Jo’s education podcast digest (episode 2)

The last time I blogged, I shared my top learnings from education podcasts. I’ve carried on listening to episodes of my favourites since then, and wanted to share a few new ideas and points to ponder. Although, I’ll admit that I’m a little behind with some of them.*

1. Working memory is a bit like a Post-it, from Trialled and Tested: Working Memory

Working memory can be a tricky concept to get your head around at first. But this simple and apt analogy from cognitive psychologist Dr Tracy Alloway is the best I’ve heard yet. Why? Well, as she outlines in the podcast, Post-its are:

• pretty small – there’s no chance of fitting all of GCSE History onto a Post-it, and your working memory couldn’t handle it all at once either.
• come in different sizes – not everyone’s working memory capacity is the same, and it tends to increase during childhood.
• usually a temporary way of keeping track of information – you wouldn’t rely on a Post-it to remember something long-term, and working memory is similarly shortsighted.

I also love the idea of working out the size of your working memory by using the “backward digit test”. When tutoring, thinking about working memory reminds me to make steps explicit, use checklists, prompts or worked examples, so they can save the precious space on their working memory post-it for practicing whichever skill we’re working on.

2. Does slang have a place in the classroom? From Tes Podagogy S7 E6: Slang and standard English with Rob Drummond

Ever been unsure about how to respond to pupils using dialect or slang within tutoring sessions? This podcast shows you’re not alone. Although – kudos to you if you always understand all of the slang they use (I’ve often been flummoxed)! Before I say any more, I think I should come clean and recognise the irony of writing this as a born-and-bred Geordie who allowed the accent and dialect to be ironed out of me whilst at university elsewhere…

Ok, onto the episode, which carefully explores the messages we send when celebrating or denigrating slang and regional dialects, the elusive ‘standard English’ or value-laden ‘received pronunciation’. A couple of choice soundbites from this episode can act as great guides: recognise that pupils need to be able to function in “different linguistic worlds” (for example, the linguistic worlds of home, friends, hobbies or sports they play, as well as linguistic worlds of the different subjects they study, and eventually the workplace). Each is unique and worthy, but linguistic practices may or may not travel well between worlds. Secondly, we should “celebrate linguistic diversity”: slang and dialect are brilliant ways to express ourselves, and standard English or received pronunciation have their place too. This is a topic to think about and reflect upon deeply and over time, and I found Rob’s points carefully thought out and informative.

3. How valuable multiple-choice questions can be, from Inside Exams S1 E7: Guessing your way into dentistry?

Many of our pupils will encounter multiple-choice questions in their assessments: primary pupils sitting SATs, secondary maths pupils sitting their GCSE with AQA, and that’s before considering the range of other subjects they study. Plus, if you’ve used our initial secondary maths workbook, or taken a look at the website diagnostic questions, you’ll have seen some carefully-designed multiple-choice questions. They are a great way to plan for tutoring as each wrong answer has been chosen to represent a particular misconception or error in a pupil’s thought processes – meaning you can be proactive about how you might respond to a pupil getting the answer wrong.

In this podcast, the ever-informative Mr Barton discusses MCQs with Zeek Sweiry, a Senior Researcher at AQA. There’s plenty of myth-busting in this succinct episode, but my favourite phrase was the idea of the wrong answers as “really plausible distractors” – I’ll be forever imagining them as excitable cartoon characters jumping about trying to tempt pupils into picking them! Thinking this way reminds me to aim for pupils deeply understanding the content we’ve covered in tutoring, to give them the strength of mind to discount and ignore plausible distractors, despite their pleas or cute appearance. The other really interesting myth discussed was whether pupils just guess. I loved the point that MCQs are pretty intriguing puzzles even if you don’t know the content – many of us would have a go at a MCQ on a topic we know nothing about, by using deductions and trying to rule certain options out. So, if you’ve ever been a bit skeptical about how useful MCQs can be for learning, or want to know why MCQs are used in exams, this episode is well worth a listen.

*I blame my discovery of TV-related podcasts for this – they’ve competed for my listening attention recently. Anyone for Obsessed with…, Dustbusters or Shrine podcasts? If you enjoy episode-by-episode dissections, outlandish fan theories, and interviews with the professionals behind the latest TV dramas, they are definitely for you!

How party manifestos can deliver fairer education this December

As the election fast approaches, it’s unlikely education is going to be at the top of the list on manifestos or necessarily a priority in voting decisions. Yet, as Nelson Mandela so famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” So many other issues dominate the debate in this election. But failing to invest in and prioritise education not only damages the potential of individuals, but damages wider society too. We all stand to benefit from a strong, holistic education system, which in turn fuels employment, a strong workforce and a strong economy.

