International Education Leaders' Briefing 2015

On the 18th January, I was honoured to be a speaker at the Microsoft Education Leaders' Briefing; the ELB is a forum for presenting the latest thoughts on the integration of technology and education and they are attended by people from across the globe. We had been invited to participate in this as one of the UK's 6 Global Showcase Schools, identified by Microsoft as being world innovators in the use of technology to change young people's life's for the better.

Below is the text of my presentation:

Good Morning & Thank you. My name is Andy Howard and I have now been teaching for 25 years! An awful lot has changed in that time, but an awful lot has remained the same. I now find myself as Principal of Sandymoor School, one of only 6 UK schools to have been awarded Global Showcase School status by Microsoft for our innovative approach to education and the use of ICT in education.

Sandymoor School is a brand new school; we were founded under the government's Free Schools programme, a mechanism that allowed schools to be set up in response to local need and without the control of local government. An initiative based on the Scandinavian Free School & US Charter School models.  

Three years ago, we opened in temporary cabins, steel boxes bolted together and fitted out with basic services. It did not stop us having strong ambitions for our students and we grew. 18 months ago, work started on a brand new building, where I worked with architects to match our vision and our ambitions. We now have a building that would qualify for the Internet of Things - a smart building … … CO2 measurement & Temperature sensors in all rooms,  lights that dim if it's bright outside, etc.

We are pretty much unique - a brand new school, built entirely from the ground up, metaphorically as well as literally, proposed and founded by 5 local parents, ordinary people, mums and dads who just wanted to make a difference.

There are very few opportunities these days to be involved in the start of something as big, as ambitious, as grand as starting a brand new school! Our founders are still very much involved in the school, all being on the governing body and very actively taking interest in their school. The school sits in a relatively new suburb of the New Town of Runcorn. A twin of Milton Keynes, Runcorn was built after the second world war to provide housing to the bombed out estates of Liverpool. Still growing today, the suburb of Sandymoor is the last growth area for the town. Sandymoor currently has around 900 houses, but is part of the government's house building strategy and is scheduled to grow to over 2,000 homes over the short term. The vast majority of the homes in Sandymoor are classed as medium density, higher status family homes & they are very sought after houses.

To the west of the school, we have, however, housing estates built when volume was the only measure for housing and some of the estates within a mile of the school rank as some of the most deprived communities in the UK.

One of the school's great strengths is our diversity and our school community. We have students from all backgrounds in the school and almost all of them local. Over 70% of our young people live within a mile of the school. In an area of the UK where social mobility is at its worst, we are an example of aspiration, with high standards of academic, social and personal development expected from all our community.

One final piece of our local setting is our proximity to the world-renowned Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre; the home of the Particle Accelerator and still a world leader in scientific innovation.

The founders set a very strong and ambitious vision for the school; to be an 11-18 school, producing intelligent, employable global citizens that demonstrate social competence, a desire for learning and respect for each other and the world around us.

And there is so much in this statement:

In a world where we cannot predict 6 months ahead, we are, as educators, trying to do the impossible. We are having to prepare our young people to do jobs that don’t even exist yet, using technologies that haven't been invented yet, solving problems we don’t even know about yet.

And with technology as it is, we are now living in a global village, with communication around the world virtually instantaneous, news beamed around the world as it happens and workers engaged in collaboration with colleagues in almost any continent. How do we prepare our young for this?

With all of that, and the world they are inheriting from us, they also need to be more socially aware, more tolerant and accepting of others than ever before. Xenophobia and fear is driving a wedge between people and we need to be providing opportunities for our young to learn from our mistakes and build a better future.

Now, I am not a technologist, never have been and never will be. I am an educationalist. Passionate about helping our young to be the best they can be. And I believe that the only way we will be able to do this, in our world, is through engaging fully with technology.

Our ICT strategy has this as its opening statement:

ICT alone will not transform learning, but learning will not be transformed without it.

This is their world, immersed in technology, the world at their fingertips. We need to embrace this world of theirs and engage with them on their territory.

Blended learning, where technology is used, when (& only when) it is better than other means. When it allows us to do things previously unimagined.

Young people, all over the world, are fundamentally no different to how they've always been; shy, uncertain, desperate to be different, individual, determined to grow up before they are ready and ultimately complex, amazing and totally unpredictable.

But they now live out their lives as much, if not more online, in the digital world. They are the digital natives, whilst we are immigrants in this brave new world.

However, just because they are the natives, it does not mean that they will embrace every new initiative, or 'learn more' just because it's delivered using technology. That is the mistake that has been made so many times before, with the results that there are numerous research papers that state that technology does not improve student outcomes.

In fact, they will defend their territory as fiercely as any pack of lions seeing off a rival group. Why on earth would they want to allow into their social world the dull duty of learning without a fight?

And that's why, I think, we at Sandymoor are starting to get it right. By being a brand new school, we have been able to think carefully about everything we have done; imagine it completely anew and ensure that every element of Sandymoor is fit for purpose as a 21st Century School.

