The Lesson’s Structure in English Schools

When I chose to train as a teacher, I had in mind what my teacher friends in France told me, “Once you’re in your classroom, you can do it your way.” This autonomy was worth, in my eyes, earning less money than by working for a company where one is often closely monitored by a manager who can’t help but micromanaging their employees. The reality of English schools was however far from the image I had taken with me from France.

Quite at the start of my PGCE training, we were told about the lesson’s structure. Teachers are supposed to start every single lesson by presenting the differentiated learning objectives to the whole class (often in the form “At the end of this lesson, all of you should be able to do ‘ABC’, most of you ‘DEF’, and some of you ‘GHI’). The actual lesson should then begin with a starter, a short activity designed to engage students, and consist of student-led activities. The lesson finishes with a plenary where all the class are drawn together and learning is assessed and/or students are prompted to reflect on their own learning.

We were told to use specific verbs for the learning objectives that are precise enough to assess whether the learning objectives are met. So, verbs like “understand” were proscribed as understanding is not easily measurable. Instead, “label a diagram” or “state the definition of” were appropriate verbal expressions. What I found surprising at first was to reduce learning to a list of simple, measurable skills. Certainly, it is often possible to do so, but I still believe that learning is much more complex than a list of skills and that it is not always measurable. Learning is also about making connections and transferring skills, and this cannot be captured in a list of skills. With such a list of measurable learning objectives, it is easy to miss overarching, higher level objectives, such as understanding a concept. Take for instance the topic of speed. Speed, alongside unit price, is one of the most common rates (i.e., a ratio between two different quantities measured in different units) that one encounters in everyday life. It is a central element in proportional relationships, namely the proportionality constant, and it is measured with a compound unit. In short, it is a key foundation topic. However, the list of learning objectives for a lesson on speed can easily be “Finding the speed given the distance and time”, “Finding the distance given the speed and time”, and “Finding the time given the speed and distance”. Some teachers will teach the lesson using a “formula triangle” and will think their lesson is a success because their students have reached the three learning objectives — they will perform their calculations neatly and nicely and find the correct results. But will they have understood something about rates and proportionality? Will they have been given a chance to make parallels with e.g. unit price and understand the idea of time unit? Will they have realised where the speed unit comes from? If their teacher cannot see beyond the written “learning objectives”, the answer is no.

Also, to declare at the start that only the best will grasp some part of a lesson is questionable. Is it supposed to motivate students? As explained here, it may motivate only those who are competitive, while many will not even consider these learning objectives accessible. And then, what if you do not want the students to know what they are going to learn, because, for instance, you want to take them on a journey of discovery?

There is another important issue with this lesson structure: it is based on the idea that all learning is taking place during the lesson and can be assessed at the end of the lesson. This idea is completely at odds with the way learning takes place. We all have experienced that learning is not linear and that we may suddenly understand something when we hadn’t expected it. Or that we think we have understood something and, when coming back to it, we realise that it is not as clear as we thought. At university, they told us that education scientists who focused on assessment for learning have observed that what students learn is often not aligned with the teacher’s intention. In brief, learning is somehow unpredictable. As I have shown here, most of the time the most part of the curriculum for a key stage or even beyond is taught every year in England, which means that often a different concept is (re-)introduced in every lesson. When this is the case, there is no way to explore the concept further, deepen the understanding, and develop fluency. As a result, with every lesson come new learning objectives; the learning that has taken place during the lesson is assessed at the end; boxes are ticked, and let’s move on! After one lesson where I was observed by my university tutor, he criticised the fact that I hadn’t assessed one of the learning objectives. The point is that I considered that this difficult learning objective would be tackled over two lessons at least. But this situation is not supposed to happen according to the “learning objectives policy”.

A way to end the lesson is to ask our students to write down what they have just learned. Thinking about one’s own learning is sometimes called metacognition, i.e., thinking about thinking. While this sounds great in theory and some students might take this task seriously, I have observed that most often students simply copy the learning objectives given at the start of the lesson, without actually thinking. Funnily, when I slightly changed the question, e.g., “what did you find difficult today?”, many would still copy the learning objectives, not having even listened to the actual question, operating in (a worrying) automatic mode…

In addition, every lesson is supposed to be “differentiated”. This means that you cannot teach your whole class a topic to the same level, using the same material. Usually, following the fact that your learning objectives are declined in three levels, you are expected to teach three lessons in one: one lesson for each ability group. It is sometimes done by having three different levels of worksheets, expecting the most able to go quick enough to do all the worksheets or to skip the first one. However, we were told at university that a better way to do it is to already teach the topic at a higher level to the most able from the very start of the lesson while providing the less able with more scaffolding. Needless to say, teaching in this way requires more preparation and an incredible energy and teaching mastery when delivering the lesson.

Finally, every lesson should be prepared by writing a full lesson plan, including timing all the activities to the nearest minute, writing down what the teacher will be doing while the students do their activities, how learning will be assessed, how the lesson is differentiated, etc.

It took me some time to realise that what we are told during the PGCE about how we should teach is not how qualified teachers actually teach. It is valid for the PGCE and when a teacher is observed. However, given the importance of Ofsted inspections, schools often internally organise inspections, or mini-reviews, in the way Ofsted do, so that their teachers can be very efficient in following Ofsted’s guidelines, or the schools’ interpretation of them. But these guidelines are in normal teaching routine unsustainable given that a day only has 24 hours. The hypocrisy of the system was best revealed when, in my school, we (the PGCE students) had a session with the newly qualified teachers (NQTs). The latter bluntly told us: “Don’t worry for next year; everything will be made easier because you won’t have to do standalone lessons and you will be able to go into a lesson without any plan. You’re observed only a few times during the year and that’s it.” Similarly, a teacher gave me a valuable piece of advice for observed lessons: “At the end of the lesson, ask the students to write the answer to a question on their mini-boards, and pretend to count the numbers of good answers, and then conclude with ‘excellent, so 26 out of 30 have reached the learning objective’. You will make the Ofsted inspector happy.” Another teacher in my school gave us (the PGCE students) a session on differentiation, and she said straight at the start, “I differentiate my lessons only when I’m observed, otherwise I couldn’t survive.” It became then clear to me why, when Ofsted announced a surprise inspection for 2 days later, all teachers spent part of their nights to plan lessons in the Ofsted format. Obviously, teaching business as usual was out of the question.

This ludicrous system has its roots, I believe, in the league tables, which give an extreme importance to the outcome of Ofsted inspections. All the system is based on the idea that teachers need to be controlled, and the best way to do that is to standardise lessons and teaching across the country. As the very purpose of education has become exams (see here), and as exams test specific skills, teachers are asked to teach specific skills (= learning objectives). As I said in my first article on this blog, we should all reflect on why we want our children to be educated and what we expect from schools. In addition, teachers should be trusted as responsible professionals who know what they are doing. Teachers would teach better were they given more trust and freedom. But I will expand on this in a future post. Watch this space!