Behaviour

Behaviour is, probably, one of the most talked about elements of school life in every community. I think it even trumps discussions about opportunities, academic progress or facilities. Certainly, in school, it takes up significantly more time and staff resource than any other aspect.

And (or should that be but) it is also a minefield for any school. One of the biggest problems is that behaviour is, with limits, a subjective thing. As an example, there are some people who feel that learning can only take place in a classroom if there is quiet work, with the students all getting on with their work whereas other people feel that learning only really happens when students are collaborating and there is chatter and a buzz in the room. There are things that everyone would agree is good / poor behaviour (throwing chairs, swearing at teachers, talking over a teacher,etc...), but so much is rooted in the values each individual brings into school.

That is why schools are so good at helping young people become more tolerant - having to accept that other people have different views than you, and react to things differently to you, is one of the most important aspects of comprehensive education in my mind.

So a lot of school time is taken in managing other people's expectations (& their reaction to others who hold different expectations). For some young people, unfortunately, tolerance and respect are not common experiences and this can lead to a lack of understanding when in school. If you live with tolerance, you become a tolerant person, whereas if you live with hate and fear, you learn to become hateful and fearful. This will always lead to conflict whenever to bring groups of people together.

And it is the school's responsibility to deal with this. All the best educational theories suggest strongly that praise and reward is a much stronger motivator than discipline and fear. The school needs to model the behaviour and attitude we are asking the students to exhibit! Yes, the 'scary' teacher, who gets the students to do their work and we all probably remember from our school days, gets results, but to what end? What behaviour is that teacher exhibiting? All that happens is that the poor behaviour comes out elsewhere (usually in the playground...). And worse, because the student feels it is perfectly ok to behave in an intimidating and threatening way because a teacher does! One of the things I am most proud of about Sandymoor is that the students respect and trust all the staff.

So how do we do it, then? Well, we do it the harder way! In simple terms, we work, at Sandymoor, on the principle of praise in public, reprimand in private. Telling off a student shouldn't be done in front of others - all that does is humiliate the young person being told off. And it isn't just a telling off either. We don't assume that the student who has done something wrong knows that they've done something wrong! More often than not, the 'poor' behaviour is, in fact, behaviour that the young person feels is acceptable within their 'out of school' life.

We take the time to explain why the behaviour was wrong and work with the individuals involved to understand what triggered the behaviour too. Punishments are also explained and are proportionate to the behaviour. We punish poor behaviour, regardless of what led to it, because the young people need to understand that there are consequences to all our actions. As an example, it is wrong to kick another student and whenever we are told that has happened, the person who kicked will be dealt with according to our behaviour policy. But we will also look into why the kick was inflicted in the first place. It could well have been provoked and if so, the person who was kicked will also find themselves having a discussion about their behaviour.

The biggest problem, however, is with 'third parties' - other students who, maybe, only saw part of an incident but have an opinion on what happened. And this account will also be coloured by that individual's personal opinions, history and background and this may well lead to misconceptions and misinterpretations. So we also ensure that we deal with these issues too.

Schools are always going to have incidents where students get into conflict. It's important to deal with each incident individually and on their own merits. And to be consistent in approach at each time to. And that is what is at the heart of our approach.

 

How do we know we're doing things right? (Part 2)

How can we make such a bold claim, then, for our students and how do we know that we can do it?

There is another, potentially more important, measure of how well a school is doing and this is called Progress. As you will know, I have taught in a wide variety of different schools, including highly selective ones. In these schools, they will always achieve significantly closer to 100% on the EBacc measure, and will always achieve 100% on the 5+ A* - C measure, but that is not surprising because they are starting with a very bright group of students.

The absolute minimum progress that Ofsted look for, from every student, is called three levels of progress in five years. I order to understand this, I will give a very brief overview of the (current) national curriculum:

As soon as students start school, in Primary school, they are following the National Curriculum. The idea is that knowledge is hierarchical, so a student can learn something at a certain level, but develop their understanding of that topic at a higher level later on. The National Curriculum states that every topic taught can be accessed at one of 8 levels. So, students move from Primary to Secondary School having shown that they can understand and explain what they have been taught at a certain level. For most students ending Primary School, this will be around level 3, 4 or 5.

