VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
I also think that being a small school allows our
children to stay as children longer, and means we can keep a close eye on them if any signs of trouble emerge. From a staffing perspective, we are very flexible
– because we have to be. We pitch in when we have to and are a very tightly-knit team heavily invested in the school. Because we are such a small team, as a head I’m not threatened by anyone else’s expertise, and I encourage everyone to be imaginative. We are all willing to experiment, and I believe our flat hierarchy fosters this in a way that benefits the children we teach. One final benefit of being a small school is that
we are able to have much closer interactions with parents – as an example, when the increase in nursery funding for working parents was announced, we were able to make personal contact with existing and future parents to let them know.
What are the challenges which you need to overcome as a small school? The first and most obvious one is budget – with a small number of pupils on roll, we don’t get the funding that larger schools get, and we really have to look at all options when it comes to spending. In some instances, our small year groups can
throw up challenges. We operate vertical groups, and we have had occasions where we’ve had fewer children in one group than the other, but we find this situation rectifies itself over time and it’s just one of those things you have to contend with. From a staffing point of view, we have to
employ experienced teachers, we just don’t have the ability to mentor less experienced practitioners while they grow into the job, and this can obviously affect our budget. However, I think this is also a positive thing, as our parents know their children are being taught by teachers with many years of experience between us!
Tell us about being a forest school – what does that entail? All teachers must undertake a programme of training to learn how to structure outdoor activities to complement and enhance learning in the classroom – by using the environment on our doorstep, we aim to encourage our children to appreciate the natural world around them, and we want them to have fun while they’re doing it. As an example, the children were recently learning about nursery rhymes, so we took them outside and got them building a wall and
April 2018
dropping eggs off it. Another example recently involved learning about the Ancient Egyptians – using willow from the environment, you can show how papyrus was woven from reeds. Our aim is for our children to independent and enjoy the outdoors, and as we serve a rural community, we find that the parents are receptive to this.
The school is currently under threat of closure – can you tell us about this? The situation regarding the possible school changes in West Northumberland is complicated by the fact that there are two ongoing consultations. The first is Northumberland County Council’s proposal to replace the current system with one of three proposed alternatives, all of which involve the closure of Whitley Chapel School. This consultation ended on April 9th. The second is the Hadrian Learning Trust’s
(HLT’s) proposal to merge Hexham Middle School with the Queen Elizabeth High School to form a single 11-18 secondary school, which would effectively force the rest of the Hexham School system to become two tier, leading to the closure of many of our rural first schools and all of Hexham’s middle schools. This consultation ended on March 29th. (HLT is an academy and the local council has no power to prevent them from doing this). The two consultations are separate, how one
affects the other is currently unclear, and for the purposes of trying to protect our school, we have had to respond to them separately.
How important is it for pupils, parents, staff and the wider community that the school stays open? When you work in a rural school, feedback from the wider community is quite rare, unless you have accidentally offended someone – but when we found out about the closure plans and organised a meeting, we got sixty attendees. The school is right next to the Parish Hall, there are regular Young Farmers events held there, the Bowls Club and the WI meet there, and as we share the septic tank on our land with the Hall, it soon became evident that if the school was closed, the Parish Hall would close soon after. Our pupils are very active in the local community, we are large contributors to the local Leek Show, providing exhibits of work and produce and enjoying celebrating shared endeavours. We love joining in events at church – the recent Mother’s Day ‘Clipping’, the Christmas Eve Nativity and the Good Friday activities. We take an active part in developing and learning about local history – we helped put on a special display and remembrance event to commemorate the outbreak of WW1, and we have helped to resource and dig at the Dukesfield Smelting Arches. There’s also the fact that our local parents who farm the land round here don’t want to uproot their children and make new journeys to get them to school, while the next generation of young farmers who are now thinking about starting families want their children to be educated here too.
How positive do you feel about the outlook for the school? Happily, I’m feeling more positive now than ever, because the consultation is actually in two parts and it’s looking like other changes in the council plan might mean we have to become a primary school adding Years 5 and 6. We need to make sure that parents understand though, that even if we do add two new year groups to the school, their children’s education won’t suffer – we’ll still be the same school, with the same ethos and the same belief in using our strengths to give their children the education they deserve.
uFor more information about Whitley First C of E, please visit:
www.whitleyfirst.northumberland.sch.uk/ website
uFor more information on the STARS campaign to keep North Hexamshire’s rural schools open, please visit:
www.facebook.com/ STARSNORTHUMBERLAND/
www.education-today.co.uk 17
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