Teach Middle East Podcast
Welcome to the Teach Middle East Podcast, the ultimate audio hub where educators find inspiration, share innovative ideas, and grow together! Brought to you by Moftah Publishing—the minds behind the premier Teach Middle East Magazine—this podcast is your gateway to the latest research-based practices, cutting-edge classroom strategies, and the heartwarming stories of educators from the Middle East and around the globe.
As the only podcast that interviews school leaders from across the Middle East and beyond, we offer unparalleled insights into the challenges and successes that shape educational landscapes in diverse settings. Join us as we dive deep into the fascinating world of education, where every episode promises a treasure trove of insights designed to connect, develop, and empower the brilliant minds shaping our future. Whether you’re seeking fresh perspectives, practical tips, or a dose of inspiration, the Teach Middle East Podcast is your must-listen resource. Tune in and transform the way you teach!
Teach Middle East Podcast
A New Approach to School Inspections: Insights From Amanda Spielman
In this episode, Amanda Spielman joins us to discuss a new, supportive approach to school inspections. We dive into how inspections can be reframed to help schools grow and improve rather than focusing solely on punitive measures. Amanda shares her vision for making the process more constructive and beneficial for educators and students alike.
Whether you're a school leader, teacher, or policymaker, this conversation provides valuable insights into how inspections can become a tool for positive change. Tune in for practical advice on creating a more supportive and growth-oriented education system.
Amanda's new chapter in Dubai is equally compelling. We examine the rapid evolution of education in the region, underscoring Amanda's role in fostering collaboration among educational leaders and advisers at GEMS Education.
Amanda's passion for educational innovation shines through, from the exciting teacher-led renaissance in England to the power of social media in uniting educators.
She also shares her thoughts on the importance of physical school environments post-COVID and the nuanced, often unseen elements that contribute to a school's success. Join us for an insightful conversation that's sure to inspire anyone passionate about the future of education.
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Hosted by Leisa Grace Wilson
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Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome back to the Teach Middle East podcast. I am Lisa Grace. Today I have Amanda Spielman with me on the podcast. Amanda is the former Chief of the Inspector and she's currently taking on a role with GEMS Education as the new chair of their academic council. Amanda is very much new to this region and so, before we jump deep into the podcast, we want to get to know who she is and we want to humanize her a little bit. Not just the role, not just the professional, but the person. Welcome to the podcast, amanda.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much, Lisa Grace. It's a real pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to have you, Amanda. Take us back to little Amanda. Where did you grow up and what was your?
Speaker 3:childhood like. I grew up mostly in Scotland. My parents moved there when I was five. My father worked for the government and my mother was a university lecturer and we were part of a community that centred around the university. All my parents' friends, I seem to remember, were other lecturers and teachers there, mostly people who didn't have children. So I spent a lot of time sitting in corners playing and listening to adults talking around me which I guess is a universal childhood experience and lots of outdoor things going, walking in the Scottish hills, sailing in dinghies, camping, really making the most of what Scotland has to offer.
Speaker 2:That sounds idyllic. It really does.
Speaker 3:It was mostly pretty lovely.
Speaker 2:And tell me then, after your childhood, what led you into education as a career.
Speaker 3:I very much had a career of two halves. I started out after doing law at university, training as an accountant, and I worked in finance and banking for 15 years or so and I had an itch that gradually built up that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to be doing. And when I had time to stop and think on one of my maternity leaves to really think about what interested me and what I wanted to be doing, I suddenly realized that ever since I was a child myself, I'd read everything I'd ever come across about education. So that was the moment I thought, oh, I'd better do something about it. Then I went off to do a master's in comparative education, studying education systems in different countries, and then looked for an interesting role. And one thing led to another Wow.
Speaker 2:And your time in education. Where did that career lead? You Give me sort of like the miniature CV version.
Speaker 3:The miniature CV version is. I came out of my master's hugely enthused, really interested in the kinds of curriculum and teaching that made the biggest difference to the children with the biggest challenges, and looked around for somewhere that I could use that and I thought I might find a little part-time policy job somewhere. Well, my children were still pretty small and I bumped into the people who were setting up one of the first chains of academy schools in England and became part of the top team there and then from there I became chair of the exam regulator Ofqual. I'd got really interested in assessment and all the complexities around assessment and I did that for six years and then I became chief inspector and was chief inspector for seven years.