One of the problems is that there is no direct link between national curriculum levels and GCSE grades; the National Curriculum levels were only ever designed to measure attainment up to the end of Key Stage 3 (or Year 9). However, a level 8 is often considered to be approximately a grade B at GCSE.

Then there is the problem of monitoring progress over a single school year - 3 levels in 5 years means that students will not always progress a whole level in any given year. So the concept of sub-levels was created. Each full level can be broken down into three sub-levels. So, for example, a level 4c would indicate that a student is only just accessing the material at a level 4, a 4b would indicate a stronger understanding and a level 4a would indicate the strongest level of understanding at level 4. If a student, then, progresses at a rate of 2 sub-levels per year, they will more than progress the minimum required 3 levels in their 5 years.

Every Secondary School gets the Key Stage 2 results from the Primary Schools and so can develop this to monitor student progress. The problem is that these come to schools as whole levels - if we get a student who has, say, a level 4 in English, there is no knowledge as to how secure that knowledge is & the student could have just passed at that level, or only just missed out on the next. This is why most schools then do some form of further testing on entry.

At Sandymoor, we use an internationally acknowledged test, developed by the University of Durham, called MidYIS, to do our further testing. The benefit of this is that, apart from it being recognised as one of the best of its kind of test, it is also a well regarded measure of natural 'potential'. Combining this with the Key Stage 2 data, we build a very strong picture of every individual student's ability to succeed academically. Alongside this, we also screen every student on entry for a wide range of potential learning difficulties.

We then measure progress using a set of national test questions (for those who want to know, this is called 'testbase') which enables us to ensure our judgement of a student's progress is accurate and valid.

On this measure, we have virtually all of our students making 2 sub-levels of progress in just two terms, meaning that our students are on track to significantly exceed the minimum progress requirements!

 

How do we know we're doing things right? (Part 1)

One of the questions I regularly get asked is how do I know that we're doing great things? (& ok, maybe not in those words, but that's how I interpret it!). And I can see where people are coming from. Sandymoor is a brand new school, and so we don't have any exam results or Ofsted inspections for people to look at. However, there are two fundamental flaws in that line of questioning, in my opinion:

First off, exam results and league tables can be manipulated and don't ever tell the whole story. There are many, many ways a school can (& so many do) manipulate their statistics to help massage their exam results and position in league tables. All of them perfectly legal and above board, but not necessarily focused on the individual students. Unfortunately, it is tricky to explain quickly because the exam system and how league tables are calculated are so complex, but here goes ...

If we start with the basics. Schools are judged, for most league tables, in a number of ways, but the simplest is the percentage of students who achieve 5 or more GCSEs at a grade C or above. And this sounds simple enough, but a school looking to get the best on this measure would/could play a joker, by having students sit equivalent qualifications. As an example, a school could get a group of students to sit a BTEC in IT, which is worth the same as 2 GCSEs, which is pretty much entirely gained through a portfolio of work developed over the course. And then if some of the same students sat a similar qualification in, say, Business (also worth 2 GCSEs), they only then have to sit and pass one GCSE exam to have gained the 5+ measure for the school. So a school could, with very little effort, score even 100% on this measure, but have a significant number of students who don't have either a significant range or quality of qualifications.

So a tougher measure is the percentage of students who have 5 or more GCSEs, including English and Maths. This would, at least, ensure that the students are sitting GCSEs in the essential subjects, but could still result in 'filling up' the count with potentially inappropriate qualifications.

Maybe the toughest measure, then, is based around the controversial introduction of the English Baccalaureate (or EBacc for short). Now, this isn't (currently) a separate qualification, but is an indication that a minimum group of qualifications; at least a grade C in English, Maths, the Sciences, History or Geography and a language. Some statistics suggest that as few as 15% of students achieve this measure, although other research has shown that as many as 30% of students in mainstream secondary schools achieve it - a lot depends upon how the school curriculum is devised.

