As leaders, we can sit back and wait, or we can shape our own landscape
This year I am celebrating my thirty fourth year in the teaching profession and my fourteenth year as a Headteacher. I use the word celebrate deliberately as it is a real privilege to have worked in the schools I have worked in during my career. The one constant during the last thirty four years has been change. At no time has that change been more marked than over the last five years. We have seen changes in education that have totally changed the landscape of schools and on the horizon we can see a complete transformation by 2020 when all schools are expected to be Academies.
We have two choices as leaders. We can sit back and wait for those changes to hit us then react to them or we can be proactive and shape our own landscape, one which enables us to meet the needs of our communities, whilst fulfilling the requirements of us from those bodies we are accountable to.
When I first started teaching it was not unusual for the LA Advisor to come into school to support teachers and subject leaders as well as planning and running training across the locality. Subject Advisors have long been extinct and as LA support teams disappear altogether it is school to school support that will provide the leadership, drive, support and direction. As Heads in Redcar and Cleveland and as a LA we decided we wanted to work together to be proactive and to create the solutions needed to raise achievement in our area. We realised we had to be quite radical and make significant changes to what we did collectively to secure success for individual schools and as a borough. We feel passionately about the role that strong and effective partnerships in our local areas will have in securing that success. Partnership working isn’t easy and can often be frustrating but we need, as Heads, to remember that at the centre of all we do are our children and young people and providing every opportunity for their success at school or college should be what we benchmark all of our partnership agreements against.
Our partnership in Redcar and Cleveland has a long history but we have taken a huge step this year to re-launch it to meet the needs of 21st Century Education. We have a real mix of organisations around the table including maintained schools; Convertor Academies; Academies sponsored by large Academy Chains; Academies sponsored by individual institutions; a FE college; a Sixth Form College; three Special Schools and LA representation. We spent time creating a shared vision, articulating our values and being clear about the aims of the partnership. We looked at data and intelligence to identify what we needed to do to make a difference.
Our priorities are:
Leadership
• To effectively communicate our collective vision, values and ambition within our own organisations and to all stakeholders
• To develop and empower senior leaders and governors to deploy best practice and drive the improvement agenda across schools and colleges in Redcar and Cleveland, leading to:
√ high outcomes for all groups of students
√ in particular raising the achievement of disadvantaged pupils, boys, middle and low attainers at Key Stage 2 so that all make at least expected progress from their starting points
√ closing the gaps in student achievement within and between schools, colleges and Academies
• To develop and empower middle leaders to improve outcomes for pupils and close the gaps in achievement
• To support and challenge the schools and colleges within the partnership to ensure all are graded good or better by Ofsted within three years
Outcomes for Students
• To increase the percentage of Year 11 students achieving A*-C grades in maths by 10% from an agreed baseline in 2015.
• To narrow the gaps year on year in achievement between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students in all year groups until the gap is closed. In 2016 raise the achievement of disadvantaged students as evidenced by closing the gap in the Progress 8 score from the September 2015 prediction.
• To improve the continuity and progression for students at the point of transfer at the age of eleven from primary school and at the age of sixteen from secondary school.
By working together we have set ourselves some challenging targets and have agreed to modify what we do as individual schools to work collectively in a partnership that brings challenge and support in equal measure. So what does it look like in practice? Since September we have:
• Re-launched and rebranded our partnership.
• Shared termly data against a range of indicators providing opportunities for challenge and support through the establishment of our Raising Achievement Board (RAB).
• Set up a system of Peer Reviews to identify best practice and areas for improvement in mathematics across our secondary schools. The reviews are supported by ex HMI Tom Grieveson and carried out alongside subject leaders for mathematics from another school and LA Advisor. This builds capacity for them to continue in the future, as well as giving us a clear picture of the quality provision across R&C. English reviews will begin in the summer term.
• Established a ten week coaching programme with Lilac Sky to support improvements in the teaching of fifty six teachers across the partnership. This is focused on moving staff to good and outstanding with a particular emphasis on planning and delivering lessons to accelerate the progress of disadvantaged students.
• Set up subject support groups for leaders in mathematics, science and English
• Set up a group of Raising Standards Leaders (RSLs) made up of senior leaders from our schools who lead on data and intervention strategies to accelerate progress. This group have accountability for the achievement of shared targets.
• Shared information with elected members and senior leaders within our LA to ensure they have an informed view of how the partnership is working to raise standards. This has resulted in increased confidence in, and tangible support for, our partnership.
The strength of our partnership is in the commitment we have to the children and young people in Redcar and Cleveland. We are a work in progress, we will make mistakes but with the passion and commitment of leaders we have a better chance of providing a consistently good and outstanding standard of education across the borough, giving our students and staff every opportunity to succeed.
Linda Halbert
Principal at Freebrough Academy
Chair of Redcar and Cleveland Education Improvement Partnership