Speaker 2:Wow, so it's a nice little pathway that led you the winding way.
Speaker 3:I've been incredibly lucky. I never for one moment imagined what I would do when I started out on that master's course, but it's been so interesting.
Speaker 2:How would you encapsulate your time at Ofsted?
Speaker 3:It was just extraordinarily invigorating. Ofsted isn't just about schools. It covers post-16 education and early years and social care. Funnily enough, the piece around schools, for some reason, is always much more politicised and much more pressured than the other pieces, so it's good to be able to calibrate the different worlds against each other. We achieved a tremendous amount in my time at Ofsted In the education world across from early years through schools and post-16, we put in a new model of inspection that's really focused on substance of education and integrity not just are the results high enough, but really sort of looking underneath at what's being taught and how it's being taught and it's gone incredibly well. The feedback is so positive on that model and yet at the same time in England the government hangs huge weight on inspection, so a big part of the job is trying to manage and navigate the pressures that the consequences of inspection create for schools. So it's a curious mix and it's an incredibly rewarding job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that in recent times inspections, especially in the school system not the higher education or early years have come under a lot of scrutiny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so much of it is about the consequences of inspection, because there is this policy of academizing schools are graded at the lowest level and at that point it is completely uncertain for heads what their future will be. So it is, this great web of fear has built up around those possible consequences and of course that's almost impossible for inspectors to defuse because they don't control that. It's for government to make those decisions. So it's quite a sticky environment in England at the moment because it's very hard to have those conversations, do you see, and it's just a hope, amanda, but do you see it becoming less punitive in nature?
Speaker 3:Inspection. This is a really important one. Inspection is not remotely punitive in nature. The whole process I listened so much before I started at Ofsted and throughout my time there I went to so many conferences, teacher-led events and usually on my own so that I could really talk to people and hear what they were saying. I consistently heard this message about fear of consequences. So one of the principles for the redesign that I did of inspection was to make it as much as possible about a constructive and supportive professional dialogue about the things that really matter.
Speaker 3:But what nobody is comfortable talking about is the very difficult situation that in the very, very small proportion of inspections you find really serious failures and, most difficult of all, sometimes people aren't aware of those failures and then you have a terribly difficult conversations and inspectors are very skillful at handling those. But at the end of the day there are times when the interests of children the inspection is there to serve and the interests of the adults are just not in the same place and the inspector sometimes has to be the person to give a really tough message. And that is their job. It's like judges have to make decisions in the cases they hear they can't say. It's all a bit difficult and I don't want to be unkind to anybody so I won't say anything.
Speaker 3:Inspectors are in that position that they have to say is this school good enough or is it not good enough? So characterizing that as punitive is not really fair to inspectors. In a system where schools have a very high level of autonomy, inspection is that key safeguard that children are getting what they're actually meant to get. So inspectors in England are hired for their bedside manner. They're hired for not just for technical competence but for their empathy and ability to have the right conversations, and the feedback is overwhelmingly very positive about that. But it's very easy for people to use words like punitive and sort of mischaracterize. It is the consequences that other people hang on it that are where any punitive aspect lies, not in the inspection process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what happens is so. I taught in England for many years and I think what happens is inspectors come in and I'm sure their intention isn't to be punitive, or let's just ban that word, it's not to be hard and fast on the schools. But of course the school leaders are feeling that pressure from wherever and then they transfer that to the staff and the colleagues. But how can we balance that with well-being? How can we balance the process, you think?
Speaker 3:First of all, you're absolutely right. The fear that heads build up around the consequences often does get transmitted to staff and sometimes I've talked to many teachers often teachers who, because inspection is quite infrequent and is a very small process it doesn't draw in everybody who works in a school typically who've had the most astonishing messages about inspection that they must do this because Ofsted and they must do that because Ofsted, and very often it's actually complete nonsense. It's do this because Ofsted and they must do that because Ofsted, and very often it's actually complete nonsense. It's not stuff that Ofsted would ever want or look at, but Ofsted is being used as the stick to make people comply and it's very hard because schools have autonomy. Nobody controls what those head teachers do and can say you can't do that. But it is bad management practice without a shadow of doubt. I think there's a lot that's really in government's gift, not Ofsted. I know that throughout my time we work to make the process as open, as human, as constructive as we possibly could, but at the end of the day, wasted cannot take away fear of consequences that other people apply. It's a really difficult conundrum. It is. It definitely is.
