• Mick Waters' presentation

Opening his presentation by "looking at learning through the eye of the pupil", Mick Waters showed an image of an eye with a continuously shifting and changing pupil – a very interesting metaphor! Mick spoke about Nelson Mandela, showing images of his cell and of the learning cave in the nearby prison quarry – “even there education was the great approach to freedom”. Mick asked delegates what their pupils thought about teacher learning on courses and showed pupil drawings responding to this question. They said things like "my teacher reads thicker books as she gets older and finds out how to build better lego".

On pupil learning Mick quoted Greene: “there is always a moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future”. He noted the recent curriculum shifts in England, the move away from content and towards having more flexibility, with national parameters but local interpretations. Mick suggested that, as we move forward, there may be more choice - though with a fixed core with more emphasis on facts and rote and less on skills.

Mick presented a word map of the Queen’s speech which showed: schools, teachers, give, reform, new, improve and state to be commonly-used words. Learning, however, was very small. In today’s speech Mick suggested that the Secretary of State had mentioned "authors of destiny" "more power and control to school leaders" "collaboration" "improved refined tests" and "key parts of plans moving forward".

Mick also made reference to the recent Gove/Gibb speeches at the Royal Society of the Arts and drew some provocative conclusions about the plans for the curriculum. He felt there would be a core of imparting of knowledge, delivered in subject disciplines. He next presented a tongue-in-cheek set of Kipling ‘ifs’, that might have large-scale system effects. These included publishing league tables by constituency, parent observers in lessons and a limit of eight GCSEs.

Looking at learning through the eye of the pupil was advocated, and a five point guide to thriving in schools was presented. Literacy and numeracy, pleasing teachers, contributing to the school, having general knowledge and having a wide friendship group were the key factors for pupil success. Mick looked at achievement on a graph with two axes: ‘everybody to unique’ and ‘effort to easy’. He looked at ways to move learners from what everyone can achieve easily, to things that took effort but made achievers unique. This would involve providing challenge with support. Getting to basics, he felt learning skills, stamina and sprit were needed and that learners needed to experience work with success, and how to deliver with panache. The entire planned learning experience would involve extended hours outside school as well as school routines.

Looking at a video clip about enjoyment in learning he felt it should be important to know the pupils and their language, and that policy must be enacted to inspire and reach out to the learners. He described how pupil assessment of school departments can be extremely valuable for change: "It’s not the number of breaths that we need to count, it’s the number of moments that take our breath away".

Kathy Seddon