I hope that all our MHS students, families, friends and staff are safe and well.
I planned to send a blog out today as we settle into the new way of working, but I didn’t factor in the bigger step towards a ‘lock-down’ that was announced last night by the Prime Minister. I hope that everyone is ok and not too worried about the weeks ahead.
Although Mr Johnson didn’t mention schools at all, I can confirm that the situation has not changed for us and for students. The expectation is that all students will stay off school apart from in certain circumstances and when absolutely necessary. I would like to thank parents for being so supportive and following the guidance; we are looking after a small number of students and are happy to do so. It is a small thing we can do to support our critical-worker families and of course the national effort. I would like to thank our brilliant staff at this point too; we are not short of people willing and able to keep school going and the combined determination shown by staff in school and working from home has been humbling to watch.
Linked closely to this, we have a desire and a duty to keep the education of all our learners going as best as we can in these uncertain times. We are now fully engaged in setting work for students via Show My Homework (SMHW) and every student should have new work arriving daily. The vast majority of this work does not need submitting back to school, although that may change for learners in Year 10 and for Year 8 Language GCSE. I would urge parents to access the following dropbox as it includes lots of great information. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/2hqoybprlk31ggt/AACia8sC29RJxAHOyFWljSRTa?dl=0. If you cannot resolve SMHW log-in issues using the information on dropbox then please email the network team on Network.Support@marplehall.stockport.sch.uk
Students should also look out for a weekly check-in task on SMHW that asks them to confirm they are online and able to access work. We will use this as the main method of checking up on students and potentially phoning home if we don’t hear back. We also have a plan for supporting our students who normally receive a Free School Meal. If you believe that this is you but have not heard from school by Wednesday 25-3-2020 at midday then please contact Helen.Harris@marplehall.stockport.sch.uk
We are working hard on plans to put work in place for Year 11. We’re looking at providing some work for those who may be going on to A Levels, as well as those who want to keep up with GCSE-level study. More info to follow on this and, of course, on the details of how grades will be awarded this summer.
I’d also recommend you to keep an eye on the school twitter account @MarpleHall. It’s updated regularly with information, and we’d love parents to upload images of the work that students are doing or the plans that families have put in place for structuring the day. Knowing what everyone is up to will help us shape the work going forwards.
Lastly and most importantly a word to the kids. Students, I know that this is a weird situation and the temptation might be to give up…but…DON’T! The world will be ok again at some point, school will re-start and we’ll get back to normal. In the meantime build a routine at home, get up and get dressed, offer to help out your families and schedule in a good few hours of school work. You will feel better, your parents/carers will be happy and the time will go more quickly.
Many thanks again to all in our amazing community.
This year one of the core themes of the staff training sessions on Monday afternoons has been how to improve students’ independent learning skills. It’s a well-known fact that the most successful students develop great study habits and, after a while, need very little encouragement to do some work. They are organised and well prepared, complete their homework on time and have all the equipment needed for lessons. As a school we have designed systems around these things that try to steer as many students as possible down the right path. The majority of our students get this right very and work well in class and at home, although as we know perhaps too large a proportion are happy to do ‘just enough’. This can be an unwanted side effect of all the support that the school offers – perhaps by providing a clear structure for homework, for example, we give the impression that that is all a student needs to do to succeed.
What sets the really successful students apart from the rest is their attitude to what we would call ‘proactive study’. This is the work that students do in their own time, in school or out of it, that they set themselves. Not homework, not revision for a test…but stuff they do because they want to learn and want to succeed. The majority of GCSE candidates get to the point where they start setting themselves some work as the exams approach, but I’d argue that relying on this is much too late. Really successful learners set themselves work from the very start of a course, for example the student who in my current history class decided to turn all her classwork into a set of revision materials as she went along from the very start of Year 10. That’s work she set herself and it’s very effective. Not everyone does this of course. In another school I can well remember speaking to A-Level students who, when I suggested they do some proactive study, looked at me like I had two heads.
