Two Weeks and Counting

It's been a very busy few weeks, with lots of development in the background (and not just on site)!

From a curriculum point of view, as a body of teachers (& wider staff), we've met a number of times since other schools closed for the summer, working on:

• Curriculum plans
• Assessment processes
• Trips and visits
• IT training &
• Statutory Child Protection Training

Also, plans are shaping up around other aspects, including catering provision, before and after school support and clubs for the students. I'm in the process of sending out packs of information to Sandymoor students and families, with lots of information - if you're a Sandymoor School family and haven't received your pack by the middle of next week, do let me know! I will also be following this up with details of our catering service, menus and how to 'sign up'The week of Monday 20th Aug is a milestone in Sandymoor School's timeline because the buildings (which have been constructed over in Ireland) arrive on site and will be put up ready for work to continue inside. I can only praise the firm, Roan, who have bent over backwards to work with us in the design and planning of the site and in the dedication to ensuring the site is handed over ready to go. It's been refreshing to work with a firm with such strong beliefs in 'doing a good job' (& I must also mention the firm they sub-contracted fixtures and fittings to, British Thornton, who also were keen to work to the tight deadlines and are in fact providing some items free of charge!)

Also, the outer perimeter fence will be installed, ensuring the site is safe and secure from early on. That and the alarm and sophisticated CCTV system that will be installed will ensure that the site is as safe as humanly possible.

The only 'fly' in the ointment has been negativity from a couple aspects. We are, as we always have been, willing to engage in genuine discussion and debate about the school, but when people start to tell blatant lies about the school, it is galling. We will do anything necessary to stop lies and rumours being spread about the school, but to address the key lies being spread:

• We are only employing highly qualified staff, in all aspects of the school. Yes, we could employ unqualified teachers, but why on earth would we, when we had such a high quality field apply? And all Academies can also employ unqualified teachers - are they being challenged?
• We have viable class sizes in both our year 7 & 8 streams. (not the 2 students in year 8 some people have been told....!)
• We are delivering the National Curriculum, and then some! Our year length is the same as all Halton schools, and our school day is significantly longer, so we have time to deliver every aspect of the National Curriculum and enhance it with everything Sandymoor will become known for.
• And finally, there is no flood risk! As part of the school designs (both temporary and permanent), we have had to consider the flood risks and mitigate them. In fact, the drainage infrastructure even on the temporary site will reduce the risk of flooding to the surrounding area.

I'm going to be posting more frequently over the last couple of weeks, as the fine detail of the school takes shape, so watch this space ....! It's an exciting time for Sandymoor, Halton and education in the region and I'm looking forward to leading the school into this exciting future.

Seven weeks and counting

 

So much has happened since the planning permission was granted, it’s been a whirlwind of activity. On a personal note, I don’t need to split myself in half anymore, having celebrated my last week at my old school. No more half a week here, half there, although I still seem to be working 16+ hour long days … I would like to record my thanks to my employers for negotiating with Sandymoor School to release me on secondment for the time they did.

 

One exciting thing early on was the finalising of the tender for all the ICT requirements for Sandymoor; a lot of our fresh approach will rely on high quality ICT and we have selected from a competitive process a company to provide all our requirements. One of the things that impressed me about them was how much they appeared to understand the fact that we want to do everything differently, building processes from scratch to best support our students. Along with this, our ICT Network Manager has been able to be involved and it is also good to see that Chris has the understanding of the Sandymoor ‘way’.

 

 

Last Friday was a big day, however, as we had the first full staff and governors induction day, where everyone (apart from Lucy, our Humanities teacher, as she’s finishing off her school’s term out in Germany) met together for the first time. It was fantastic to see everyone getting on and discussing ideas together! One of the main foci of the event was to plan the school’s contribution to the Sandymoor Village Fair. It was all a bit of a worry, during our Induction event on the Friday, looking out of the windows at Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre’s boardroom as the rain came down, but Saturday came and so did the sun! What a great day that was and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. All the Sandymoor School staff who were able to be there were, in my opinion, splendid and threw themselves into the event with the passion that I saw from all of them during the interview process and since.