I’ve been chatting to the Action Tutoring team about what they think the next government should prioritise for education. Our staff spend a huge amount of time in schools up and down the country, they hear first hand from teachers and pupils on a regular basis and see all too often the challenges that both face. Here are a few highlights of what we, at Action Tutoring, would love to see in the parties’ manifestos and from the next government:

Increase funding for all schools and protect the Pupil Premium

No doubt this is the most obvious place to start! We see daily how hard teachers are working with stretched resources, but there’s no doubt that money helps and schools have been ever squeezed over the last few years. Schools should have the budget to ensure there is a safe, warm, comfortable place for excellent teaching and learning to happen. We’d love to see not only an increase in funding for schools, but in particular protection for Pupil Premium funding, with schools sufficiently well resourced so that the Pupil Premium really can be used to support those it’s intended for and not just to plug other gaps in the system.

Early intervention to close the attainment gap

Although Action Tutoring works with children in Year 5 and above, we’d advocate to see early intervention made more of a priority by the next government. We know that the disadvantage gap has already opened up before children even start school and that high-quality early intervention can make a big difference to a child’s learning and attainment down the line. Yet the full allowance of 30 free hours of childcare is only available if parents work at least 16 hours per week and is not yet universal. Surely an easy way to make a difference here would be to open up the 30 hours of nursery provision, regardless of whether parents are working or not, to make sure children facing disadvantage are not left behind.

Further commitment to reducing teacher workload

Here at Action Tutoring we hugely admire the teachers in our partner schools. They work so hard to make a difference for their pupils. Yet, we see how stretched they are in so many directions and the toll that their workload takes. There has been much said recently about reducing teacher workload and it’s something the current Education Secretary has expressed a commitment to continuing to work on. We want to see this priority reinforced, so that teachers can focus on the real reason that most come into the profession: to make a difference to children and young people. We think a reduction in workload would make a big difference to teacher recruitment and retention too, another pressing issue in education.

Invest in pupils’ wider wellbeing

Since Action Tutoring started in 2012, we’ve seen a significant increase in concerns raised by both teachers and volunteers about pupils’ mental health and wider wellbeing, with teachers now warning that pupils’ mental health is at a crisis point. We think this is an issue the next government cannot afford to ignore, with greater investment needed in CAMHS to ensure shorter waiting times for referrals, plus better support for teachers to deal with these issues. Teachers can’t do everything and we would advocate for more services, such as each school having an in-house counsellor to support pupils’ wellbeing.

Post-16 opportunities

Post-16 education isn’t Action Tutoring’s main focus, but we certainly hear a lot about it from teachers and charity friends working in the post-16 space. Further Education has been poorly funded in recent years, with many considering it at crisis point. The current government pledged an additional £400m but reports say this still leaves colleges 7% down on their 2010 figures: clearly more is needed if this is an area the UK wants to take seriously. And we absolutely think it should: young people leaving secondary school are at a critical point in their lives and the right qualifications and support can set them up to flourish personally and contribute to society.

It’s not all about what happens post 16 though; careers support varies hugely from school to school and is often not introduced until late into the pupil’s school journey. We would love to see a commitment to a qualified, well-trained careers advisor in each school working with pupils right from Year 7.

Support evidence-based practice

There is now some fantastic evidence available about which practices and interventions are most effective in schools and how disadvantaged pupils can best be supported. But this evidence-based approach needs to be more widely adopted and shared. The EEF have made great strides in that, but we want to see a commitment from the government to facilitate schools to form networks, share the most effective evidence-based approaches and learn from those schools experiencing success in tackling disadvantage.

Keep pupils at the heart of decision making
Our final message would be this: keep pupils at the heart of decision making, not results. Too often, Ofsted and league tables can incentivise schools to make decisions based on results rather than the experience and development of the individual pupil. Recent stories of schools excluding those pupils predicted to get poor results is an example of this, although thankfully it has already been cracked down on. Each pupil is an individual with huge worth and value, and we want to see that cherished and the best decisions made for them, whatever that might be and without fear of the system.

In the UK we are lucky to have a brilliant, free education system that many around the world can only dream of. But it is not yet serving disadvantaged pupils as it could be and there is plenty of room for improvement. The Action Tutoring team’s theme for the year is ‘Doing Good Better’ and we would love to see the next government adopt this in its education policies: commitment to making our education system even better and ensuring that it really does benefit every pupil, from pre-school right through to life-long learning.

Why volunteer?

In the fast-paced world we live in, we are constantly moving from one thing to the next.  It can be hard to find a minute to ourselves, let alone a minute to give to someone else. So why would you give up some of your precious time to volunteer?  What are the benefits?

At Action Tutoring we have over 1,100 incredible volunteers who give their time for us every year.  Their support directly impacts the lives of around 2,500 pupils a year, to ensure they can progress in life.  We simply could not function without them. To us the benefits are clear – our volunteers give our young people a future.

But we know your time is precious and we know even with the wider benefits to society it can be hard to make time to give back.  Sometimes we have to be a bit selfish, and so I think it’s important to reflect on how volunteering benefits the giver…

It gives you the chance to meet people you wouldn’t have otherwise met

Any volunteering activity will take you outside of your normal social circles, offering you the chance to interact and learn from other people in your community.  At Action Tutoring we’re proud to have a diverse range of volunteers supporting us, from 18 to 80 years. One of those, Abigail, is a university student who was new to London when she joined us,

“I have met lots of different, interesting people (tutors and pupils) and been to lots of different places in London that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.”

