On August 28, 2016, Robert Reed, the Headmaster of the Brighton Hoff Park School, delivered a lecture entitled “The Standards and Expectations of a Good Teacher in the UK” for IICE’s International Education Podium. The lecture was chaired by IICE Professor LIU Baocun and attended by graduate students from the IICE and teachers from a number of high schools in Beijing.

Beginning with a day in the life of a teacher in England, the lecture addressed several key themes in relation to UK schools and teachers including the application of national standards for teachers, the application of school pay policies, common teaching approaches, closing achievement gaps between pupil groups, managing relationships and monitoring performance.

The lecture concluded that the government believes that reforms of recent years should give school leaders the freedom to manage staff to maximize performance. National standards, autonomy with pay policies, Ofsted criteria, a national emphasis on closing gaps and autonomy in determining methods for monitoring performance were all tools available to school leaders. However, some of the case studies in this lecture demonstrated that effective school leadership and management requires more than the provision of a range of management tools.