Speaker 3:I'll give you an analogy. I read the feedback from inspections very carefully and there was a lot. For example, people would say my staff actually came away buzzing. We were nervous about it, but my staff came away buzzing because it was such a constructive experience. I think the model that came in 2019 really has shifted the experience at the receiving end quite significantly.
Speaker 3:I think it's an analogy, actually something like a dentist checkup. I don't know anybody in the world who says, yippee, I've got a checkup tomorrow. Everybody feels a bit apprehensive, but that apprehension is not about the visit itself is going to be awful. It's that it might show that you need a root canal or an extraction, or that that niggling tooth is going to need major treatment, or that there's something you haven't realized. And normally you come away from that dental checkup really pleased that you went and thinking, good, I've done something that I did need to do. There is never going to be a world in which people say, yippee, bring it on, let's do more of it. And yet it is fundamental protection in an education system, which is why so many countries have inspectorates.
Speaker 2:But it is important that people understand that sometimes they are the people who have to give really tough messages very much so I think the uah has adopted especially dubai and the other emirate have adopted an ofsted style inspection and it has helped, I think, in a lot of ways to drive up standards in the schools, because when you know that your processes are being looked at closely, then you also in turn start to pay closer attention to them and the consequences of how they're being implemented. So that turns me to your new role and your new region. Why the UAE?
Speaker 3:Well, the UAE is somewhere where so much is happening at the moment, and GEMS approached me after I'd finished my term as chief inspector and there's a lot that's interesting Because of the way that the education system is configured, with the state schools serving only Emirati children and a very large proportion of the population being non-Emirati. So there is an exceptionally large private sector in a country that is growing very fast, that is very entrepreneurial and dynamic, lots of parents who are themselves of entrepreneurial, dynamic kinds of people which is why they've moved to UAE and so a rapidly growing school sector that's very forward-looking, very outward-looking. It's very clearly a place that isn't set in stone, where nothing is really going to change ever. It's a place where there's a lot going on, so it's a place where it's very interesting to take a role in being part of shaping that future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been here for 14 years and over those years I've literally watched the country just grow and evolve and I find that their ambition is so vast that I often say, can they do it? And more often than not, they've done it and you're like, wow, you've actually managed to do something that it takes other places decades or even longer to implement. They've managed to do it in record time. So your role as chair of the new academic council at GEMS Education what does that entail?
Speaker 3:It's not an executive job.
Speaker 3:I'm not stepping into a place where I tell anybody at GEMS what to do.
Speaker 3:They have an excellent leadership team taking those responsibilities.
Speaker 3:The academic council is a way of creating a relatively light touch mechanism to draw together a group of the education leaders within GEMS with some external education advisors to chew on the sort of critical issues, not to try and reach across everything that GEMS does, but to think about and say what are the things where there is the greatest potential to improve the education we offer. Going forward across the range of different kinds of schools that GEMS has. Let's pick out a few of those that would benefit from that kind of airing to give the executive some extra insights, some extra ways of thinking about things that they can take back and build into their thinking and planning, and to keep iterating that kind of a loop to find those angles, whether it's about curriculum, whether it's about teaching, whether it's about assessment, whether it's about ways of building school culture, ways of improving the wider offer, all the sport, the extracurricular, all those other things that we know that people support, all the things that add up to a great education and people's coming out happy, well-educated, prepared for what lies ahead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it sounds good, sounds exciting, so I wanted to because of how wide your scope is. Now you're coming international. You've worked in the UK. What are you excited about now in education? What do you see happening that excites you?
