VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
Our early focus on families and staff cemented the foundation of our improvement work. Pupil behaviour and outcomes are easier to approach if you’ve already secured a strong, confident parent and staff connection, enabling us to work together to ensure the best education possible for pupils.
What was the key ingredient in your recipe for success?
Our guiding element was our new school vision: ‘Learning Together in Love”. This vision underpins our work across the school and encourages staff and pupils to contribute to a supportive school culture. Many staff, families and pupils were feeling somewhat disconnected and demoralised following the initial Ofsted rating. So, our vision was designed to strengthen and nurture our connection to the community and uplift spirits in line with our shared Christian values. Not only has this vision had a positive impact on pupils, drawing many of them out of their shells and helping them bloom into kind individuals, but it also enabled many teachers to build the confidence to flourish too. Walking around school, you see people who are nurtured. Interactions between pupils and staff are clearly strong and based in love and staff are confident to lead in-house training to drive their subject areas.
You mention offering support, who supported you?
What were the challenges you faced at the start of this journey and how did you approach them?
Shipley is a close-knit community so many families and staff had a strong affiliation with the previous leadership team. Therefore, my first goal was to build my relationship with the community to gain their trust and support. Achieving this would help further my plans for transformative change, as well as inform my strategy, as it was important to incorporate the needs of our community. My Deputy Headteacher, who started at Shipley at the same time, and I conducted lots of outreach to increase our visibility with families. We spent every morning and afternoon at the school gate, talking with parents, carers and pupils, showing that we were a strong team and wanted to hear their thoughts. We fostered an ongoing open-door policy, inviting families to come to us with questions or ideas and hosted frequent coffee mornings to fully understand their needs and see how we could help. The school had recently seen some other changes in staff and leadership, so it was vital, in our first steps, to develop a stable environment and collaborative culture. We worked with the new and existing staff to get to know each other, spending time learning about their families and interests, injecting fun and humour into the daily interactions, and building trust so they felt comfortable in their roles and with us. We also extended the open-door policy to staff, inviting them to share thoughts or concerns and established a forum for them to suggest ways of working and have ownership of initiatives they wanted to drive forward, such as clubs or curriculum changes. We wanted them to know we have faith in them. Additionally, we offered hands-on support within the classroom for any staff who needed it, demonstrating that help was always available.
May 2024
I benefited greatly from the support of the central Trust team, who were instrumental in helping me drive forward school improvement and empowering me as a leader.
The interim leadership team made up of Trust leaders stayed at the school during my transition to quickly bring me up to speed. I still benefit from frequent visits from the Trust team who are always happy to lend additional hands-on support as needed. I also know that if I want to sound out new ideas or seek support, I can speak to any members of the Trust team including Carol, our CEO, and Craig, our Primary Director, who always make the time and provide excellent advice. It’s this collaboration and support that enables headteachers to thrive.
What advice would you have for other headteachers starting on a school improvement journey?
My biggest piece of advice is to invest in your staff. Teachers, middle leaders and support staff are the lifeblood of a school and crucial figures in championing transformative change. Not only do you need them on your side to develop and embed provisions, but it is also important to nurture and build their abilities and knowledge to drive their career progression.
One big mission we undertook was putting a robust CPD provision in place to train all our teachers to be subject leaders. Given we are a small school, it’s important that every teacher is upskilled in their subject. We drew expertise from other Trust schools to design the training and have continually built upon it each session. The expanded expertise is now filtered back into other schools through our trust-wide CPD offer. Another important piece of the puzzle for our school was providing training and development to staff at all levels, from apprentices through to leadership. Our goal was to cultivate talented individuals from the very first day of their career, building them up to help them transition into permanent roles. This, in turn, ensures pupils receive high quality teaching and pastoral care at every stage of their primary education. More widely, I also advise taking every opportunity to deepen your knowledge of your community. At Shipley, many of our pupils come from disadvantaged backgrounds which can reduce their access to enrichment opportunities. I noticed some children only had regular access to home, school and church, and didn’t have many chances to gain experiences beyond that. To address this, we implemented an expansive programme of enrichment, including residential trips, visits, visitors and work with art and music specialists, to provide developmental experiences. Overall, the improvement journey has taught me that no matter what a school is facing, by working together there is always a positive way forward if you focus on what matters most – respect, understanding and the love we have for each other, our communities and the world.
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