Perhaps the problem has been that up to now we’ve never really made it clear that successful students see work in three ways, shown by the diagram below. So, what we plan to do from now on is to be much more explicit with students that classwork and homework are only 2/3rds of the job, and that real success requires students to set themselves some work too.
Stockport learners lose out on great leadership following an Ofsted inspection
A few months ago I wrote a blog about the new Ofsted framework. You can read it here.
It was inspired by the experience of Bramhall School which, in a recent Ofsted inspection, was given another judgement of ‘Requires Improvement’. I wrote my blog because I felt that this judgement was completely unfair, and a worrying sign for the new Ofsted approach that commenced in September. My concern stemmed from the fact that the judgement seemed completely at odds with what has happened at Bramhall in the past few years. If there is another school that has improved more rapidly or more impressively than Bramhall in that time then I’d like to see it. The staff there, led by Lynne Fox and well supported by Governors, parents, students and the community, have transformed the fortunes of that school so that it is now one of the highest performing schools anywhere in the country. The change has been remarkable and I honestly believed that they deserved ‘Outstanding’ in the inspection – and so I was really shocked to hear about how the judgement of ‘Requires Improvement’ was reached.
Why am I revisiting this subject today? Well, on Tuesday evening this week Lynne announced that she was bringing her retirement forwards as a direct result of the Ofsted inspection. You can read all about it here. Therefore I wanted to raise this issue again, as the last thing we need is for great leaders to be leaving education due to the actions of the very organisation that is tasked with raising standards. Lynne, and other heads like her, are leaving their posts due to the current inspection process which cannot be right. Stockport youngsters will be worse off as a result and that’s a real shame.
We’re always trying to find ways to improve what we do at MHS. Our September 2018 change to Mondays is the biggest investment into staff training that we’ve made in recent years, and I am very conscious that shortening the school day is a controversial issue. If readers wish to know more about that change and the rationale for it, as well as plans to review it this year, then here’s a link to a blog that I wrote a few months ago. http://www.marplehall.stockport.sch.uk/monday-staff-training/14290.html Therefore this blog is about one of the things that we are developing within our extra CPD time. We have for a long time tried to find ways to motivate students, especially GCSE students, to form the right kind of learning habits. We know from both experience and from external research that students with a certain approach to study do better than their peers, and that there are a lot of different factors that determine whether an individual student develops these effective learning habits. Influences from school, home and innate characteristics all play a part. The goal though of course is to help every student develop effective learning habits and that is where ‘The GCSE Mindset’ and VESPA comes in. Last spring, on one of our extended Monday training sessions, we had an inspirational talk from Steve Oakes. Steve along with Martin Griffin is the author of ‘The GCSE Mindset’. It’s a great book that charts the work these two teachers did at their school, in the North West, over several years to identify what it is that make certain GCSE and A Level learners successful. They then unpicked these qualities and habits and formulated ways to support students to develop them, producing a no-nonsense guide that schools can use if they wish. I was impressed with the message, the simplicity of it and the fact that it struck a chord with what we are working on here. That same evening I emailed all staff and asked them if they felt we should explore this approach with our students, and over 95% of colleagues responded with a ‘Yes’. Since then we have worked further with Oakes and Griffin to plan out how we can bring the mindset of ‘VESPA’ to Marple Hall, deliberately focussing on Years 10 and 11. VESPA stands for the five main elements that make up a successful mindset for study. Vison, Effort, Systems, Practice and Attitude. Students who develop a proficient approach in all 5 are more likely to succeed. Since the initial VESPA session in the Spring we have formed a group of staff who are trialling various activities in lessons and form time with Year 10 and Year 11, with a view to launching VESPA as a Key Stage Four focus for the current Year 9s when then reach the end of this year. I see it as a natural progression from the Marple Hall Spirit, which will remain as the foundation of our school ethos. The Spirit will help everyone be the kind of person we want them to be, and then VESPA will help our older students to be the best learners they can be as they gear up to their GCSE exams. Of course, some Year 7 students turn up at school already showing every attribute needed to succeed – the goal is to help everyone else develop the same kind of mindset too. We’ll keep you posted on how this exciting plan unfolds, Best wishes Joe Barker and the VESPA team
Every ‘Open Evening’ in September, and occasionally in between, I share my thoughts on Ofsted. For those of you who are lucky not to have been bored by it before, my general approach to Ofsted is to not think about it. My view as a school leader is that way too many people in way too many schools spend way too long worrying about Ofsted. I don’t blame them though. The accountability culture in schools is so pressured and the stakes are so high that the temptation is to make sure that every decision taken is ‘Ofsted friendly’. But, still, I think it’s a mistake. I didn’t come into this job to satisfy the latest ‘Inspection Framework’ (as the rules of inspections are known), and I find thinking about Ofsted all the time incredibly draining, especially when the ‘rules’ change more times than you can imagine. I’m not saying I don’t care, because I really do. I know what damage a poor inspection report can do to a school and a local community and so my team and I have always made sure we’ve been well prepared for inspections. I also 100% believe that we need Ofsted. Accountability is crucial in any service and especially so in education. Without a shadow of a doubt the advent of proper accountability in state schools has raised the bar in terms of student engagement, development and achievement.
