Student Absences and Student Abscesses: Impediments to Quality Teaching

This article, written by a research-active teacher, reports on efforts to embed quality teaching in a local urban primary school in the north of England, under pressure from the Local Authority to raise standards because it is well below national expectations on SATs tests. The school has concentrated over recent years on embracing the Office for Standards in Education ‘First wave quality teaching’ notably through its Teaching and Learning Strategy and professional learning opportunities, including joining a city-wide network of practitioner researchers. This is a mark of the trust placed in staff by the school Head. The teacher inquiry project reported here began with identifying and naming professional concerns about student achievement and what this meant for classroom practices, including pedagogies or instruction as it is called in the USA. The teacher set out to investigate student learning needs and develop responsive schemes of work. The social realities of the Year 3 classroom, and the research evidence, all point to recognition that official versions of ‘quality teaching’ are not enough to improve student learning outcomes. There is simultaneously a need to confront the inequitable opportunities that exist in this local urban school community and to acknowledge the need for a contextualised understanding of school improvement.