Byron is a large primary school in the heart of Gillingham. A Victorian building, surrounded by terraced housing. The school has a high percentage of children who have free school meals and SEND. The percentage of pupils who do not speak English as their first language is very high and the stability of the school is very low. The reception classes are fed by 19 feeder nurseries.
In January 2014, a Local Leader of Education and head of Brompton-Westbrook Primary School, a high-performing local school, began working with Byron at the request of the local authority. She worked alongside the then head as executive head of both schools.
This work was planned as the beginning of a partnership between the two schools and brokered because Byron was at risk of a difficult inspection. Brompton-Westbrook has a track record of working collaboratively with other schools and organisations.
Working with Byron was an obvious choice for the leaders. While very different buildings, the two schools have many similarities – high mobility, high SEND, high free school meals, and high numbers of pupils with English as an additional language. Both are main feeders to the local secondary school.
On her second morning in post, Ofsted called. The school was predictably placed into special measures after consecutive years of under-performance and the need for a partnership now turned into the need to be sponsored.
The head retired shortly after and the executive head was set the challenge of leading two schools. She set about the work of up-skilling teaching staff in pedagogy, while at the same time working to understand the budget resources the school had. She took senior leaders from both schools off-site to develop an improvement strategy, embedded in up-skilling staff, collaborative working and improving outcomes.
The strategy set out a week-by-week plan with clear measurable outcomes. I arrived at Easter, seconded from Brompton-Westbrook having previously worked alongside the executive head supporting a number of other local schools in challenging circumstances. This allowed the executive head to split her time between the two schools more evenly.
Literacy
Standards throughout the school were not good enough. One of the first major changes was the introduction of a daily phonics programme. With both senior leaders having seen the impact in other schools, we opted for the Read, Write Inc programme. All teachers and teaching assistants received two days of training at the end of May and the programme began across the school in June.
A teacher was appointed to lead the programme and develop the staff. This teacher was supported on a weekly basis by the programme’s leader at Brompton-Westbrook. Joint cross-school monitoring and training was a key aspect of the initial roll out.
Reading is an essential life-skill. Without being able to read, children would find accessing the rest of the curriculum challenging. The governing body backed this view and released significant funds to train all staff and purchase resources.
The staff team
A restructuring of staff in the summer months brought with it the formation of a new leadership team for 2014/15. The structure in the Foundation Stage promoted a talented class teacher to leader of the phase, with the previous phase leader taking the position of deputy head.
Talented staff exist in every school. It isn’t always necessary to make sweeping changes to staff when a school is placed in special measures. It is often about placing staff in the right role and then giving them the support and freedom to grow.
Growing your own staff is so important. It is also the cheapest way to recruit. It is then akin to a relay race. The incoming leader takes up the baton from their predecessor and pushes still further, supported from behind with words of wisdom and encouragement. The previous Foundation Stage leader is thriving in her role as deputy head and takes great pride in the development of her protégé.
All leaders had an equivalent at Brompton-Westbrook. This meant that collaborative, supportive and challenging work could be carried out across the two schools. Staff meet regularly to share what they have been doing and revel in the opportunity to work with partners. Each school acts as a critical eye for the other and it has been empowering that Byron, the school in special measures, has been able influence its supporting partner too.
Foundation Stage
The new Foundation Stage leader had developed as a class teacher under the leadership of the new deputy head. While inexperienced as a leader, her questioning skills, relationships with children, staff and parents, and vision for the phase of the school, coupled with the support and guidance of senior leaders, ensured that this transition was a success.
She set out a plan for the year and would bring her staff with her every step of the way. A major re-organisation of the indoor learning environment helped to ensure that resources were clear and easy to access for all children.
The decision was also taken as a leadership team to reduce staff workload around assessments in the early years across both schools. This was done successfully by purchasing tablets for each member of staff, enabling them to use a piece of software to make “in the moment” observational notes and judgements. This immediately cut the doubling up of work (whereby quick observations during the day are, that evening, typed up into a formal record) that is all too often the case in the Foundation Stage.
The online system worked to engage parents as well as make things easier for staff. The system is live and parents can not only access the assessments made in school but can add to them too.
Planning was adapted to make sure that every child’s interests were taken into consideration. This sounds obvious, but previously the planning had been based around an interest and, therefore, when that interest leaned towards more girl-centric topics, the boys were less engaged. Maths became a great focus daily and the modelling of shared writing was improved.
An open door policy
The design of the classrooms in this 120-year-old building are such that the three Foundation Stage classrooms are inter-linked by adjoining doors. Opening these up and placing the Foundation Stage leader in the middle room meant that the sharing of good practice and in-the-moment feedback and support became part of the everyday practice.
We have used the analogy of sporting referees many times in relation to staff support and feedback. A football referee monitoring classroom practice would be forever blowing the whistle, stopping the lesson and penalising the teacher for the things which are wrong. A rugby referee on the other-hand would help keep the flow of the lesson, would offer suggestions to move things on in the moment and would do everything possible to be supportive. This has been our approach.
Open-doors, professional discussions in-the-moment and fostering a sense that we are all after the same thing and it is not to catch one another out. When this is the approach, moderation is not scary. It is seen as part of the process of supporting and learning as a team. Throughout the year, judgements are moderated weekly in a team meeting and termly across the two schools.
The school day
Changes to the school day in September 2014, brought the start of the day forward and pushed the end of the day back, enabling the children to finish at 1:15pm on a Friday and attend after-school clubs instead. This had been a key change at Brompton-Westbrook a few years before. As part of directed time, teachers meet until 4pm to jointly plan and assess. This has brought about greater consistency between the classes and means that data is used to identify and plug gaps from the very beginning of the school year.
A timely review
Around Easter this year, we called in a consultant to look at everything the Foundation Stage was doing. The outcomes of this helped us to review the action plan and feed the next one. Then, in June, the end-of-year levels were fully moderated by the local authority. This enhanced confidence in the professional judgements being made. No member of the team is afraid to ask anything. No member of the team is afraid to answer anything.
New arrivals
When you have 75 children arrive in September from 19 different nurseries, this presents a challenge. You cannot wait for them all to arrive to begin the work so we have introduced drop-in sessions. The Foundation Stage leader visits all children in their nursery setting. To reduce the time nurseries spent in transition meetings, these meetings were carried out with both schools in attendance.
All children receive a home visit and we host evening sessions for parents. All of this in the summer months before the children arrive. Our staff know so much about the children before they start at the school – but knowledge breeds a thirst for more and we are already looking at what we can do next summer to improve this still further.
A work in progress
In 2013, 67 per cent of children achieved a good level of development at the end of their reception year. This has risen to 90 per cent in 2015. The best in the authority and all from a school in special measures.
This summer, we have worked closely with a corporate partner. Vanquis Bank’s Active Community programme have funded a £48,000 transformation of our Foundation Stage outdoor learning space. The development of the outdoor space will make such a difference to the sensory aspects of the curriculum.
A school in special measures is always going to have to react quickly, but it is also about a long-term strategy to ensure that what is put in place is appropriate. All too often we see schools come out of special measures just to fall back into it a few years later. This is because the solution was short-sighted. By focusing on getting it right with our youngest children and working in a fully collaborative partnership, we are raising the bar with what can be achieved.
- Jon Carthy is headteacher of Byron Primary School in Gillingham. Brompton-Westbrook converted to an academy in October 2014, forming The Westbrook Trust in the process. Byron Primary will join the trust in December 2015.