 

It was also great to see the site of the Temporary school fenced out, ready for work to commence. Just last Friday, I drove over to Wakefield to meet with the contractors tasked with getting the school ready forus and had a very productive meeting. It was great to hear the commitment from them to the school; they had done their research and read the website (and this blog) to get a feel for the project. It is really good to meet with people who care about the projects they work on and I have absolute faith in Roan’s ability to deliver the school to us. As an example of the level we’ve got to,we were discussing where we wanted carpet, as opposed to vinyl flooring, locations of student lockers, and other, sundry details about the fixtures and fittings.

 

As an aside, this last week, we were also down in London, attending a reception in the House of Lords for Free Schools opening in September, where Michael Gove and Rachel Wolf (from the New Schools Network) praised the hard work of all the project groups to get the schools to where they all were. A good celebration of the Free Schools project and great to be part of it.

 

 

Alongside all that, I am still visiting Sandymoor School’s prospective students in their homes and primary schools, and continue to do so. If you would like me to visit, all you have to do is drop me an email through the school’s website and we will arrange it.

 

And finally, we are putting the finishing touches to our next event, a joint event during the day hosted at the Daresbury Labs, onFriday, July 27^th. A lot of the teachers, including myself, will be there, working with the education team at the labs, to run a cross-curricular event along the theme of Reflections. This is aimed at providing our students the chance to meet and get to know each other, but is also open to every student currently in years 6 and 7 living in the area. There are limited places, however, so booking will be essential.

 

Post planning permission

So it's all systems go - the first signs of construction are on site and the specialist building are, as we speak, being built for us in Ireland. Over the next few weeks, the site will be prepared and the building will be brought over mid August. All the tables, chairs and classroom equipment is being ordered and plans are being finalised for the cutting edge IT resources to support learning in the school. Everything is coming together to ensure that the provision is excellent from day 1. Although we are well under way with plans for the main school, designed with all the most exciting educational plans and theories, the temporary school is designed to provide the best educational experience possible.

It was great to welcome people to the Sandymoor School tents during the Sandymoor Summer Fair, where we had most of the staff on hand to answer questions. The teachers had designed a number of integrated activities to show how the Sandymoor curriculum will work, with subjects working together to enhance the learning experience. Our catering manager was providing free food and answering questions about our commitment to healthy eating. And the governors & I were on hand to answer questions from everyone who visited us. It was great to see young people enjoying the activities and trying on the uniform samples we had, and I think the best testimony to the excitement about the school was the disappointment clearly visible in the faces of a group of 14 year-old girls when they realised that they couldn't join the school because we didn't yet have their year group!

One of the most common questions I had on the day was about the PE provision we are going to provide, so to summarise this:

One aspect of the Sandymoor curriculum that sill make it stand out is the fact that the whole curriculum will be grounded in links to the wider world and this applies to the PE as well as everything else. So, the PE curriculum will endeavour to provide experiences of the sort of sporting and more general physical activities that they are likely to experience when they leave school. There will be a number of modular units to expose the students to different experiences. Modules will include things like Zumba, Martial Arts, Golf and Mountain Biking, to name a few. We will also be using local professional and semi-professional teams to provide exposure to team sports and will provide further options for involvement in team sports through the after school activities.

Dates for the diary:

Friday, 27th July - Sandymoor School & Daresbury Labs joint event. The teachers & members of the Labs education team will lay on a day of activities in the Labs.

Monday, 3rd September - Sandymoor School first day of term.

Thursday, 20th September - Sandymoor Open Evening. Come and see the school in action. Hear about enrollment for 2013/14

Saturday, 29th September - Sandymoor Open Day. For those who couldn't make the evening, or want to hear more about the unique experience that is Sandymoor School.

Planning permission - revisited!

We now have planning permission for the temporary school & plans are in place to ensure the school is ready in plenty of time for September! Below is the presentation I gave to the committee in support of our case:

Good evening, Chair, members of the committee and thank you for this opportunity to talk about Sandymoor School.

20 years ago, when I started teaching, in inner-city comprehensive schools, I developed a passion for young people that has never left me and when the opportunity to be part of a project to develop a brand new school here came up, I knew I had to be part of it.

The vision for Sandymoor is to add to the provision in Halton, working in partnership with the other schools and local community to ensure that every child in the area has the best possible opportunities. And that is what Sandymoor school is about. A local school for local children, in the Sandymoor & Windmill Hill areas. There are too many young people who are educated out of area, with the lack of community cohesion that brings, and the Sandymoor area of Halton is in need of a heart, something to stop the young families moving away.

With over 3,000 new homes planned as part of the core strategy in East Runcorn, and 10,000 new jobs planned in the Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre, Sandymoor School is ideally placed to help maintain and build on the excellent reputation of Halton as a Beacon Council! With the Shadow Education Minister promising to support successful free schools and Lord Adonis supporting them as a Labour initiative originally, there is national support from all elements of government.

In terms of safety & security of the pupils, as Principal, I take that aspect most seriously:- it is a legal truth that the parents of Sandymoor School's pupils place them into my care, in loco parentis, and I have promised them that I will do my utmost to ensure their safety. Both the temporary site and the main build have been planned with security in mind and that extends to the issues of transport. Either myself or my colleagues will be outside the school in the morning and after school to ensure the students are safe around the roads, to assist in students crossing the road and asking cars to move on.

It is worth stressing that this is all around otterburn lane, not the Wharford lane extension, that I understand is in planning from HCA, and has nothing to do to do with the school's application.

In the community centre next door to the temporary site, there is a nursery and pre-school. Every day, over 40 children are delivered there and collected later in the day, almost entirely by car, using the same roads that our pupils and parents will use. The drop-off & collection times are completely different so there will never be children being dropped off or collected at both venues concurrently. In the first year, we will have no more than 45 students, and a number of those will walk or cycle to school, so the traffic impact will, in fact, be less than for the pre-school.

Sandymoor School will do nothing but add to the whole area, from jobs - there are already 9 of us (myself included) who have livelihoods that depend on Sandymoor, and that will only grow - I have requests weekly from all sorts of people looking to work in the school, from secretarial staff, through caretakers and through to teachers wanting to be part of the school's vision. We had over 100 teachers apply to join the school.

And we are committed to being a community school; from the beginning, we will be providing evening classes to the local community, from Spanish Conversation and Digital Photography skills through to basic literacy & numeracy lessons to those who need it.

Once again, thank you.

10 weeks and counting!

In under 10 weeks, we open! Now that's an exciting thought. . . So much has happened and everything is shaping up nicely. Since my last post, we've now finalised all the staff and now have a full compliment of teaching and non teaching staff on board. There was a small hiccup with one appointment, but all that is to be expected. Do look on the school's website for details of the teaching staff. (I'll be getting the non-teaching staff on the site as soon as possible too.)

In the background, there's been a lot of meetings going on to get everything sorted; we're meeting to finalise the IT provider, who will be responsible for ensuring we have all the best equipment and software to support the provision, we've had our 'Readiness to Open Meeting' with the DfE and they are happy with everything we've done. And our pre-opening Ofsted inspection is booked. I am actually looking forward to showing them everything we have in place & showing off Sandymoor. (And as a teacher, I never thought I'd hear myself say that I'm looking forward to seeing Ofsted .....!)

Last weekend, I was down in the South of England at the Sunday Times Festival of Education, taking part in a weekend of exciting and stimulating talks. Lord Adonis, confirming what the shadow education minister said on the television, that a Labour government would not shut down successful free schools, in fact, going further and confirming that the idea was, actually, a rebranding of a Labour idea in the first place. It was also good to hear Rachel Wolf (founder of New Schools Network) taking part in a discussion about the changing needs of education and how free schools fit into that agenda by having the freedom to innovate and provide different experiences.

And talking of NSN, it was good to meet Rachel again last Wednesday, in Manchester and help NSN in showing how free schools provide opportunities for local businesses to get more involved in education. Sandymoor's Business and Enterprise Mentoring scheme attracted a lot of attention.

Then,this week, I've also met with most of the teachers, where we were planning exciting activities to put on as part of Sandymoor School's contribution to the summer fair - do come along and meet us all, this Saturday in the heart of Sandymoor!

So lots going on and very exciting things happening. Everything is nicely on track for opening this September and I am getting so excited now about meeting our students and making Sandymoor School the reality the founders envisaged when they wrote their proposal.