However…what Ofsted chooses to value, and therefore what it chooses to measure, can have unexpected consequences. The old-old focus on students getting five or more A*-C grades led to an unfair focus on the middle ability students, those who might turn a ‘D’ to a ‘C’, at the expense of the less and the more able. The more recent old focus on ‘Progress 8’, measuring the progress students make from Year 6 to Year 11 across their best 8 subjects, with extra weighting for English and Maths, is probably the fairest system we’ve had for measuring school effectiveness. It’s much more inclusive and every student counts, so less tempting for some schools to overlook some students. However, even that system could be manipulated. Some schools at the top of the tree when it came to Progress 8, and therefore most likely to get a ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ judgement from Ofsted, based their success on teaching as narrow a curriculum as possible. Perhaps they ditched the arts, or technology, or PE to focus on the core subjects and the e-bacc. Good for the school maybe, but not always good for the child. Worse still, some schools took the grossly immoral route of removing those students from their roll purely because they would badly damage the progress 8 figure. The government and Ofsted are now starting to crack down on so called ‘off-rolling’ which is very welcome in my book, if a little late.
So, given these issues with the old inspection frameworks I was quite interested to see how a new approach for September 2019 would pan out. The new approach focuses far more on the school’s curriculum and what it intends to deliver to students. We are encouraged to be ambitious and to provide students with the skills and knowledge that they need to follow their dreams in the future (ok, it doesn’t say ‘dreams’). On the face of it this sounds great! Exactly the kind of thing I hope we are providing for students at Marple Hall. However the early reports from schools inspected this term are worrying me, hence the heading of this blog. It appears from early inspections that the quality of education is being judged almost entirely on the curriculum and not at all on the outcomes of learners. It feels like we have swapped one obsession (outcomes) with another (the curriculum), when in reality we needed a common sense mixture of the two. I am all for Ofsted looking more holistically at the experience of learners and I applaud the move away from a results driven inspection framework, but I fear that the pendulum may have swung too far. An ambitious curriculum is good….but if students don’t achieve anything of weight, such as recognised qualifications, at the end of it then where will that leave them for the future? Equally, excellent outcomes that are changing the life chances of young people should not be overlooked during inspections just because the school cannot/does not offer one subject or another for long enough. This appears to be happening and it worries me. Not for MHS as I think we are already in a great place in terms of the curriculum, but for education as a whole. We cannot afford for student outcomes to become so minor in the consciousness of leaders and inspectors that students begin to fall behind as a result. As I started off by saying, some school leaders spend way too long worrying way too much about Ofsted and the danger is they will take some curriculum decisions now that they will regret in years to come.
One of my priorities remains trying to secure greater funding for our students. It remains a national scandal that our students – your children – are expected to perform as well in high pressure GCSE exams as their equally able peers in other schools, but to do so with literally millions of pounds less per year spent on their school. As you may know we recently asked parents of students in Years 7-10 for their feedback based on a set of standard ‘Ofsted Parent View’ questions, offering a free text box for people to write comments. We’ve had a large response and we’ll publish the main findings in the Autumn, and whilst the data looks pretty positive there are of course individuals who feel let down in one way or another. I hope that we can address all your concerns in future years.
However…I mention the issue of funding again here as it is one thing that I am not prepared to keep quiet about. One responder to the survey commented that I should ‘Stop bleating about government cuts and politicising teachers jobs – there is no sympathy for teachers in the general population, most of whom think they are overpaid and underworked’. Now, the second part of this statement may or may not be true depending on your point of view…but the first part is only going to make me more determined to explain quite how disadvantaged our learners are compared to similar students elsewhere. My efforts to secure more funding are not for me, they are for the people who really matter in this whole process. So no, I won’t stop bleating about Government cuts…I’ll keep fighting and keep arguing until our students get what they deserve!
This time last year we had just had our very first spark day – a time to showcase creativity in every subject followed by a sports day/music festival/carnival extravaganza on the school field. Last year’s event was special, this year’s was spectacular. We braved the fairly dodgy weather and the whole school came together to enjoy the creative stalls and excellent sporting events on offer. From the tiki bar to scooter racing to glitter make-up and teacher’s face masks, the field was a buzz of activity. A huge number of students took part in the athletics events and the support from others was great to see.
We first put on Spark day to celebrate the arts in school. We’re passionate about developing the ‘whole person’ here at Marple and we’re proud of the fact that our creative arts subjects keep going from strength to strength. To prove our commitment, a couple of years ago we began working on achieving ‘Arstmark Gold’ – a very prestigious national award given only to schools that truly embrace the arts both in and out of the classroom. Last’s year’s spark day was instrumental in Marple Hall being awarded Artsmark Gold Status last month, a fact we celebrated with the Deputy Mayor and Mayoress who came along to the second Spark day in school today. Artsmark is a big deal and I am so proud of our staff and students for making it possible for us to achieve it, and even more so we have been asked to help other schools in the region to follow in our footsteps.
Spark day two was a great way to round off the final half term before enrichment week, just as gaining Artsmark gold was a great way to round of a very successful year for creativity and ‘spark’ at Marple Hall.
Our WomenED lead – Niamh Lavelle – interviews Deputy Head Claire Gregory…
As part of our work on WomenEd, I have had a number of conversations with women about their relationship with their own achievements. Sometimes, when we achieve something great, we can feel like we ‘just got lucky’, or things just managed to fall into place. Instead of this, we want to encourage women to acknowledge that their hard work created the achievement, not just mere luck. That being said, it isn’t easy. While we might be able to identify those achievements to ourselves, talking about them to others can sometimes feel like a much harder task. The idea of writing a ‘blurb’ has come from the book 10% braver.
10% Braver suggests that writing a blurb is a useful exercise in building confidence about talking about your achievements. Because a blurb is written in the third person, it is said that taking this step back makes it a lot easier to talk about your achievements in a positive light. Claire has kindly offered (and I annoyed her for quite a while!) to create a blurb about her achievements, which she can use if in need of a boost! In order to do so, Claire answered some questions about her achievements, which she then used to create her blurb. Hopefully, by leading the way, we can encourage others to speak out about their own achievements. What would your blurb say about you?
1. What would you say was your bravest move as a women in education?
Other than answering these questions for everyone to read you mean?!
I’d say probably going for the Deputy head role in particular a second time. I knew how much I wanted the role and I was clear in my own mind what I had to offer and the difference I believed I could make but I was very aware that some of the decision making people were the same as the previous time. When Joe told me I had got the role, I remember really clearly that rush of emotion and I remember promising him I wouldn’t let him down. I haven’t always got things right and like everyone I make mistakes but I would hope that I’ve kept that promise.
In the short term, it would have been easier to stay as an Assistant head as I enjoyed that role, I just felt strongly that I wanted to contribute more and do more to shape the future of our school. I had to really keep reminding myself that all the emotions I would feel if I didn’t get it would subside and that there was also the option of securing the role. I knew I had to go for it otherwise I would have always regretted it. There is no substitute for experience sometimes and you just have to gain experience, knock backs, feedback etc along the way. Perseverance and resilience are two characteristics I have had to develop but I hope I am a better person and better leader because of this.