It helps you to use existing skills you might have or learn and develop new skills

Depending on the activity there may be new skills you can learn or for softer skills, such as confidence or teamworking, volunteering often helps you to develop and refine these.  As Chris, a HMRC Tax Specialist, comments,

“In my daily life Action Tutoring has helped me too. I am so much more confident walking into a room of people I don’t know and holding meetings at work, where I have to lead.”

The ‘feel good factor’

Through volunteering you’ll often get so see the impact of your efforts first hand, which can be incredibly rewarding.  Through our tutoring activities, our volunteers often see this in the progression of the pupils they are supporting. Patsy, a retired statistician, comments: 

“I get a great sense of satisfaction from seeing my pupils understand something that they didn’t understand before; and succeeding in their exams. Achieving these qualifications is so crucial for them and whatever else I do during the week, I know I’m helping to make a difference.”

Positive impact on your mental health

Volunteering has also been acknowledged as causing improved mental health.  Giving your time to others helps to reduce isolation, reduces stress and helps to keep things in perspective.  The Mental Health Foundation looks into this more deeply here.

In 2017-18, over 20.1 million people volunteered through a group, club or organisation – so there are plenty of opportunities to choose from.  Whatever activity you choose, you can be sure the benefits will be great for you and for others. 

For more information about volunteering with Action Tutoring, check out our impact page here and our volunteering page here.   

Jumping word hurdles with pupils

As the Communications and Policy Manager for Action Tutoring, I know how frustrating it can be when you can’t fix on the word or phrase that you need to get your job done.

When I first started volunteering as an English tutor, this was what I was so excited about: helping my pupils become more confident expressing themselves in writing. The more you can refine your own writing and apply the words you learn accurately, the more meaning you can unlock in complex texts and find greater satisfaction in expressing your ideas to others.

As a tutor I discovered pretty quickly that the first challenge in sessions was often ensuring that pupils understood the material, which involved slowing right down and dismantling words that had become barriers to accessing the meaning of the text.

After that, you had to start the tricky business of generating ideas about what you’d read and picking choice quotations. The final hurdle was expressing these ideas clearly by finding the right words of your own.

It sometimes stopped me in my tracks when my pupils did not know a word that I was expecting them to know, making me wonder how many other words they had passed over without asking for an explanation. I realised how important it was to check their understanding of a passage and dwell on significant words, and I made it my mission to help them acquire some of these words for the future.

I studied medieval languages at university and whenever I was trying to commit a new word to memory during my studies, I would look for a path connecting it to another word, idea, or image. I thought of it like putting up pegs in my mind to hang the new words on. The Old Norse word hegri sounds a bit like ‘egg-grey’, which could help you picture grey bird that lays eggs and remember that hegri means heron. Some words happen to have memorable stories that help you store the meaning away.

One of my favourite examples is the Old English word sōna, from which we get our adverb ‘soon’. But to Anglo-Saxons, sōna actually didn’t mean ‘soon’, but ‘immediately’: over time, our way of saying ‘right now’ ended up meaning ‘in a bit’ – a shift in meaning that we can all relate to!

I tried to put this method into practice with my pupils when I wanted them to retain more ambitious vocabulary. One pupil did not know the word ‘crimson’. I told him to think of a criminal with bright red blood on their hands, so that the sound of the word and the colour it represented would be connected by an image. Finding these pathways and pictures was a fun and rewarding way of dealing with obstacles in sessions, and I would try to revisit these words in future to ensure they were remembered.

Of course, as great as it is to teach our pupils new vocabulary and help them remember it, we also need to help them cope when they face a word that they don’t know in an exam, without getting hung up on it. Fortunately, it should always be possible to draw a valid interpretation without knowing even a lynchpin word, provided you can back it up with evidence from the surrounding text.

A good example of this is in the Old English poem The Battle of Maldon, where a word with unclear meaning appears during a turning point in the narrative. The hero is said to act with ofermōd – which has been variously interpreted in this context as meaning ‘too much heart/courage’ or as ‘excess pride/arrogance’. The events that unfold, and the representation of the hero overall, can be interpreted entirely differently depending on that one word. Although the exact meaning intended by the author can’t be known, we can accept either interpretation because both can be convincingly justified using the rest of the poem.

Our English workbooks for primary school pupils have a ‘Word Journal’ in the back pages which tutors will be familiar with: pupils are encouraged to write a new word and draw pictures around it, to help them remember it better. Although our GCSE pupils might not appreciate being asked to illustrate new words they’re learning, it is certainly worth taking time to discuss new words, write them down, and revisit them in future sessions.

Words are not only fascinating but empowering, helping you to access meaning and express yourself, and I think that is a worthy goal to have for our pupils beyond their exams: to better understand and interpret what they see, and to make their feelings and ideas more clearly understood.

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