Success Stories
St John Bosco Arts College
Read the Latest Ofsted Report on St. John Bosco Arts College, published 24/05/2010
Outstanding Teaching Intervention Programme: St. John Bosco Arts College – Case Study 1
To read the full version, please click here
St. John Bosco Arts College is a Catholic Salesian School for girls aged 11 to 19, in the north end of Liverpool. The College is located in an area of high social and economic deprivation, with most of our students living in areas in the top 1% of significant social deprivation in the country. Around 90% of students are of the Roman Catholic faith.
The College was granted specialist school status for visual and performing arts in September 2004 and since 2005 has been working as part of the Alt Valley Collaborative with four other high schools and two special schools and more recently moving towards a super collaborative in 2008. It is a host site for the Bosco City Learning Centre.
The College is proud of its emphasis on education, training and support for the whole child. Central to this is the Salesian ethos, which is core to everything we do, and has ensured that “every member of the College community has the opportunity to flourish and fulfil their potential with hope and confidence.” (Ofsted report April 2007)
Margaret Murphy – teacher on the programme
“I always thought I was quite a good teacher. The pupils responded well and engaged in the tasks I set them. They seemed to listen quietly. Being part of the Outstanding Teaching programme made me realise I was playing safe, I’d stopped taking risks – perhaps after 13 years of teaching I’d become complacent. I’d fallen into the trap of spoon feeding to help students pass exams.
I found that using humour, imagination and challenging questioning meant that students stayed motivated and fully engaged. Even when faced with “the pit” students were inspired to search for the ‘Eureka Moment’. Since being on this course I haven’t just radically changed my teaching, I have radically changed my thinking.”
Details of the Training
Outstanding Teaching is a modular programme of training that has been delivered in our school over the last two years. The course has been delivered by Andy Griffith (Director of Motivated and Loving It (MALIT). The course has been developed in association with Osiris Educational).
The training experience has included two whole school INSET days (85 staff) and two groups of ten teachers have worked through three Outstanding Teaching Modules over each of the past two academic years. These modules (e.g. Questioning and the art of challenge, Engaging Learners and Creativity – developing ours to unlock theirs!) are delivered in three-hour sessions, which are followed by a lesson observation a week later. The aim of the lesson observation is to encourage the teacher to demonstrate their skills within the area of focus. After the observation, one-to-one feedback is given by the trainer (this takes place within 48 hours of the observation). Two of the three sessions are videoed and DVDs of these recordings are given to the teacher concerned. These are owned by the teacher but extracts can be shared with other staff (put on the training section of the staff network) if they are willing to share this.
At the end of the training programme teachers receive a certificate.
Outstanding Teaching will go into its third year with the school from September 2009. We intend to use it to embed a peer observation system in the school. These observations will be built around the levels for each of the units. Just as Outstanding Teaching has helped us to move our staff’s attitude to being observed and training we are confident that it will help us embed a peer observation culture across departments.
Our reasons for using the Intervention programme are:
Our latest Ofsted report (April 2008) described Saint John Bosco Performing Arts College as a “Good school with outstanding features”. We see the Outstanding Teaching course as part of a range of strategies that we are using to become an Outstanding school.
In conclusion
Outstanding Teaching began as an INSET, developed into a course, and is becoming a culture within our school. This training has challenged, empowered, demystified and inspired.