lot of people in schools are a bit fed up by the number of people telling them or asking them to do things. They're they're losing their autonomy. So if you're ahead of a school these days, that job itself is very variable between having autonomy to make the school work or doing what the academy trust wants done. And if that's the case, then you've diminished the role of head teacher, haven't you? You've made it less um less rewarding, less challenging, uh less less responsible in some ways. So I think the the jury's out on multi academy trusts. I have to say, for some schools, individual schools, being close to a multi academy trust to stop them hiding in the way that they used to be over to in local authorities. Regression to the mean, and one of my worries is that when the inspectorate talks about having so many good schools, that's only good in their terms, and you have to be careful that what we haven't done is regress to the mean, and what we were looking at is a sort of premium mediocre, it's not very good, but because it's better than other bits of it, we think it is good, and so we call it good when actually it's pretty ropey, really. I mean, anybody who's ever traveled on premium economy knows it's still rubbish, don't they? Yeah, the danger of premium mediocre schools is that they sound good because the report says they're good, but actually underneath they're not very nice places to children, surely, to go to school in nice places where to meet nice people and do nice things. So if if you're pleased with a school that isn't nice, I think you've got a problem.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

I agree. Can I take you uh now, Mick, to you know, you're not advising the Welsh government or any other body, but I've I'm putting you in front of the General Assembly uh in the United Nations, and uh we've asked you to talk to us about the Mick Waters vision for education globally. Have you got one, two, or three things that you would say, for goodness sake, over the next few years, education systems should really focus on what?

SPEAKER_01 45:34

My goodness, I mean, that's a good one. Um, I think equity is an easy word. And it's a word that a lot of places use, but they don't really, really consider it. So if we were thinking about school systems everywhere, what would we do to try and help children understand what equity was about so that they themselves saw the point of a more fairer world and a more globally supportive world? So what can we do now to introduce children to concepts that a generation and a half from now they'll start to really understand? So I suppose in that is firm education, isn't it? You starting from there. But the other end, I would suggest that I think this is gonna happen anyway, and within the next five years we ought to start saying instead of every country having its own national examination system, let's have a global one. These these big tech companies could do it, and you know, trigonometry is the same in Mexico as it is in Australia, as it is in Vietnam, as it is in Italy. So, why are we all inventing our own exam and doing norm reference tests? Why don't we just have an international global standard for trigonometry and children do the tests when they're ready and prove they can do trigonometry based on criteria, not on how many have done the test and how many need to pass. If you can do these bits, you can do trigonometry or focal length or density or uh circuits or algebra, the loads of things that are just global. That wouldn't that wouldn't be the same for art in France compared with art in China, compared with art in Peru. But nevertheless, if you were in England, you could do Chinese art or you could do Peruvian art, you could do anything that you fancied. So you open up the menu, that would stop the international uh competition between nations to show their schools are better than anybody else's based on trivial examination performance. I don't mean the exams are trivial, I mean the performance and the results are trivial. That's just an international game now for politicians saying we do better than 16 other countries. And we can all find things we do well in international tables and all find things we do badly. So I think about global communication. And I I think if I were talking to the United Nations, I'd do something about the fact that it it seems to take many generations for people to get over wars and conflict, and therefore we need our school teachers globally to take seriously the issue of helping children to understand how civilizations develop, society tries to get better but continually makes mistakes, and we need to help to educate truly educate children to think about the influence they can have as an individual on the state of their nation and the way their nation relates to others. Because I can't believe that across the country, across the world people genuinely want some of the fighting that goes on between countries, uh but they don't know how to change that. Ordinary people, and I count myself as you as ordinary in this sense, we we'd do anything to stop some of the world strife, but we have no tools to do it except the ballot box. Uh and until people know how to work together to pull politicians back, I think we've got a challenge. So one of the things I'd tell the United Nations is recognize the mess you cause, not you the United Nations, but the nations between each other, and try and work out how you help future generations come to terms with what they can do about that. That's a big global thing. That that you know, if if education's for anything, it's surely to make life better for everybody globally.

SPEAKER_00 50:14

I give a challenge to the listeners. There must be someone out there that has influence to get Mick in front of the United Nations of General Assembly. Come on, we want him there with these ideas.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

If I if I did that, it wouldn't be off the cuff. I'd I'd prepare it beforehand.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

I'm sure you would. Um you know, um, what do you hope will be your legacy?

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Oh my goodness, many. Um I was talking to somebody about this the other day. Um, I don't not that, they they raised it. Um I I don't think I ever hope. You always hope you make a difference, don't you? Yeah, you know, and a positive difference. That would be better. And what I mean, one of the joys for me is that you know, I look around the school system, and there are when I was a head teacher, people came and worked for me as teachers or student teachers, even, and they've gone on to be head teachers and always have really nice schools. That that pleases me. So you sort of you look at things that have developed and think I I played a role in that. I I think you know, making teachers think things are worth it is all right, you know. That'll do for a legacy. It's not a legacy in a big way, is it? But um I do think if only we could convince every teacher that they make such a powerful difference. Anybody who's got a a wider view, if if if you got to say to a teacher, well you taught 30 children for a year and every day you had however many hundred conversations, but over the course of year of a year you affected 30 children positively, and those 30 children grew up and affected 30 more people positively, accumulatively over a career, that's a lot of impact. And I I don't I don't think we emphasize enough the way in which teachers make minute differences often to people that eventually lead them to make massive difference on a big scale. I think we we we we undermine we we don't recognize the power of teachers in the way that we should. I think we should do better at that. So not really about my legacy, but I do think there's a legacy about teaching that we ought to work on and recognize. And I haven't explained that very well, but I I think I think anybody in the profession should be proud of the profession and recognize what it does and should feel part of something very, very influential on society.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Yeah, really good.

SPEAKER_00 53:05

Yeah. Thank you, Mick. That that that's that's inspirational. Uh may I, on behalf of all the teachers and and thousands and thousands and thousands of children because of those teachers that have benefited from you in ways that you will never agree about. I know because you're very humble and modest, but I know the impact you've made both at the national level, international, and local level, and with individual people when you you meet them. So half fellows. Professor Mick Waters, thank you for joining me in this noble conversation today. I think it's been, and I hope it will be impactful. And listeners, I hope you have enjoyed it, and um and will want to know more about Mick Waters. You can find information about him on the internet and and all that. And uh, I hope one day you'll have the honour as I have had of listening to him uh when he talks. He has marvellous little illustrations of what children can do. It's inspirational. And thank you, Mick. How for things is any last word you want to say before we finish?

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Uh no, no, it's been a delight, Neil, and thank you very much. And anybody who's listening, uh I'm not sure it's a noble conversation, but I I do hope it's made a thing.

SPEAKER_00 54:24

Thank you very much, Mick. Thank you all very much, and until the next time. Bye bye, everybody. Bye bye.