We start every planning exercise with a blank sheet of paper and ask the question; what do we want this to look like, in the modern world. We do not automatically assume that the way things have been done before are still fit for purpose. Where they are, we use them, but only after testing them against our vision.

What do we want a 21st century student to do, to be, to experience? How do we help them adapt their skills to make them accept the use of technology in their world?

And that has to influence, in fact shape, the whole infrastructure.

First of all, we are all, now, used to looking up the answer to something at the click of a button, the swipe of a finger. So a teacher is no longer the gatekeeper of knowledge, the expert and deliverer of understanding. It is no longer valid to have the teacher stand at the front of a room, delivering material to students. The whiteboard, let alone the interactive whiteboard, is redundant, because I can look up the answer to a question faster than you can write the question on a board.

At Sandymoor, we have twin projectors at right angles to each other, which project directly onto the wall, painted in an ultra-matt, green-tinged cream, which is, according to research, a much easier surface to read off, without glare from a bright white surface. And the twin projection system means that the learning experience is an all-encompassing, immersive one.

There is no traditional 'front of class', with no teachers' desk, either, which means that the classroom environment has a much more collaborative atmosphere; my teachers are very much more 'Guides on the Side', as opposed to 'Sages on the Stage'.

Getting rid of whiteboards entirely, which in their time replaced the old black chalk board, is a clear sign that we are starting to use technology to completely redefine education, rather than mere modification of old habits.

But we also have to think about what, in fact, the point of school is in the modern world. What place does the teacher have, now? If they are no longer the gatekeeper of knowledge, then they do have to adapt completely to a completely different role, that of guide and mentor, helping the student to find their way, develop their understanding and grow in independence.

The most transformational invention of the last 50 years has to be the internet, the 'Cloud', and it is to the cloud that we have looked to ensure that we are building for the future, ensuring capacity.

Collaboration is key here; working together, in collaborative spaces, we grow and share and experience more than we ever can in isolation.

But we always have to come back to what is most important; the young people we are all doing this for. How do we ensure that everything we do will help them grow and succeed in their future, especially when we can't see what their future looks like?

 By building a structure, in the cloud, using collaborative spaces, we ensure that outcomes are clear and impact is strong. Students work together, with teachers, to learn off each other, learn how to learn and develop the skills for future growth.

The skills they need, adaptability, mental flexibility, and perseverance, are all developed in a curriculum focussed around collaborating in online spaces. Students can bring in their own devices, regardless of make or model. Our wifi is designed around public space capacity, with 1-1 infrastructure being not ambitious enough for us (I, personally, have 4 devices that connect to wifi with me today), so we have a complex wifi network capable of dealing with any device a student could bring in and capacity for over 3,000 separate device connections.

We need to meet students where they are, so one over-riding principle for me is what I call device agnosicity. Any systems we use in school need to be accessible by whatever the student will bring in. For us, Office 365 exemplifies this.

Against popular convention, as I have said, our students have been resistant to embracing this, but for two reasons;

First of all, as I've said before, it is trespassing on their territory. We need to tread carefully, and not assume that they want us in their space. We need to set out our case, let them accept the need first and foremost. We have done this by assuming a very business-like environment. All our students have the same access & expectations on them as my staff. Homework, project deadlines, meetings, etc., are all set with students via calendar invites. We don’t have student planners. Communication between staff & student is via email, with the same expectations for reading and action. There is no skin on our systems - we don't treat them like children; there is no dancing frog or comic sans fonts in sight. . . (Did Facebook create a young-person centric version, with silly characters or simple fonts?)

And then secondly, we expect them to take responsibility, to accept that they are part of the solution, that they have to actively participate rather than just be passive recipients of learning. That is hard work. But it is important, because it’s about behaviour modification, about teaching them to take responsibility, whilst there is a safety blanket around them to ensure they don't get hurt. 

But they are still children and while the social domain is very firmly theirs, we need to help and support them, which means we need to be active in their domain. Tools such as Yammer, in the Office 365 environment, are perfect for this, bringing the social into the workplace.

There is also, however, the flip side of the coin and that is the teachers themselves.

We need to ensure that we don’t forget that there is a behavioural management change required here too. If we are going to truly instigate transformation, we need to support, encourage and if necessary cajole teachers into learning new ways to be as well. There is always a workload increase when something new is implemented, but it is important to ensure that there is a clear pathway to smarter not harder ways of working.

Ultimately, however, it needs a strong vision, clearly focussed, with the modern student at the heart, to ensure that we truly transform education. And it does need transformation, if not revolution, across the world - we are failing so many young people and politicians talk about percentage improvements in test scores, without really recognising that every percentage point that fails is a real student who learns that they are not a success. . .

Technology will not transform learning, but without it learning will not be transformed.

Thank you

All that is necessary for evil to flourish

This phrase is one I have heard so many times, in so many places; when I tried to look up its origin, there are so many different versions of it that it's hard to place it.

 

And no wonder why - it is a phrase with so many different interpretations.

If we first of all look to the horror of the awful incidents in Paris, where so many innocent people, going about their ordinary day, found themselves cruelly targeted by cowards (to call them terrorists is too good for them). There were examples of good people not doing nothing and trying to stop the deaths, but in the face, literally, of semi-automatic weapons in the hands of trained people, there is not a lot anyone could have done.

