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Classroom displays - do you love them or loathe them? This, and more...

16 November 2021

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1. Do you have results-based performance targets?

Having performance targets based on results looks to be a trend that becoming less popular. Over the past three years, the percentage of teachers who don’t have any targets related to exam results has raised from 24% to 54%.

Furthermore, 41% of you in 2018 said that your targets were tied to pay progression, but not anymore! Just 21% of you say this now.

This was the direction of travel before COVID, but there are obvious reasons for not tying exam results to performance when there are no external exams taking place. We’ll continue to track this trend over the next few years to see whether COVID was a blip, or fast-tracked an already-existing trend…

But how else do you wish you could develop? Over 50% of you wanted your line manager to give you recognition privately and 29% said that they would like to receive it in a public forum more often. Younger teachers were more likely to want to receive recognition from their line managers than older teachers, whether in private or in a public forum.

Only one-in-five teachers wanted their line manager to drop into their class more, but two-in-five wanted more time to read material for professional development!

2. Love them or hate them? Classroom displays edition

Two-thirds of you prefer to keep your classroom walls plain or display subject information only. Furthermore, there was no difference between primary and secondary teachers. Across both phases, just one-third of teachers were in favour of displays.

However, more experienced teachers were less likely to want a plain classroom wall. 46% of teachers with over 20 years experience preferred a display on their classroom wall, compared to just 31% of teachers with less than 5 years experience.

75% of science and maths teachers say they prefer a plain wall in their classroom. On the other hand, Languages teachers were more in favour of displays, with 46% saying they prefer a display to a plain wall.

3. Are you sitting comfortably?

Reading has often been said to have multiple benefits, from expanding vocabulary to reducing stress. Primary teachers often read aloud to their class, and in fact, reading aloud to your class has become more popular over the past three years. Back in 2018, 25% of you read a book aloud to your class every day, whereas this has now rocketed to 48%.

There has been a marked shift towards more regular reading across these years. The percentage of teachers who responded saying they read at most once a week has dropped from 23% to 11%.

Reading aloud is most popular among teachers of younger students. 70% of Key Stage 1 teachers reported reading to their class every day and virtually every EYFS/KS1 teacher said they read at least once a week. Key Stage 2 teachers still read regularly – 40% read aloud every day and 93% say they read at least once a week.

4. Lesson Length

Politicians have been making noises again recently about changing the school day to improve outcomes as we start to come out of the pandemic. One aspect of this, that is often overlooked, is how much time is spent in each lesson. So we’ve had a look at how this varies between secondary state and private schools.

87% of state secondary schools have lessons between 50 and 69 minutes. However, private schools have a much different system, only around 50% of private schools have lessons between 50 and 69 minutes.

Most private schools have shorter lessons – 15% of private schools have lessons less than 39 minutes and 25% have lessons between 40 and 49 minutes.

Finally… we know you love the daily read, so here are the ones from last week

The most read tip this week was: What to do if your school has a crazy marking policy?

And here are the rest for your reference: