The role of a headteacher requires you to wear many hats. Leading a school on an improvement journey puts each of these hats to use and necessitates a deep understanding of your school community paired with a strong support system, both internally through staff and trust support and externally through families and community members.
Each school and its community is unique which means its improvement journey must be tailor-made.
When I took on the role of headteacher at Shipley Primary School, a small Church of England academy, I knew that creating a sustainable improvement model would require drawing on a range of these elements to reach every corner of our school practice to achieve meaningful and sustainable impact.
Joining an ‘inadequate’ school
Shipley became part of the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust in 2018 following an Ofsted judgement of “inadequate”.
My deputy headteacher and I both joined the Shipley team in 2021 and we immediately got to work, building on the school’s existing improvement framework. When we took our posts, we knew another inspection visit was due to take place imminently, so it was crucial to hit the ground running and start implementing changes that would propel the school forward and achieve positive results.
The central trust team was instrumental, especially in the early days, as the interim leadership team made up of trust leaders stayed on at the school during my transition to bring my deputy and I up-to-speed.
Their knowledge and support were invaluable in helping us embed ourselves quickly, understand the school community and get stuck in.
The trust’s experts then continued to visit frequently in the lead-up to our next inspection, lending hands-on support to prepare each area of the school’s framework and strategy. Even now, years after joining the school, this support from the trust team is there and plays a crucial role.
1, A strong guiding vision
I set out to create a strong vision to underpin all school improvement work and encourage staff and pupils to contribute to a supportive school culture.
We wanted a vision that would strengthen and nurture our connection to the school community and lift spirits, especially as many families, pupils and staff were feeling disconnected and demoralised following the Ofsted judgement.
Shipley was already a close-knit community with strong values based on Christian principles: respect, thankfulness, forgiveness, resilience, honesty, and inclusivity. I knew our vision should encapsulate this essence.
Our new vision – Learning Together in Love – was designed to create a loving, welcoming and inclusive school culture.
I believe this has helped us have a positive impact on our pupils and staff, building confidence and helping them develop empathy and respect for one another. Interactions are based in love and staff have the confidence to nurture and lead both pupils and fellow colleagues. This has helped to make our school a positive teaching and learning environment.
2, Reaching out to the school community
Shipley is a small, deeply connected community, which meant many families and staff felt a strong affiliation to the previous leadership team. It was therefore crucial to build a foundation of trust and understanding with staff, parents, and carers to ensure they supported our mission and that our school improvement strategy addressed their needs.
We conducted a robust plan of outreach to increase our visibility with families and connect with them directly. We spent each morning and afternoon at the school gates talking with them and listening to their thoughts and concerns.
We wanted to demonstrate our unity as a capable team and our commitment to supporting them. As part of this, we established an open-door policy, encouraging families to approach us with queries or suggestions, and organised regular coffee mornings to listen to their needs and explore ways we could support them.
Deepening our knowledge of the community was vital to our school improvement, allowing us to understand the best ways to support our families. For example, many of our pupils come from disadvantaged backgrounds, which can mean they don’t have regular access to enrichment opportunities. To address this, we implemented an expansive enrichment programme, including residential trips, visits, visitors, and work with art and music specialists to provide crucial developmental experiences.
3, Keeping our faith in the staff
It was essential to form a strong relationship with staff and let them know we have faith in them. There had previously been staff and leadership changes, so we focused on fostering a stable and collaborative environment that could benefit everyone.
Alongside both new and existing staff members, we spent time getting to know each other, learning about their families and interests and bonding. This was aimed at solidifying a foundation of trust which hopefully meant that staff were comfortable in their roles and had confidence in us and our approach.
We invited staff to share any thoughts or concerns they had with us through our open-door policy, as well as a forum where they could make suggestions on ways of working or initiatives they wanted to drive forward.
Where needed, we offered hands-on support in the classroom and made it clear that help was always available, while empowering them to make the changes they could see would help our school.
Building relationships with families and staff early on helped us cement the foundations for our improvement journey. We knew that once we were in a strong place with the community, pupil behaviour and outcomes would be much easier to approach. The insights of families and staff helped to inform our approach and fuel our mission to provide the best education possible for our pupils.
4, Embedding key best practices
Another key step was drawing on the expertise and best practice at other schools within the trust. This included from subject areas and for curriculum-building, as well as strengthening our business plan, and expanding our Ofsted preparation.
Integrating these learnings alongside the good practices already embedded at Shipley helped us stay on track.
We also appointed a business manager and a SENCO – both of whom split their time between us and another school within the trust. This enabled us to draw on their knowledge and practice from the other school and introduce new ideas that would build on our provision.
Sharing them with another school also proved cost-effective, saving money which was redirected towards teaching and learning.
5, Strengthening SEND provision
After the success and positive foundations laid by our shared SENCO, we then appointed a permanent full-time SENCO of our own at Shipley. The SENCO has since been working alongside our whole team to enable Shipley to offer high-quality provision for pupils with SEND despite the challenges presented by the national crisis in SEND funding.
This support and expertise enabled us to develop our SEND curriculum and train staff to work within an adaptive teaching model, which tailors teaching to the individual needs of a pupil and has made a world of difference in behaviours and outcomes.
6, Supporting staff CPD
Investing in staff development is vital to creating meaningful improvement and empowering a school community. Staff are the lifeblood of a school and essential points of contact for pupils and families, meaning they are central to the success of a school.
By nurturing and developing their knowledge and abilities, both their careers and the school will be in a position to thrive. The development of our SENCO is a great example of this.
To support this, we established a robust CPD provision to upskill our teachers, including training them to become subject leaders. We also, drew expertise from other BDAT schools, designed a training programme to equip staff with knowledge and skills to support their work, inclusive of all levels, from apprentices to leadership.
This helps cultivate talent from early career stages, ensuring our pupils receive high-quality teaching and pastoral care and creating a supportive home for our staff family.
7, Celebrating progress
Establishing these initiatives and fostering strong collaboration enabled us to make rapid improvements to the school and its offerings. When Ofsted visited in 2022, we received a “good” rating in every area.
It is important to celebrate achievements such as this to thank the whole school community, mark a new chapter in our history, and support continual improvement.
Now, we serve other trust schools as a capacity giver and best practice example, offering practical support for pupils and families as well as leading a trust-wide training programme for staff and leaders, including year 6 networks and NPQSL delivery. We also share our vision and culture as a guide for others to strengthen community morale.
Our journey to school improvement has shown me that no matter what a school is facing, there is always a positive way forward through hard work, collaboration, and love.
- Gavin Hamilton is headteacher of Shipley CE Primary School in Bradford, part of the Bradford Diocesan Academies Trust.