What Did I Get?

As an inspector, Julie Price-Grimshaw is glad that individual lessons will no longer be graded. It should at least mean less shouting...

Last term I was involved in a pilot inspection; inspectors were under strict instructions not to grade teaching following lesson observations, nor to feed back grades to individual teachers. Instead, feedback was to focus on the strengths and areas for development, based on the learning observed. I wasn’t quite sure how it would work at first, but it seemed to be a good thing. I thought about all the feedback sessions that started with the teacher coming in to the room and immediately asking, “What did I get?” I would respond by asking if we could perhaps talk about the learning, but some teachers said, “Can’t you just tell me what grade I got?”

I once observed a maths lesson where the quality of teaching was inadequate, largely due to the fact that most of the pupils produced no work at all and told me that they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. I thought carefully about how to deliver a difficult message in a sensitive and constructive way, focused on ideas for improvement. However, the teacher came into the room and, before I’d had chance to say anything at all, announced that: “I usually get a grade 1 but today I’ll settle for a grade 2. So which was it?” I have to say, this threw me a little and the feedback session didn’t go well. This was in spite of me emphasising, several times, that the grade reflected 30 minutes of teaching and was certainly not an overall judgement on that particular teacher, who kept shouting, “You’re calling me inadequate! How dare you call me inadequate!” No, really, I’m not saying that at all…

On another occasion I observed a literacy lesson jointly with the headteacher. We agreed that achievement and teaching should both be graded as ‘good’ and the headteacher fed back the judgement to the teacher. There were lots of positives and I expected her to be happy with the grade. I was wrong. She asked to see me and started off by saying, “I’ll cut to the chase; I want you to change the grade to outstanding.” I explained that the teaching in her lesson was good and offered to talk through the main points. She told me that she wasn’t interested in talking about the lesson and surely I could just change the number on the sheet? When I tried to explain why this wasn’t possible, she said, “But I always get outstanding! Always! What am I going to tell my friends?”

Thankfully, not all feedback sessions involved emotions running quite so high. But in my experience it was common for teachers to place too much value on the grade awarded for teaching during one lesson. What really matters is the quality of ‘teaching over time’ and the impact of this on pupils’ achievement. Inspectors pull together a wide range of evidence when judging the overall quality of teaching, including pupils’ work, data, and pupils’ views on their learning, in addition to lesson observations. School leaders do need to know about the impact of individual teachers’ work on pupils’ learning, but they too should use all available evidence in making a judgement.

The approach adopted during the pilot inspections has now become standard practice and teachers should not expect a graded lesson observation as part of an inspection. There is still the opportunity to receive feedback from an inspector and this can be extremely useful. As a teacher, I would have welcomed this new approach, but I was a little surprised to discover that not everyone shared this view. One of my feedback sessions in last term’s inspection started with the teacher asking, “What did I get?” I explained that the inspection was part of a pilot and there would be no grade given for the teaching in that lesson. We had a very interesting and enjoyable discussion about the lesson, after which she said, “So what did I get?” Again, I explained, no grade. She responded with “Yes, yes, I know that – but if you had been grading me, what would I have got?” For a short time, I was lost for words – especially words like ‘outstanding’, ‘good’ and ‘requiring improvement’ – but ended by saying, ‘It’s no longer about what you got, it’s about what they got out of it.’

Julie’s new book is Self-propelled learning and effective teaching (available on Amazon). It examines dozens of teaching strategies to discover what works and what doesn’t.

About the author

Julie Price Grimshaw is a teacher, teacher trainer, and education consultant. She has taught primary and secondary and has been involved in school inspections since 2001.