Next time you see a school publicising it's exam results, have a close look at which measure they are using ....

So how will this look at Sandymoor? Well, we are committed to the principal that students will sit exams when they are ready for them, rather than just because they are at a certain point in their school life. We are committing ourselves to ensuring that every student will leave Sandymoor with above a C in their English and Maths GCSEs and ideally at least 6 other equivalent qualifications. Every student will also have the ability to follow a full EBacc set of qualifications, if that is appropriate to them. We have Spanish as part of our compulsory 'Foundation' (the first two years at Sandymoor), and in fact the Foundation curriculum is designed specifically to ensure that every student has the basics required to go on and succeed in all the EBacc exams.

 

And the school starts to prepare for expansion

We really are in an exceptional period of the school's history, with major changes to different aspects happening over the next few weeks. I will be blogging about each change, to keep a record of this time in the school's development.

The first organisation change is a move from two houses to the four we will have from now on as the school grows. The two original houses (Darwin & Einstein) will be supplemented with two more (Roddick & Ennis). The students were told in assembly today which house they were now part of, but before that, I spent some time explaining why we had chosen those people. Here is an extract of the assembly that I gave:

So, we are launching the new houses today. You will all find out which house you are in and get a small 'button badge' to wear to indicate this.

The new houses will have staff in charge of them, but these will be some of the new staff we are appointing over the next few weeks, so in the meantime, Mrs Simpson, Ms Mooney & Mrs Cooper will work with the houses. Diploma points already awarded will be re-distributed so that the new house totals will be displayed showing the four houses in the near future ... historic points will still count, as will negative points too....

But before we announce who's in which house, I thought it would be interesting to look at the four people our houses are named after.

Darwin House is named after Charles Darwin, the author of the book 'On the origin of Species', which first proposed that all living things have common ancestors and that life evolved through a process of Natural Selection. Charles Darwin was born in 1809, in Shropshire. The fifth (of 6) children of Robert (a doctor) and Susannah (housewife). Darwin went to University to follow his father and train to be a doctor, but found the lectures dull, so he studied taxidermy in his free time instead. Getting cross with his son's lack of study, his father sent Charles to a different university to train to be a vicar (as a poor alternative career in those days). However, Charles wasn't that interested in this either and preferred to go riding, shooting and beetle collecting (surprising popular then....). This gave him an interest in geology and through friends the opportunity to join a boat undergoing a trip to chart the coastline of South America came up. The two year journey ended up as five years at sea and Charles' interest in beetles and other animals led to him taking detailed notes about everything he found on the trip. This led to him eventually coming up with his famous theory.He died aged 73. Although he was born and brought up in the upper classes of the time, he was an ordinary person, who followed his passion and ended up doing something truly extra-ordinary.

Einstein House is named after Albert Einstein. Everyone thinks that they know this man, but there is much more to him than the myths. He was born in 1879, in Germany. The son of Hermann, a salesman & engineer and Pauline, a housewife. He left school when he was 15. He was, apparently, at school a very quick, bright young student and only left school when he did because his father's business failed and the family moved to Italy. He did go to school in Italy, but didn't get on with school there, later saying that the 'Spirit of learning and creative thought weer lost in a regime of strict rote learning'. Despite this, at the age of 17, he managed to pass the entry grades required to go to university for a maths and physics teaching diploma. He passed and spent two years looking for a teaching job, but ended up working at the Patent Office as a filing clerk. However, he carried on reading and thinking about Physics and was awarded his PhD in 1904. Visiting America in 1933 with his family, he decided not to return to Germany as Hitler had just risen to power. The rest is well known. Despite his current status as one of the most important scientists of all time, Albert was, quite genuinely, an ordinary person from an ordinary home, who did extra-ordinary things.

