Building character: why we do what we do.
Posted inHuman Edge

Building character: why we do what we do.

The belief in my school centres around developing learning habits. We’ve implemented a strand in our curriculum designed to instil in our pupils a growth mindset philosophy. This means we believe that everybody can learn and succeed with the right attitude. Courage, tenacity and self belief are crucial, we believe, to learning and can be developed by how we recognise and reward success.
Executive leadership: you can’t be in two places at once!
Posted inLeaders

Executive leadership: you can’t be in two places at once!

I remember that my first big decision was the decision I agonized over the most. I found it incredibly difficult to decide where I would physically be at the start of the day on day number one. Which school should I go to first, which set of parents should I speak to first, which pupils would I be there for to say “good morning” to, which staff team would I chat to before the school gates opened? I worried because I was so new to this role – and I was finding for the first time that my kind of leadership (the very personal, the very hands-on, the very visible and the very involved in the fine detail) was not a leadership style that could work when leading a federation of schools.
Improving school partnership…
Posted inEduvators

Improving school partnership…

in my schools we use the partnership word when we talk of engagement, voice, involvement, collaboration and anything else that involves the perspectives and actions of others. If the learners are truly at the heart of what we do as a school, if each SIP objective is linked to impact on pupil learning, if each new idea, initiative or drive is centred around improving outcomes for children then everyone and anyone who can and should be involved does so in partnership.
A different model for the school improvement plan.
Posted inEduvators

A different model for the school improvement plan.

A few years ago I decided to reflect more seriously on the school improvement planning process. I decided to start with a simple question: how do we know what we want to improve? The answer, it seemed to me, was that a very small well of sources informed us: our continuous school self-review and evaluation model (SSRE); data pertaining to standards, attainment and achievement; and what we were told by our partners and stakeholders - teachers, pupils, parents, the community and/or the government.