But terrorism spreads, like a disease, when people fear others because they are different. When tolerance is lost, we put our barriers up and look to fight.

Whilst it is still early days, the three people who felt they needed to take up arms and kill cartoonists and shoppers in a supermarket did so because they felt they did not belong in the society where they grew up. And that is at least in part because people turned their backs on them. That is no excuse for what they did and they were turned into killers by cold, manipulative terrorists, who seek to stop our way of being, who feel that our lifestyles are offensive to their God. But if they had people they called friends in their society, would they, could they, have turned their guns on people who looked like their neighbours, their friends?

All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

And of course, there's our response - do we say that, because it happened in France, that it is of no concern of ours? The news is full of the increased risk of similar attacks now in our country, and in every western country. There are, apparently, dozens, if not hundreds, of people in this country alone who feel isolated, excluded, left out, to the pitch where they look elsewhere to be made to feel welcomed, to feel at home. And then they find those people turn them, twist them, and send them back to cause havoc and fear.

Why? Our society is one of the most unequal in the world, with a larger gap between those who 'have' and those who 'have not' wider than almost anywhere.

In our compassionate society, where the principles of looking after those who need help are enshrined in law, it is our duty to not do nothing. Because people need our help.

Bur sometimes fear drives us to do nothing. Sometimes, we turn our back because we don’t want to get involved, or because we don’t want the bother.

All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

But what about closer to home? Here in school? All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

As a school we believe, with a passion, that each and every one of you is important, equally and has a huge potential inside of you and that it is our duty to help you realise this and release your potential. Doing nothing is not an option to the staff who work here, because they all believe that it is an important thing, the most important thing, we do. And they most certainly do not do nothing. . .

What about you? I've spoken time and time again about the importance of you being on board, on the journey. Part of the solution. . .

When we work together, as a community, we help and support each other to be bigger, stronger, better than we ever could be on our own.

And yet time and time again, things go wrong. People fall out. Fights happen. And no-one wants to get involved. Because of the outdated feeling that 'we don't tell'. 'No-one likes a grass'.

It's actually so alien to me, that idea. If there is someone who is making another person's life miserable, and you know it, but don't tell someone? How is that, in any frame of reference, a good idea? It is, in fact, the living example of the phrase I've been quoting:

All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

But being a grass is seen as a bad thing. How about I re-phrase it in another light: Telling someone about something wrong is a moral duty - it is helping to make the world a better place, make the school a safer place. It is rooting out 'evil' & turning the spotlight on it.

Maybe, just maybe, in Paris, if a neighbour or someone had said something about the men who felt they could stop free speech by killing cartoonists, then maybe those men and women, those fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, other people's children would still be alive today, getting on with their lives, maybe sitting having a coffee, planning a treat or holiday.

All that is necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

When you think twice about doing something or saying something when you see something bad going on, think again and do the brave thing, the moral thing, the right thing & make a difference

New Year Resolutions

Like most people, I set myself some resolutions for 2015; one of them was to 'blog' more, starting with my weekly assemblies. So I am aiming to post online my Monday assemblies shortly after the students have heard them... Here is this weeks:

 New Year Resolutions

First of all, welcome back & Happy New Year! I hope the Christmas break has provided you with the chance to rest and spend time with family. New Year is a funny festival, traditionally a time where we reflect on the year gone and make some resolutions for the year ahead. Pretty much the whole world now celebrates this marker on the 1st January, to the point where it's difficult to believe that it could be anything else. But I read this morning that there is a Scottish island, the remotest part of the British Isles, that still celebrates festivals dating back to ancient Norse times and so will celebrate their 'New Year' tomorrow!

And, of course, there's the famous Chinese New Year, an ancient calendar that is based on the Moon's cycles, rather than the Sun. This year, the Chinese will be celebrating their new year (or Spring Festival) on February 19th and we will move from the year of the horse into the year of the goat.

However, whenever it's celebrated, around the world, we mark the turning of the Earth in its continuing cycle around the Sun. Since we last celebrated New Year, we have travelled 586,920,000 miles (From http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1865762 ).

 In our dim and distant past, we would meet together to celebrate the fact that the days are getting longer again and we will not be thrown into continual darkness - the time around early January marks the point at which it is just beginning to be possible to notice the longer days without modern instruments to time things. Rituals would be performed (including at various times, human sacrifice) to celebrate the fact that Spring may be just round the corner again; in our modern times, our rituals include fireworks and standing in groups singing a song in an old Scottish dialect that hardly anyone knows the words to, let along the meaning…

 But at the heart of the festival lies an important theme; that of renewal and hope. New Year stems from a time when hope was hard to come by at this time of year, with no electricity to light lamps or double glazing to keep out the cold winter storms - imagine spending this time of year in a tent or cardboard box, homeless…

 So we celebrate the fact that we have done more than survive the year, that we are different to who we were a year ago. Hopefully better, definitely older.