We are still receiving requests to enroll students into both our year 7 & year 8 groups; if you would be interested in finding out more about this, do please get in touch visit the website!

Back to what matters - the students

With the last few staff being recruited over the next couple of weeks, and with the teachers now in place, it’s time to get back to planning and building the student experience. And it’s good to get back to that, in my head, because that is what has always been at the heart of Sandymoor!

One thing that has been occupying a lot of my time over the last few weeks has been a document called the Education Brief. This forms part of what is called the Education Plan for the school and is assessed by both the Department for Education and Ofsted. The Brief goes into the details of the school, in minute detail – the contents page alone runs to 3 pages and the whole document is over 100 pages long. . . In writing it, I have been able to refocus back onto the students and the experience they will receive.

We have decided on the first term’s focus – every topic covered will be related to the concept of ‘Reflection’. In Maths, this will look at the concept of geometry and 3-D shapes, linking to technology, whereas Art will be looking at the concept of reflecting the world through different movements in art. English lessons will be focussed on the concept if reflective writing, biographical / autobiographical, both real and fictional. In science, the concept of reflection and light in general will be the starting point for exploring many aspects of the world and in Humanities, the concept of reflecting our impact on the physical world will be the link. Community engagement will look at three aspects of reflection; locally exploring the issue of different ages’ perceptions on being a local resident, regionally looking at the different perspectives of faith communities and how that reflects on being ‘British’ and internationally, looking at different perspectives of global issues. Within all this, we will also be developing the students’ ability to reflect on their own learning and progress. This is core to the Sandymoor way – the skills for life-long learning at the front of what we do.

One key difference is going to be the integration that takes place – in far too many secondary schools, each subject is treated as a discrete item in the curriculum, in its own box, unaffected by other subjects. As a science teacher, for example, I’ve found myself frustrated by other departments unwilling to change the order in which they teach their subject to make links, and I’m determined that this won’t happen at Sandymoor. Or when secondary schools do claim to run an integrated course, it’s often taught by non-specialists. At Sandymoor, we are developing a curriculum where the subjects are taught by specialists, but in an integrated way, with each element of the curriculum placed in sequence to match other subjects.

For example, the Maths department will be working with Technology to look at geometry and shapes. This will tie in with Art, looking at the use of shapes and colour in compositions, so the Science department will look at light and colour, how we see the world around us. This then leads into the humanities subjects, with our interactions with the world, and so the links grow. These links will also be made explicit with the students too, with time for them to reflect on these links as they work in multi-age groups on projects of their choosing, but tied into the curriculum.

This all takes effort and time, and that is often why schools don’t do it; it is simpler to buy a scheme of work from a publisher, with all the worksheets and student text books all linked together. But that then stops the creativity in linking the subjects together. The text book and bought in scheme takes the priority – “we can’t do that now because it’s not the next chapter in the text book…”.

And all of that is built into Sandymoor; collaboration between departments, creativity in the curriculum and freedom for teachers to teach to the individual needs of the students.

Planning Permission

The planning committee chose to defer making a decision on planning permission due to concerns expressed by elected members about the traffic safety around the site. This was despite a complete recommendation by the council officials and a verbal report that directly addressed the concerns - the committee members wanted a full written report. We completely support and appreciate the committee's concern for the safety and welfare of our students and are grateful that they take their job seriously; it is reassuring to see the concern that the elected members have for our students. We look forward to submitting the reports they have asked in ample time for the next meeting on July 2nd. It is encouraging that they did state their support for schools and they did not question any aspect of the educational provision the site will provide. There was a question raised about the ability of temporary accommodation to provide a full experience to the students, but the replies about the quality of temporary accommodation being excellent and the fact that there is a new build that will replace the temporary site (which will, of course, go through it's own planning process) answered their concern. Whilst disappointed that permission was not granted, it is encouraging that it was not refused and the issues raised were not related to the core purpose of the building, which is to provide outstanding education for the students of Sandymoor and the wider East Runcorn area.

I personally take this to be tacit agreement with the aims of Sandymoor. At present, with deferral to the 2nd July, we are still on schedule to open in time on 3rd September.