2. As a women, do you think you faced any different obstacles to men?
If so, what were they? And how did you overcome them?
If not, what obstacles did you have to overcome on your journey to SLT?
It’s really hard to answer this question as I’ve never been a man so it’s difficult to compare! I think that like a lot of women, in the past, I have taken too much time to consider whether I have been right for a job and vice versa/whether I could do it and almost talked myself out of it before I’ve even filled in an application form. At the same time some of the men on interview with me have been absolutely clear in their own minds that they are absolutely right for the role and have let us all know that this is the case! I think there is a happy medium between these two polar opposites– I can very easily talk myself out of something and sometimes just need to have a word with myself, go for it and understand the world won’t end if it doesn’t work out. Likewise, I’d never want to be that person who is full of my own self- importance and come across as someone who thinks I always know best.
There’s also the obvious answer of taking time out to have a family. Whilst some people say doing so “set me back” with regards to a career, maybe that’s true but I wouldn’t change it. Others say that working full time has meant I’ve missed out on things in Ollie’s life. Both or neither of these things may be true, who knows. The question is whether it matters and I have to say no, for me, it doesn’t. Having a child was our choice and I wanted both a family (albeit a very small one!) and a career, despite many people saying I couldn’t have both. Ollie may be many things but he isn’t an obstacle. Some women choose a family, some choose a career and some sadly don’t have the luxury of choice. I do believe though that any of us can only make the decisions we think are right at the time. I don’t believe there is only one path we should take but that we have various options and opportunities and everything always works out one way or the other in the end. My husband works away a lot and it can be hard to juggle work and home but I love my son, I love my school, I love my imperfect life and so somehow we make it work! There are times when I feel guilty; I can be with my family and my head is in work; likewise, sometimes I’m in work and my head is thinking about what I should be doing with Ollie (particularly when his birthday is the same day as Open Evening!). However, at the end of the day, I think for me personally, I’d find it very hard to be a stay at home mum and because of that, I wouldn’t be a very good one. I support any woman who chooses to do this and think women are our own worst enemies sometimes in not supporting each other and instead criticising the choices other women make. I salute the stay at home mums, the part time working mums, the full time working mums and the women who aren’t mums, whether through choice or circumstance.
3. What is something about you/ Your career that not many people know?
I didn’t get either the Assistant Headship or the Deputy Headship here at Marple at the first time of trying and had to put myself through both processes twice. I am nothing if not persistent!
4. What do you think is your biggest achievement in your career?
That’s a really hard opening question and I wish there was one thing that sprung to mind immediately! It will sound ridiculously cheesy but I am proud to have worked with other colleagues and thousands of young people over the years and I know that together we have changed lives, opened doors and made young people believe in themselves and their abilities. I think that is a huge achievement in itself. My passion for and belief in the potential of young people and my determination to not give up on any of them whilst in our care is something I am proud of.
6. Do you have any regrets?
On a professional level, my biggest regret is that we can’t save all the kids. Inevitably, not all make it all the way through and I hate permanently excluding anyone, knowing the effect that will have on their life chances. Even though by the time we get to that stage I am comfortable that it’s the right thing to do, there is always that sense of regret than we couldn’t unlock the potential that I believe is inside every single young person.
On a more personal level, I have spent far too much time in the past comparing myself unfavourably to others and the people who I work the closest with will say that I have a tendency at times to be overly harsh on myself. I have to regularly tell myself that when we are part of team, each one of us has different skills and talents and we all complement each other, that’s the whole point of being a team. There will always be times when other people have better ideas, respond to situations in a better way and lead people better but I am trying to be kind to myself these days and accept that I know what I’m doing as much as the next person!