A lot happens in a year - 12 months ago, we were still firmly in the temporaries (now completely gone, with virtually no trace of us ever being there), and the Foundation 1 students were still in Primary School, looking forward to their SATs. . .

 In the world, we lost a plane in Malaysia, still missing today, with all 239 people on board still missing, Oscar Pistorius (the famous para-olympian, with the nickname of Blade runner), was arrested and convicted of killing his girlfriend, we lost one of the greatest comedians of all time, Robbie Williams, and Ebola became a disease we all suddenly know about, having ravaged through several West African countries, killing well over 8,000 to date.

What about your year? When I think about mine, I can easily think through a huge number of highlights, and feel that it has been a very good year. I hope you can too.

And then, finally, there's the tradition of setting New Year's Resolutions. A whole industry has grown around this, helping us set them and keep them. Most of the New Year's Resolutions set, if you take the headlines in the papers and magazines, focus around getting fitter, slimmer or in other ways more beautiful. And according to studies, well over 90% of resolutions made last week will be forgotten or broken before the end of this one.

Which is a shame, because the habit of setting yourself goals and targets to improve is a very good one. As I have said before, doing nothing, not changing, not growing, is not an option in this modern world - if you stay put, stay with your current ways of doing things and being, the world around you will leave you behind.

So I have set myself some resolutions; some to do with being healthier, and maybe getting a bit fitter this year, and some to grow my mind.
I was interviewed over the holiday by Microsoft & the interview features in a blog, written by the Vice President of Microsoft, responsible for global education, Anthony Salcito, Vice President – Worldwide Education : http://dailyedventures.com/index.php/2014/12/23/andrew-howard/

One of my resolutions is to blog more, including these assemblies, on the school's blog - check it out (if you don't have anything more interesting to do…)!

 When setting any targets, it is important to make them very clear & specific - something you can visualise and see happening. It's also important that they are measurable - just saying to yourself that you will work harder is not a good example, therefore - imagining yourself working harder is not a good, motivating image, and it's not something to be easily measured.

 It also has to be something attainable, or achievable - something you can actually achieve. There is no point aiming to achieve something that is completely out of reach - there's no point, for example, in myself aiming to look like George Clooney by the end of the year. . .

It also has to be relevant - something that is going to be useful to you, and achievable in a specific time frame.

 So, what are your new year's resolutions? Pathways students - you are now well on the road of your examinable courses, with some very important work being completed this term. Foundation 2 students, it's Options time, where we will be asking you to make firm your choices of courses for next year. These are choices that will impact the rest of your lives and need to be taken seriously. Foundation 1 students, this term, this year, sees you completing a huge chunk of the foundation subject material, setting the ground for the rest of your school careers.

Time can never be stopped and our lives move forwards, whether we want it to or not. We grow older and the world changes around us. We have a choice to make; to fight the change and to try to hold back time, or to embrace the fact that the future is ahead of us and move forwards, determined to make a difference.

 What will your New Year's resolutions be? One of our students, Jonathan Follett, has taken up flying & has his first lesson this coming weekend - if he perseveres at this, he will obtain his flying license before he gets to drive a car! Well done Jonathan!!

Moral Purpose

Today (5th December), my three Microsoft Innovative Educator Experts (MIEEs) & I travelled down to London to take part in the launch of the Microsoft Global Showcase Schools programme. Sandymoor School is one of only 6 schools from the whole of the UK that has been recognised by Microsoft as being innovative leaders in the use of ICT as a transformational tool in education. A truly inspiring day to launch what will be an amazing journey. There were about 30 teachers and school leaders representing the 6 schools in Microsoft's London headquarters, where we had the chance to discuss the opportunities the programme offers and experience the Microsoft Showcase Classroom. And while the classroom was inspirational, with it's integrated wireless screens and innovative designs, it was the people there that has to be The highlight. Everyone involved in education has to have some motivation to do it, something that inspires them to get up every day and work hard (in a physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting environment) interacting with young people, but I am always reminded of this most when I attend meetings like today's. There was a strong 'Moral Purpose' from everyone in the room, focused on wanting young people (& not just those we each individually have responsibility for in our schools, but all young people) to extend themselves and grow into the amazing people they have the potential to become. In the leaders break-out session in particular, we were having some passionate discussions about our responsibility, as leaders in education, for providing real, relevant experiences for young people, who are growing up in a world with technology embedded in everything they do. In the busy environment of a modern school, with all the issues that arise on a day to day basis, it can become far too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and the wider purpose, so having the time to spend looking at the horizon and talking about where we want our young people to go and become is a rarity. In this modern world, we have to accept that technology is now truly embedded in everything we do and we do a disservice to our students by not recognising this. It is this recognition that the 6 Showcase Schools present are all aligned with and by working collaboratively, we truly hope to make systemic change for the better. Let the journey begin!

Founders Day 2014

I know it's been a very long time since I last blogged, but I will claim mitigating circumstances - getting the school into our brand new building has taken some considerable effort & focus. I hope I will be forgiven for the lapse.
Anyhow, the first blog of this new year is the Founders' Day speech I gave last week. We were delighted to welcome the Mayor of Halton and our guest of honour was the High Sheriff of Cheshire, Mrs Susan Sellers.