Speaker 3:Oh well, in England, for example, I think there's been a real intellectual renaissance in education in England over the last decade, and very much as a teacher-led intellectual renaissance, People have really been picking up and thinking about all the sort of accumulation of evidence around, all the different aspects and reading, discussing, thinking about the implications, sharing ideas. Twitter for a while, for quite a long time, was a great vehicle for that kind of sharing, though it's all got a bit difficult there at the moment. But there's been a willingness to engage intellectually and to test thinking and even for people with very different starting positions to listen, to read, to talk to each other and I've seen so much emerging out of that that I think is genuinely improving education. And I think seen so much emerging out of that that I think is genuinely improving education. And I think social media has helped to connect people in different parts of the country and different schools that sometimes there were people who were, of course, they've always been people with tremendous interests, who felt quite isolated within schools and didn't have ways of connecting with other people, and I think that's really built up. And then, layering onto that, many of the emerging multi-academy trusts have really harnessed that intellectual energy and have been building that into the various kinds of support, the training, the models that they set for their schools.
Speaker 3:So I don't think it's an accident that so much of the school sector in England is doing very well at the moment, as reflected in some recent iterations of PISA. I think there've been some very good things happening there. There's perhaps a bit of a downbeat mood in England at the moment in the education sector between dealing with the aftermath of COVID and lockdowns, concerns about school funding, concerns about rising special needs and for a whole variety of reasons that the school sector is not at its most cheerful. And yet I think there's a tremendous amount actually in the fundamentals to be very positive and excited about. I'm really looking forward to seeing in more depth the kinds of conversation, the kinds of thinking that GEMS is harnessing, that individuals visited a whole series of GEMS schools in June very different schools coming from very different traditions international curriculum, British curriculum, IB curriculum but seeing how, in their different ways, they were all building on and making that energy.
Speaker 2:And how did you find the tour of the different GEMS schools? How did you find it all?
Speaker 3:First and foremost, I hadn't been in a school for several months and, lisa, I tell you I was so excited to be in schools again and see children and teachers working, and seeing a good school in operation is such a lovely thing to be in and to be part of.
Speaker 3:I think one of the things that COVID taught us actually is quite how much the physical reality of a school matters and what a sophisticated mechanism a school is to create an environment in which children engage in the whole business of learning and in learning things they don't know, that they want to learn and need to learn, and in building constructive relationships with adults and peers. That process of socialization, all the different ways that schools help children discover what they're capable of being. They're very subtle mechanisms and most of that doesn't work when you haven't got humans in contact with each other, making eye contact, doing all those little things that are really hard to do unless you're in a room with people. So I'm a tremendous believer in the power of schools. I saw schools serving very different parents with significantly different approaches, but I saw a common thread that really encouraged and excited me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I always say COVID made me love school again because I had my own kids at home and I was like I love school, I love school for them and I love school. I wanted to ask you this question, so I'll use it as my final question. I think I forgot to ask you. Dubai uses an annual inspection, then other Emirates use a biannual and some once every three years. What do you think is the right interval at which schools should be inspected?
Speaker 3:at which schools should be inspected. That's a really interesting question. The first thing I would say to that is inspection isn't just a thing that you do. You do it for a reason, as part of a bigger government regulatory policy. So what you inspect, how you inspect, how often you inspect all of those are things where your choices should be driven by what's the bigger policy, are things where your choices should be driven by what's the bigger policy. What is it you're trying to achieve?
Speaker 3:I think one thing I would say is and there is a balance at one end you don't want schools to be constantly preparing for inspection and never have a minute to draw breath in between, because, whether we like it or not, schools are always going to do some work to make sure that they're ready, to make sure that, as far as they possibly can, that an inspection will go well. So too frequent and there's not enough time to do the day job. You're spending all your time preparing for inspection, but at the other end, too infrequent and actually you create the space that the fear and apprehension can build up. So to make it less work and less concerning for teachers, we'll only do it once every 10 years would probably be really bad news. So trying to find the sweet spot in the context of a particular policy environment to me should always be the aim, so that you're properly looking after the interests of parents and children in a way that's actually as fair and reasonable to head teachers and staff as you can make it Fantastic.
Speaker 2:That's a great place to end the pod. Thank you so much, Amanda.
Speaker 3:Really nice to talk to you, Lisa, and good luck. Thank you so much. Thanks very much. Bye-bye.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Teach Middle East podcast. Visit our website teachmiddleeastcom and follow us on social media. The links are in the show notes.
