Can you save a teacher's career in one successful difficult conversation?  A choose your own adventure book

She has many strengths, she’s fantastic at behaviour management, in her class and across the school and she’s supported NQTs and RQTs develop their skills with great results. Her classroom learning environment is superb (it’s actually one of the best you’ve ever seen) and the majority of her children make good progress every year. She is well liked across the school and is willing to support on a wider scale - if you want an event taken care of Jane's hands are the safest!

However some of Jane’s teaching methods are outdated, she relies too much on worksheets, which she spends a lot of time creating.  Also she doesn’t make her lessons engaging learning experiences for her children; you’ve seen her class be passive learners and this is not how you want learning to be in your school.  Her differentiation isn’t great either, sometimes it’s done well and other times it feels like a ‘tick-box’ exercise and the children who don’t make enough progress tend to be her higher ability or those with specific needs.  And, heartbreakingly, as you saw just under a year ago at your last Ofsted inspection, where you got 'good' (but feel your school scraped it), she falls apart in observations, going into a frenzy of over-planning and preparation before, then having a sub-standard observation which, coupled with books full of worksheets and passive learners, doesn't show Jane as being the good teacher you would expect at UPS1.

As Head of Hawthorne Primary School you’ve tried to broach these issues a few times and each time she’s become upset – she believes she is a good teacher and ‘these external observers’ don’t see her strengths; as someone who works incredibly hard, she feels this is a ‘kick in the teeth’ to her 18 years in the profession.  You don’t want to upset her and you don’t want her to leave the school, however you know your children deserve better lessons every day - ones that enthuse them and that they talk about at home.  And you know that when the Ofsted inspection comes round again in a few years, unless something changes, she will not be seen as a good teacher and they will want to know what is being done to improve or remove her.

What are you going to do about Jane's performance?