High Sheriff, Mayor, Ladies & Gentlemen, Welcome to Sandymoor School! 

Thank you all for coming tonight, to this, our third Founders’ day, our Second Prize-Giving ceremony & but importantly, or first Founders Day & Prize-Giving in our brand new building! 

Standing here, talking to you clearly marks for the school the end of the beginning. It has been a long journey, but we are now firmly established as a high quality educational establishment, helping to provide a broad and balanced education to the students of Halton & surrounding areas. 

An awful lot has happened in the last 12 months, and not just the obvious! We have, in some ways, changed massively, but in others, we are just the same. One of the things I am so proud of is the ethos and atmosphere that exists in the school. Everyone who visits us comments on just what a nice, relaxing and welcoming environment there is! And every time we send out groups of students on trips, visits or competitions, everyone says what wonderful confident, polite young people Sandymoor Pupils are. 

And for me, that says it all & says what a good job we are doing here. So, to our students, first and foremost, thank you! This evening is a celebration of everything you have achieved in the last 12 months. 

Unfortunately, the nature of events like this means that I can’t really end there, however. There is still a lot to be said and celebrated. 

A warm welcome is extended to our Guest of Honour, High Sheriff of Cheshire, Mrs Susan Sellers - Thank you for attending, handing out our prizes and speaking. I look forward to hearing what you have to say! 

Also, a warm welcome to The Worshipful the Mayor of Halton, Councillor Shaun Osborne and Lady Mayoress. It is nice to have the strong link with the local council, as we firmly believe that we are better together, working in partnership to support the young people of the area. Thank you for taking the time to join us.

I would also like to extend a warm welcome to our other guests - As we are in clear site of the world-renowned Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre, it is good to welcome John Leake; we already have worked closely with the campus in the past & I look forward to stronger links as the school grows and develops. 

It is also good to see friends from Kier, our main contractor and Halliday Meecham, the architects, who together helped design and see to realisation this amazing building. 

And a final warm welcome to Mike Foy,  Sally Pearson & Simon Wearing, from the Education Funding Agency, our paymaster, no less!

But also, a warm welcome is extended to the parents, carers, grandparents, aunties and uncles, brothers, sisters, et al, here with us! Thank you for all the support you have extended to us - we do strive to work in close partnership with you in the journey that is education.

I’ve said it before, but do not tire in saying that I consider myself the luckiest man alive - to lead any school is a huge privilege, but to be responsible for being the founding Principal of Sandymoor is an honour I am humbled by. I am blessed to be supported by an amazing team of professionals, without whom, we would be nothing. Last year, I named each and every one, but we have already grown too large for that! Let me just say to every one of them thank you. I know I ask a lot of all of you, and thank you so much for rising to the challenge. 

As Founders’ Day is a marker, where the school takes a pause and recognises where it stands; an annual ‘health check’, so to speak, I need to provide some detail;

The move into this building sees us grow again, with 177 pupils currently on roll, and 39 staff in total, supporting the education of our young people. 

Last year I said that we are truly comprehensive and we still are. This is one of the strengths of Sandymoor School and something we are proud of. Using government speak for a moment, we have students from every socioeconomic status and it is wonderful to see students from different backgrounds mixing and getting on. 

It is by sharing with and understanding people from different backgrounds to our own that we break down prejudice and grow in tolerance. 

At Sandymoor, we hold our students to high standards of behaviour and personal responsibility & it is wonderful to see them step up to these standards the vast majority of the time.

Whilst it is not the be-all and end-all, there is no doubt that Ofsted hold the measure of school quality and an Ofsted report does say a lot about a school. It will never tell the whole story, but, despite frequently being put down by the profession, Ofsted does have a very rigorous framework for inspecting schools in the country and does provide a very clear headline measure of the quality of a school.

We were pleased to welcome a team from Ofsted into the school back last January and it was very good to have them confirm our views on our school. Ofsted rated Sandymoor School a ‘Good’ school with ‘Outstanding’ Leadership & Management. It was a very intense time, as anyone in education will acknowledge, but hugely important and worthwhile. 

I am pleased, in particular, with a number of key elements about why Sandymoor is special:

From the report: "The quality of teaching is good overall, and some is outstanding.” 

In fact, last year, as part of our formal performance management, 71% of lessons observed were good or better by Ofsted criteria and none were graded inadequate. 

From the report: “The majority of students are meeting or exceeding the ambitious targets set by their teachers.” 

We do, indeed, have very ambitious targets for our students, with the expectation that they will aim to achieve a full level’s progress each year, against the national average last year of less that 60% making ⅔ level’s progress per year. Over ¾ of our students last year made or exceeded our ambitious targets, regardless of background or starting point; a real testament to the dedication of the team. 

From the report: “Behaviour in all areas of the school is very impressive. Students are polite, friendly and supportive of each other’s learning. Students feel safe and secure in school.” 