Roddick House is named after Dame Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop, Human Rights Activist and Environmental Campaigner. A businesswoman of the Year among many awards, Ms Roddick is an inspiration to many people. She started the Body Shop from her kitchen table, as a way to make an income for herself and her two daughters whilst her husband was away in South America. That was in 1976. 15 years later, there were 700 stores around the country and in less than another 15 years, there were almost 2,000 stores worldwide, serving over 77 million people. 5 years ago, the company was taken over by L'Oreal. She died in 2007, aged 64. An ordinary person who did extra-ordinary things.

Ennis House is named after Jessica Ennis. Called the 'poster girl' of the olympics, Jessica is an ordinary young woman from Sheffield. She was born in 1986 and is only 27 years old. Her Father, originally from Jamaica, is a painter & decorator and her mother is a Social Worker from Derbyshire. Jessica didn't really get into athletics until she was 10 years old & her parents took her to a summer camp in Sheffield. Four years later, she was winning at national competitions. She continued through school and University & has a degree in Psychology whilst competing seriously in competitions.

In 2008, she suffered an injury that took 12 months to heal, resulting in her missing out on the Beijing Olympics, but she got back into training as soon as she could and the rest, as they say, is history. A gold medal in the London Olympics, and a CBE from the Queen for her athletics achievements.

An ordinary person who did (& is doing) extra-ordinary things.

Four ordinary people, from different times in history, who all ended up doing extra-ordinary things. There was nothing about any of them that would have made their teachers at school say that there was someone who would be known throughout the world for what they did. There is nothing stopping any of you here doing extra-ordinary things and being known by hundreds, thousands or even millions of people if you put your mind to it.

When you find out which house you are in, think about the inspiration the person who your house is named after: can you be an inspiration to others in the same way?

Ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things.

Collecting badges

We've had a bit of bother getting the badges we want to issue to students and the story is rapidly approaching a Homer-esk tragi-comedy! Well over a month ago, last term (& last year!) I ordered a set of badges from an online badge supplier (who I will refrain from naming, because we still need to talk to the about missing orders...!). Looking to increase the Student Voice element and to help our students gain experience of being responsible for aspects of school life, we invited applications for student responsibility posts. A Head Girl & Boy, Deputies, Form & House Captains and Prefects. Glittery, enamelled badges were duly ordered to be presented to the successful candidates as soon as possible. A parcel arrived, but damaged & badges were missing. The company were duly informed and promised to send replacements. Time passed and the end of term loomed, with no sign of the replacements. Over the break, a parcel did arrive but it only included badges that had been missed from the original order, not the replacements and still our students don't have their badges. We are hopeful, however, that this will be resolved soon & badges will be handed out, with appropriate hand shakes and clapping of hands in an assembly.

But on a more serious note, thinking about the whole process got me thinking about 'badge collection' in more general terms. You see it everywhere - websites, email footers and letters all with a string of logos along the bottom, saying that we've got this award, or that. We're good at investing in people (whatever that means), or do a certain amount of arty activities, so have an artsmark, and the collecting continues! One email I received the other day had seven different badges along the bottom of the email, shouting that the organisation was good at inclusion, healthy eating, investing in people, etc. . . . . Am I impressed?

Where does this desire to collect badges come from, then? We would probably all agree that from our childhood. Collect stickers from our primary school teacher - 'Can I have a gold star, please, Miss!?'. But where does it end? Should I give out gold stars to my staff when they do things well? Or do I expect that they want to do their best, because doing a good job and the satisfaction gained from doing so is reward in itself? (Although I do believe in saying think you and rewarding excellence. I write personal letters to people thanking them for going the extra mile. The quiet, unpublic thank you.)

The trouble is, there's an element where badge collecting can be harmful and it's the current examination system. We put our young people under enormous stresses, jumping through hoop after hoop in the chase for more and yet more GCSEs. Whilst the press bemoan the dumbing down and whinge about how easy they are to get. But I do think that GCSEs have become little more than badge collecting. What on earth does it show when a young person collects 10, 11 or 12 of them? Seriously, what does it really show? That they have the perseverance to learn an inordinate number of facts and regurgitate these in the appropriate manner in the marathon that is the summer exams. Hour after hour sitting in a intimidating room, either too cold or too hot & if you suffer from hay fever it's even worse.

