‘Peeling the layers of the onion’ of CPD teacher days, revealing motives and values:
I worry about values out there in our schools as a result of external monitoring.
I worry about the pressures from league tables, exam boards and OFSTED
Why do I worry?
Well I run CPD days for teachers across the UK.
My courses range from Art and Textiles to SEN themes on Literacy and Communication, Policy planning, Engaging SEN young people with art, Mainstream and SEN SEAL, Community Cohesion, PSHE and Citizenship.
Most recently, I have find that despite running courses on very different themes and subject areas, common themes are emerging:
The teachers that come on these courses are funded by their schools to improve their practice on a particular theme.  They are asked at the beginning of the day why they came on the course and what they want to have learned/ achieved by the end of the day.  They are also asked to state what they do not want on the day.
The teachers each state what they want- which not surprisingly is about the theme for the day.
We begin with the programme designed to meet their needs.
It usually transpires through further discussion that the reasons the teacher has come on the course are more specific than they first stated:
1. Mainstream teachers facing challenging behaviour:  these teachers have a handful of young people in their classroom that they have great difficulty engaging
2. Outstanding schools striving to maintain GCSE C+:  these teachers are under great pressure from their head, to improve the predicted grades of the ‘poorer’ students in their GCSE group (because of the status of the school being Outstanding).  The perception is that these ‘poorer’ students are an irritation and are responsible for spoiling the school status.  The motive for their improvement is for the school league table rather than meeting individual needs and fulfilling individual potential.
3. Special schools not knowing how to evidence progress across their profound and severe learning difficulty cohort: teachers do not know how to evidence progress to OFSTED, as their students operate at a lower level of progress than is measured by P Scales, Pivat and B Squared.  They lack the knowledge and understanding of how to evidence progress and believe that they should be ‘allowed’ to judge for themselves, sometimes from ‘gut feelings’ and resent external monitoring and the need to comply with national standards and monitoring schemes.

My Assumptions from this ‘snapshot’ experience of practice in schools:
• The teachers are working to OFSTED’s demands and are worried that they will fall short of expectations, this overrides their values around meeting individual needs
• The teachers need more knowledge and understanding of the many ‘barriers to learning’ (my preferred term) and are unable to meet their needs.  Their training has fallen short of understanding teaching and learning styles and the multitude of barriers to learning.  Their discipline problems and results would probably improve if they focused on what the student is receiving rather than their output.
• OFSTED inspectors would apparently seem to demonstrate a wide inconsistency of understanding across the wide spectrum of SEN, particularly the severe end for which there is a lack of appropriate assessment criteria.
• Teachers (on my courses) demonstrate a poor understanding of appreciating the need to evidence progress and the methods to use to be able to respond to OFSTED demands with confidence
• There is poor and inconsistent guidance and advice available at national and authority level for teachers that need further training and support
• Disruptive pupils continue to disrupt lessons and the means of engaging and including them in their own learning are absent

Conclusions: Many of the teachers on my courses have a limited repertoire of teaching and learning styles
Many of the art teachers on my courses value talent and the production of ‘good’ art, over instruction and skills development to ensure that every student understands creativity, have effective means to express themselves and do not feel exposed, inadequate and humiliated by their artistic efforts which are doomed to failure. 
The values of the classroom are expressed in the work displayed, the focus of praise, the comments both verbal and written on work undertaken and (most sadly) the preconceptions of the teacher of the expected behaviour, disruption and poor performance of students presenting with particular characteristics e.g. street wise, mouthy, argumentative, talkative, sullen, non communicative, sulky, isolated, disruptive etc.