When high standards are expected of young people, they more often than not rise to the challenge. It is a shame that the league table mentality and accountability frameworks that exist in education today have led to a reduction in expectations and a lowering of standards in an attempt to meet targets, rather than aspiring for the very best. At Sandymoor, we do not believe in lowering the bar to ensure we reach it, but we hold high standards & expectations and strive to exceed them at all times. To paraphrase from one of my favourite films, Now Voyager, Aim for the moon, because even if you miss, you end up amongst the stars!

And our students like coming to school. Last year, we had an impressive 96% attendance overall, putting us one of the very best schools in the country for this. And this is even though we have a longer school day; as I said on our open evening, with our longer school day, a Sandymoor student experiences a month’s worth more of lessons than in any other Secondary School over the course of a year.

A couple quotes from our Foundation 1 (Year 7) pupils, who we are interviewing to ensure they are happy and feel safe in school:

When asked 'are you enjoying Sandymoor School up to now?'

"I really like this school because it's not like stressful and stuff.  All the teachers are nice and no one is mean to anyone and we all get on"

"Its a good school because all the teachers are really nice.  They make it clear on the work you've got to do and some teachers don't do that and then you don't know how to do the work" 

And it’s not just in the academic field; as the school’s ethos states, we aim to excel in Science, Technology, Enterprise & Sport. Although small, we have participated in a number of sporting competitions, both formal and informal. We have some very talented sportsmen & women and they have shown themselves to be aspirational in their achievements, holding their own in Athletics, Football & Netball fixtures over the last few months. We are also working at furthering our community links, with support from local Rugby Union teams, local cricket and hosting the new local Sandymoor young football teams!

One of the key priorities the founders set was that Sandymoor should bring a Fresh Approach to Education; something I have held close to my heart at every planning stage of the school’s growth. We do things differently here, but if and only if we believe the old way of doing it doesn’t work. One small example of this is our school uniform. We have a traditional school uniform for our younger students, as you can see; a simple black & white uniform, with the school crest on the blazer pocket. With newspaper headlines screaming that some schools put burdens on the home by requiring costly and complex uniforms, we have ensured that this is not a barrier for us. But then, when our students make their option choices at the end of Foundation 2 (or Year 8 in national terms), their uniform changes. We feel that making such life-changing decisions as which qualifications to choose to study requires recognition & as such we then change the uniform so our Pathways students have the option of wearing ‘business attire’ and don’t they look incredibly smart too! I have seen so many young people wearing a suit for the first time to go to an interview and looking so uncomfortable; not our students! 

And we provide leadership opportunities for all students, with our Student Leadership team drawn from all year groups. I would now like to ask our Head Boys & Girls, along with the prefects, to come forward as I read out your names, to receive your prefect badge. We require our prefects to be role models and by wearing this badge you are committing to supporting the school in our aspiration and promise to uphold what we stand for, behaving as examples to your peers. 

Being a Fresh Approach to Education, it is also important to ensure that we are not being insular, and inward looking. Whilst we don’t collect badges, we are pleased to be associated with and be active members of the Specialist Schools & Academies Trust (SSAT), the National Association of Able Children in Education (NACE) and The College of Teachers. We are also extremely pleased to say that we have been awarded the Halton Healthy Schools Standard award, in recognition of the efforts to provide healthy food; congratulations to Paul Timms, our Catering Manager, and his team, for the hard work in getting this award.

We are always looking for opportunities to work in partnership with others and are pleased to announce two major collaborations we are just entering into:

First of all, in recognition of our innovative use of technology within the school, we are to be designated as a Microsoft Global Showcase School; one of only seven schools from the whole of the UK, showing that we are a truly global school, at the cutting edge of ICT in education anywhere in the world. 

And secondly, we are working in partnership with Tarporley High School, who have just been awarded Teaching School status; we are becoming an active member of the Cheshire Vale Teaching School Alliance, a group of schools working together with a shared moral purpose to work to improve the learning and achievement of all young people in the region. 

And that's just the beginning; we have further initiatives in the pipeline, developing links with national leaders in sport and the business community.

But also, we are pleased to announce that we are launching our 6th form from this September; there will be further information coming out later, but we are looking to build on our already excellent provision to provide a post-16 offer for students, with strong links to universities in the area. We are calling our 6th form the Sandymoor Gateway, as it symbolises the gateway to the going people's future!

But finally back to what really matters, the pupils here now and their achievements. I said that this evening was a celebration of them and what they have achieved and so it is. After the Chair of Governors has given his report on the last 12 months, we will be asking students to come forward and receive their certificate from the High Sheriff; these awards are well deserved by the students as we do not believe in prizes for everyone. Each award given is for hard work and dedication by the student who receives it and it is justly deserved. There are a number of categories, starting with recognition of students who have developed and shown the skills required to learn, then those have achieved in academic subjects. This is followed by attendance awards, celebrating those students who never missed a single day last year, and those who have received the most positive reward points over the year. 

We do have two new awards this year; the Sandymoor Endeavour Award, a shield we will award annually to the student who, over the year, has improved the most in a wide range of areas over the year - recognising the journey some of our students make in getting them to where they are. And the Sandymoor Achievement Award, awarded to the pupil who has achieved the most across a wide range of subjects over the year. These trophies will have the pupils’ names engraved on them and will be on show in a display case in the foyer. 