In 1972, the school leaving age was raised to 16 and O-levels (& CSEs) were the national record of school achievement. A national school leaving certificate, if you want. And less than 7% went on to university. Now, however, the age at which a young person has to stay on in education or training is being raised to 18. And over 45% of young people go on to university.

Maybe GCSEs have outlived their purpose, therefore. They are no longer a leaving certificate, marking the point in a person's life where they leave school. And in a school they are so wasteful of time. Think about this: the current 'standard' model is for a GCSE to be a two year, 6 term course. But the whole of the last term is written off with first revision / cramming / exam practice then the actual exam itself. And there's coursework (or Controlled Assessments), which will easily eat up 4 - 6 weeks of time out of effective learning. That's another 1/2 a term. That amounts to 25% of the total course length spent on demonstrating what you've learnt. A full quarter of the time wasted.

I'm not sure I have the answer, but something has to be done about this. Can we justify wasting so much of our students' precious time? Let alone put them under so much pressure? I am putting the details to our plans for what our post-14 curriculum will look like and, in keeping with everything else we're doing, it will be a fresh approach to education! If we start with the assumption that our students will stay with us to 18, we can look at a 4 or 5 year pathway to higher education, with the compulsory exams diluted in their impact. And that is where we are looking here at Sandymoor.

Reflection on the new year to come

Walking the dogs the other day, chatting about the Christmas holidays about to end & all our children, usually unwilling to agree on anything as a matter of principle, were unanimous about their intense desire not to go back to school. And that got me thinking ...

So, I've been a Headteacher (or Principal, as it's a Free School / Academy) for 'only' a term (not including the 6 months prior to opening), but I have been teaching for over 20 years. And I can say with certainty that I still absolutely love my job. Yes, there are times when it's hard & I feel overwhelmed, but on balance, I really do think I have one of the best jobs in the world. It is such a shame that the vast majority (if not the entirety) of young people under the age of 16 are today bordering on clinical depression thinking about the school run tomorrow.

I've heard and read a lot about the discontinuity that is the difference between a young persons' life outside of school and inside, highlighted by the immediacy of the Xbox, Internet and FaceBook. Watching my children over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed one thing - it's not about the currently popular modern technology-bashing phrase about short time spans! In fact, our two youngest have, at times, spent over 3 hours on task. Ok, it was an Xbox game (Minecraft, so no killing or blowing things up even ....!), but 3 hours, non-stop!! That's not a short attention span. And it's not even just modern technology. Over the break, we've taught the youngest to play backgammon. On a traditional board. And she will play two or three games in a row. Again, there's no short attention span there.

Reading, however, is different. I've just bought the eldest an ereader for Christmas and she's loving it. The youngest, however would, in her own words, rather "wait for the film to come out - so much easier and quicker!". And I don't blame her either. I've never read Les Miserables, but I've seen the stage show a number of times and am so excited about the film about to come out!

But back to school (& I can almost hear the national groans from households around the country). How can I, as a Head, do something to make school somewhere that my students want to be part of & enjoy like I do?

First of all, I would say that the vast majority of my students enjoy school the vast majority of the time, once they are there. In fact, it was lovely last term seeing the students coming in to school - none of them looked like they had to be forced out of bed to get to cool on time & they were not desperate to leave at the end of the school day either. This did not happen by chance. We focused, in the first term, on the personal. Seeing each student as an individual, rather than a herd. Getting to know them and understanding their individual personalities is important. In fact, I would say it's vital.

The other thing is relevance. Being an Academy, we can adapt the curriculum to make it relevant to our students. And we are. Yes, this is hard work, because it has meant that every teacher has been re-writing schemes of work to match the school. I know that I have an amazing team of staff with me, who have worked hard (& will have worked hard over the break) to bring this vision to reality, but it has also been essential. The students know that what they are being taught is relevant to them and has been crafted by teachers who care.

