Year Eleven Invocation turned up in dribs and drabs once the bell went, plumping rucksacks on desks and gossiping with each other in little knots. A few of them greeted Walden politely, which was unusually good manners with an adult they did not know well, and boded well for this year group as sixth formers next year. Chetwood’s general standards of behaviour hadn’t been affected as badly as some schools by the pandemic a few years ago—when you locked down a boarding school, it just went on being a boarding school—but most of the day pupils had been pulled out for the duration, and of course a lot of the younger children now coming up through the middle school had been primary schoolers at the time. There was a feeling among the staff that general maturity levels had slipped, a sign of children who’d missed out on key bits of socialisation.

Walden opened up the observation form on her laptop and made a note: good behaviour even before their teacher arrived. A nice set, as Ezekiel had said.

Lesson observations could be very dull. What was wanted at the end was a beautiful A4 page of admiring notes that Walden and Ezekiel could both put in their prof dev folders ahead of the next pay review cycle. After all, there were very few surprises involved in good teaching. Different people had different styles, but the fundamentals were consistent across age groups, across disciplines, across all different kinds of schools: Know your students, and Know your subject. All you could really get from an observation was a handful of ideas for things to incorporate into your own practice: activities, structures, turns of phrase.

Ezekiel arrived, unhurried, two minutes after the bell. He walked into his classroom and was instantly the centre of it. Year Eleven went silent, rapidly pulling out notebooks and tucking away rucksacks under desks, not needing to be told. Walden did a quick headcount: there were twenty of them, a medium-large set for a GCSE in a magical subject. Ezekiel waited in amicable silence until all of them were prepared and watching him, and then said, “Good morning, Year Eleven. Back to the grindstone; we’re carrying on with our magical ethics discussion. Dr Walden is joining us today,” with a nod in her direction, “as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Let’s get started.”

Walden began her A4 page of admiring notes: Clear routines & established behaviour expectations. Immediate sense of purpose.