All our pupils have made huge improvements over the year, and all need to be congratulated for their journey, but tonight is a recognition of those who stand out - I hope that they will continue to be role models for all the students at Sandymoor School, both those here now and those who will join the school over the coming years.  

Reflections

Sitting at my kitchen table, during half term, I have been reflecting on the past 18 months since we opened and in particular about all the various ‘news’ items about Free Schools over the last few weeks. I do get particularly cross with the way that education in general, but the Free School agenda in particular, has become such a massive political football.

When I talk to parents (& as a parent myself), what every parent wants is the very best possible for their child.  And that can usually be summed up in a couple of simple objectives; they want their child to be happy and educated so that they can be the best they can be.

For me, that is what the Free School agenda is all about. At its heart, it was designed to allow people to set up a new school to fit the needs of a local community. Now, whether that is a highly academic school with Latin on the curriculum, or a Primary School or a school with a faith focus, surely they are addressing a need? There needs to be checks and balances, and accountability, but that holds for all schools.

The thing is, every free school is different and using one to beat all is just ridiculous. I have a student at my school who was shut in a room during break an lunchtimes at another secondary school before coming to us. Why were they punished and excluded from their friends in this way? Because they were being bullied by a group of other students and this was the school’s way to stop this young person from being bullied. Yes, you read that right – punished for being a victim.  Why isn’t that used to berate non-free schools?

Sandymoor was set up by a small group of local parents, who wanted to increase choice and provide a local school for families who were making a choice by moving out of area to find a school they wanted to send their children to. I do not make any exaggerated claims about what we are; we aim to be a local school, for the local community, providing the best possible experience we can for the students in our care, helping them to be the best they can be.

And in that way, like so many others, we are just the same as every other school in the country. We deal with children from every background represented locally, just like the other secondary schools in the area. I want nothing but the very best for the children at my school and I know that I can do that better when I work collaboratively with the local schools and authority. Detractors of Free Schools talk about how they take money away from other local schools; we are funded on the same basis as every academy, with a per pupil funding formula. The only way I am taking money from other local schools is when a child comes to my school rather than another. Again, that is identical to every local school. Except with one exception – in our situation, we have a significant number of students who would have been educated out of authority, so it could be argued that we are actually bringing central government money into the authority. And, with a new school building going up fast, we are also helping to raise the standards of educational establishments in the area. If you trawl through the news archives, you will find allegations that we will drain in excess of £3 million from the council. It is this sort of ridiculous allegation that just makes me furious.

We’ve also been accused of feeding our students fast food from a well-known chain. Again, utter rot! And I know that my Catering Manager is furious about these allegations too. Headlines nationally about how Free Schools need to have greater controls imposed on them about healthy food don’t help. We want our students to be the very best they can be, in a friendly, safe environment. Our food is sources as locally as possible, with our meat, for example, coming from a local butcher’s firm. It is cooked fresh on site, prepared fresh daily and served to the students by our catering manager & assistant. The food is served on china plates (not the ‘prison slop trays’ you see in a number of ‘ordinary’ schools we should, apparently, be more like) and the students are expected to sit and eat their food together, as a social activity. We have cashless catering in place, so our FSM children are not highlighted in any way.

And over 80% of our students have our hot meals. That’s the ‘aspirational’ target Jamie Oliver wants the government to aim for in all schools. If you want to see happy, healthy young people, have a look in our dining hall during lunchtime!

Yes, there are some free schools that have appointed unqualified people into posts, particularly the high profile ones around currently, about head teachers appointed with no qualifications &/or no experience in schools. The last 18 months have been some of the hardest months in my career and I have over 23 years experience in a wide variety of schools around the country, including inner London comprehensives. I have two degrees (my original Physics degree from Imperial College and a Masters in Education) and my head teacher’s qualification, the NPQH. Have they helped me in my role? Most definitely yes, but not necessarily in the obvious ways. Resilience, perseverance and dogged determination have been much more important. I have had to know what I’m doing, but anyone who is a head teacher will appreciate that, every day, things come across your path that you have no direct experience of. You just have to rely on experience and the collaboration of colleagues to make the right calls. I actually feel sorry for those people who were given the responsibility for leading a school, any school, without that background of experience and support. I can only imagine how often they did not sleep with worrying about an issue and how many times they must have cried through frustration or doubt because they did not know what to do.

As for the other staff? Well, my Catering Manager has all the qualifications needed to run our kitchen and my Business & Finance Manager is a qualified accountant. Why wouldn’t I appoint someone who had the right qualifications, if they were the best person for the job? Again, politics gets in the way here – people think they are being helpful by saying that independent schools have unqualified teachers delivering lessons, so what’s the problem … but people see the word ‘independent’ and forget to then see the principle being laid out, which is about the best person for the job. But getting the best person for the job is about recruiting the best people. And that means having a school where teachers want to work at. The last time we recruited for three teaching posts we received over 120 quality applications, from experienced & fully qualified teachers. Why wouldn’t I appoint a qualified teacher in that instance? But just because a teacher is qualified and experienced does not mean that everything will be fine! A quick Google and you will find references to a teacher I had to fire for gross misconduct – this was a highly experienced and qualified teacher, who came with excellent references and was the best person interviewed for the post.