We also don't talk down to them. The environment is one where we encourage the students to see themselves as being in a workplace. This is the starting point of our behaviour policy too; students are held to account for their behaviour and asked to justify their actions in terms of what would be acceptable in the workplace.

And we seek to make the environment even more relevant to them, by engaging other people in our journey. Each student has a member of the local business community as a mentor to them and we bring in opportunities to reflect the students' excitement. This term, for example, we are looking to offer Sign Language lessons as an after school club, acting master-classes by a local, successful actress and links with an organisation that will develop reporting skills in a group of our students as an extra-curricular activity. The Reporters' Academy is a local organisation that has similar values to ours; giving young people real-life experiences of situations and giving them the skills to be successful.

I am excited about welcoming our students back tomorrow morning and while some may well be groaning about coming back to school, I am hopeful that once we get back into things, they will throw themselves into it all as fully as they did last term!

 

School Traditions

Friday's assembly was a special one: naming the first set of Student Responsibilities for Sandymoor:

One of the nice things about being part of a community is the chance to celebrate events and significant dates. In families, birthdays and anniversaries can be important times in the year, where the family gets together to celebrate these milestones. And at the big events, such as weddings, etc, it is a chance for the wider family to get together for a celebration, with members of the community meeting for the first time in a long time.

These events are part of what holds the family together; the joint celebrating of the good times.

And in school communities, it is important to mark specific things as well. That is why we have the birthday celebrations in school, as a community we are celebrating each and every one of our personal milestones. . .

That was why we celebrated the school’s official opening the other week – and from here on in, the first Friday after half term will be a celebration event in the school calendar. We will meet, formally, as a community to celebrate what the past year has held for us and look forward to the coming year.

And traditions are important to communities too. I don’t know about you, but in my family, there was, for example, always a present left under the tree to be opened on Boxing Day (because my parents didn’t want all the excitement to be over on the one day!). And, of course, it’s always important to leave a carrot for Rudolf on Christmas eve ….

The formality of a community’s traditions are part of what helps to define the community. Those who take part in the tradition are a stronger part of that community. And so in a way, Founders’ Day will become a tradition here at Sandymoor. Something that helps us understand who we are as a community.

And today we start another tradition. Student leadership roles. These are posts people have applied for and some people have been disappointed by not getting the post they wanted. We have selected a team of student leaders who will have the opportunity to have a real impact on Sandymoor school, taking responsibility for clear and specific parts of how the school works as well as having an input into how the school grows and develops.

Before I announce the post holders, however, I do want to stress the responsibility that these people will have. Each person I announce now will have to promise to try their hardest to lead by example, to hold the school and the reputation of the school.

It is a huge honour to be given the responsibility, but with that honour comes the serious business. Each and every one of these people will be given specific jobs to perform and they will have to show us that they can do this.

But without any further rambling, I am pleased to appoint the following:

Head Girl:                            Rebecca Edwards

Deputy Head Girl:            Jamie To

Head Boy:                          James Laff

Deputy                               Jack Kirkbride

Form Captains:                 William Webb (Yr07)
                                            Alfie Rowland (Yr08)

House Captains:               Tyler Willcott (Darwin)
                                            Rowan Hobson (Einstein)

Prefects:                            Annie Hilton     
                                            Eleanor Watson
                                            Sophie Betteridge
                                            Georgia Coakley
                                            Aaron Davies
                                            Chantelle Stewart
                                            Sydney Cato
                                            George Stoddart
                                            Daniel Fenelon
                                            Sean Poutney
                                            Connor Whitmore

Charity Prefects:              Nicole Smith & Callum Thornton

Sports Prefects:               TJ Robertson & Rebecca Fenelon

Arts Prefect:                     Jessica Rooney

School Newspaper:        Chris Harrop

Well done to every one of them! I will be meeting with the Head Boy & Girl to discuss the specific roles for the prefects next week, and the Head boy / girl & deputies, form & house captains will form the school council as well.

Another Sandymoor tradition has begun.