6. Have you written your blurb?
Yes, as suggested by the leaders of the Women’s Ed movement, I wrote a blurb as a personal reminder to myself of what motivates me, what I have achieved in my career so far and what my future dreams are. To have some way of reminding ourselves of our own strengths and motivators, to spur us on when we feel inadequate or are having a bad day can be really helpful. As educators, we are all experts in building up confidence and self- esteem in our young people but self- care and being kind to yourself is also important. Modelling the behaviour we want to see in our students is important and we don’t accept self -deprecation from them, nor do we allow them to dwell on their weaknesses without having a plan to address them and without recognising their strengths so a blurb is one way of reminding ourselves that we are strong committed women with a passion and a purpose!
Just under three years ago we decided to try something new with Year 9. Mrs Lawton, Senior Assistant Headteacher, had read reports into the ‘wasted years’ of Key Stage Three. The report said that too many schools saw years 7-9 as little more than a rehearsal for Year 11, that too little attention was given to the first three years of secondary school and that years 7-9 lacked focus.
To combat this we launched the concept of the Key Stage Three graduation. The plan was to challenge students to meet a series of expectations from effort to attendance and from behaviour to extra curricular activities. Students would be tracked across the year and encouraged to build graduation portfolios, which were then monitored and checked by form tutors and the pastoral leaders for the year. Students could then ‘graduate’ at the end of Year 9 with either a pass, merit, distinction or special distinction. All would get a certificate and all would be invited to a celebration event in June. Those graduating at distinction or above would also get the added benefit of graduating from the sanction system – a valued prize indeed!
At the time we had no idea if the concept would work. We didn’t know if students would take to it, and we certainly didn’t know if parents and carers would buy in to the idea of a graduation ceremony. We need not have worried. The first event two years ago was great, last years was similar and last night’s was the best yet. Over 600 people attended what is now without doubt the most popular single event of the year. It is a testament to the hard work of the students that they want to come and celebrate their achievements, a testament to the staff that they give up their time to run such a large event and most of all a testament to the fantastic support we enjoy at Marple from our parents, carers and families.
Being the Headteacher of our school is a real privilege and it is nights like last night where I feel this most strongly. I was humbled to see so many people all together at our school celebrating the best of our young people. The future is bright!
‘Wellbeing in
schools is all about individual choice and work-life balance has no clear
definition as it differs for everyone.’
I read this recently in Andrew Cowley’s ‘The Wellbeing Toolkit’ and I couldn’t agree more. For those of us who stay late at school planning and marking, there are others who are gone by four o’clock but doing just as much work at home. The work-life balance of our colleagues with children (or demanding pets!) will be very different from those of us without. For all of us though, whatever our circumstances, it can be a real challenge to achieve work-home balance.
Schools however, can
do lots of things to support their staff to achieve wellbeing and to feel
positive about their workplace. Reading the ideas in Cowley’s book, we already
do lots of the suggestions he makes. For example, the ‘Shout out to staff’
board; flu jabs; introducing mindfulness; free tea and coffee; end-of-year
get-togethers; food to sustain staff at parents’ evening; reporting made
simpler; kindness initiatives; to name but a few.
Cowley also stresses the importance of relationships in schools, meaning the professional and interpersonal relationships that should be at the core of any wellbeing toolkit. I recently attended a new initiative at my school – Marple Hall – to promote wellbeing through strengthening these relationships and wanted to share with you why I felt it was so successful.
Art teacher, Paul Morin’s ‘Chatty Art’ class last term was a great success. Paul’s aim was to provide a relaxing space for staff to try out creating a piece of Art, but as he said in his email ‘…remember, there’s no pressure – the art element is just an excuse to meet, relax and chat and have a nice end to the day.’ It was brilliant – packed out and a lovely mix staff from both buildings & teachers/LSAs. I spent most of my time chatting to a colleague from the other building to me and we talked about a wide range of topics we would never ordinarily discuss – universities, families, the joys of being certain ages (!), primary vs secondary school experiences etc – the kind of conversation we would never usually have in school. I could see that staff all around the room were engaged in similar conversations and as you can tell by the photos, the Art produced was pretty good too!
It made be realise again just how important relationships are to wellbeing at school and how important it is to make time to develop them.
MrBarkerMHS 