To answer a particularly ridiculous, politically motivated tweet, no, Free Schools don’t have magical recruitment powers. We are just like any other school, trying to pick the best people to deliver the vision we have for our young people.

And the latest thing is that Free Schools need to be told to deliver the national curriculum. . . When I spoke to my brother about this, his reaction was: “But surely you’re delivering it and some?”. (Paraphrased there). Again I say, why wouldn’t I teach the national curriculum? Our students are going to take national exams, whether GCSEs, A-levels, BTECs or whatever they all get re-branded into. Why? Because Sandymoor School leavers will be competing for jobs against school leavers from other schools. Their CVs need to be easily compared to other applicants – when a boss, who went to school decades ago, looks through a pile of application forms, anyone who has qualifications that they don’t understand is much more likely to be added to the pile of rejections on the floor.

For me, the freedoms I have as a leader of a Free School is the ability to deliver the curriculum in a different way, trying to tackle the things that everyone agrees is wrong with our education system. Like, for example, the fact that business leaders say every year that school leavers cannot transfer skills to new situations, or that they lack basic literacy & numeracy skills. Or that, year on year, tens of thousands of 16-year olds are forced to sit exams they know they will fail (& that all the people they trust know they will fail) and just because they happen to be 16.

Sandymoor students will take the exams that will enable them to compete on an even playing field with others, but they will also leave with the skills to help them stand out and be a positive influence wherever they find themselves.

And in that respect, our students are luckier than the school – all I want is a level playing field, where I can get on with the mind-blowingly difficult, but inspirational and hugely rewarding task of leading my school and helping the staff & students be the very best they can be, day in and day out.

Having been through the whole process (I was appointed after the school went into pre-opening phase), I can say that the checks and balances are there, too. I have sat in a panel interview, proving to experts from the DfE that our curriculum was rigorous and would provide the best outcomes for students before we even opened. I have sat with an Ofsted inspector who grilled me on our policies, procedures and curriculum to ensure that we would meet all statutory regulations. Within a few months of opening, we had a ‘monitoring visit’ from the DfE to ensure we were delivering what we promised & have another one next month. And we will be visited by Ofsted for our first full inspection before the end of this school year. We have been checked and monitored and inspected very thoroughly! I welcome this level of monitoring too; we do need to be able to prove ourselves to external experts. But so do all schools. There are bad schools out there. Some will be Free Schools. That is why there is a system of inspections to monitor the quality of education in the country. 

Assembly week 5 - Respect

One of the things I found myself talking about during the open evening and open day was that here at Sandymoor we base a lot of what we do on the concept of respect. And that got me thinking: what do *I* mean by that word? How does it shape what we do?

 

Respect is a positive feeling of esteem for someone, or some actions or ideas held by someone. As in:

 

I really respect Barack Obama.

I really respect the way the Red Cross work in areas of conflict around the world to help those in need.

 

In school, we base everything we do on the starting point that we all, as individuals, respect each other. I know that every member of staff has joined Sandymoor because they want to be part of an organisation built on the founders' original ethos and that they want to do the very best they can to support and help you be the best you can be. I know that there is not a single one of you who would want to hurt another and that you want to be the best you can be.

 

I respect the staff because of this and I respect you all because of this.

 

I also expect you to respect the teachers and other staff who work in school.

 

Respect is not just some idea either. It is shown by actions. So, I respect the staff, for example, by doing everything I can to provide the workplace that allows them to do their job to the best of their ability. And I respect you by making sure that I listen to you and hear your opinions and views.

 

I do have an advantage here, however. Respect for authority is, according to academics, something common to most societies - as your Headteacher, I am given respect by people who don't know me. But I know that this respect will quickly drop away if I am disrespectful.

 

What about you? Another quality of respect is that it is earnt. If you want to be respected, you need to respect others first. Do you do that? Or do you expect to get respect first? You can expect respect, but if you have not been respectful to others, it is unlikely that you will get it.

 

Within Sandymoor, we have a number of students who hold positions of authority and as such should hold your respect. Our prefects carry out important tasks within school and do so with my authority. To be disrespectful to them is to be disrespectful to me. And if you are, then you will suffer the consequences.

 

However, the prefects are, conversely, also representing me when they are performing their duties and if they are disrespectful to other students, then that reflects on me and I will not tolerate that either.

 

We are a community. A family. And we share a set of common values. Respect for the individual, respect for the values of kindness and mutual support and respect for the desire to be the best you can be. When any member of the community breaks these values, they are being disrespectful to all of us and we need to hold them to account. But in a respectful, supportive way, in deference to their right, as an individual to be treated kindly. We can all fall short of these ideals, but if we are a supportive community, we have people around us who work with us and help us get back to being the best we can be.

 

So, how will you ensure that Sandymoor is known as a respectful place? How will you support the prefects in them carrying out their duties? How will you someone who is known to be worthy of respect?