“I’d Rather Boost People Than Be Brutal” – Best Practice In Action At St Mark’s Primary
At St Mark's Primary in Bromley, the wellbeing and professional development of staff is paramount. Whether you're a teaching assistant or senior leader, there are plenty of opportunities to thrive
When Jennifer Richards arrived as the new head of St Mark’s in 2012, there’s no denying that there was a lot of work to do. In the words of Ofsted, the school had been ‘through a period of staffing instability during which standards started to decline rapidly.’ A pretty daunting prospect for a first-time head, it would seem.
‘There had been acting headteachers – deputies who had stepped up within the school’, explains Jennifer. ‘Day-to-day management was working well, but strategy, and really understanding school improvement, was quite difficult for them. They didn’t expect that role and weren’t prepared for it.’
Jennifer didn’t even have a solid leadership team to fall back on during those first few months. ‘I had two teaching deputies – one of whom was on maternity leave and came back part time – so I had to try and bring all my previous experience of being a subject leader and deputy. It was a very steep learning curve,’ she admits.
The tricky task was made somewhat easier due to one important factor: the eagerness of the staff. ‘They were great and responded to everything,’ says Jennifer. ‘They wanted direction. When the chair of governors asked them what sort of leader they would like, they said that they needed someone who could lead school improvement.’ It was always Jennifer’s goal to make her school an attractive place to work. ‘I can remember saying on my application form that I wanted not only the children to want to come to school, but also the staff – for people to want to work here.’
While she understands that there will be a natural pecking order at any school, Jennifer firmly believes that co-operation is key. ‘I don’t like working in a hierarchical structure’, she says. ‘I see us as parts of a jigsaw puzzle. Whether you’re the site supervisor, a teaching assistant or a parent, we cannot be the best unless we all work together.’
1. Everyone a leader
At the core of Jennifer’s beliefs about how a school should be run are two essential values. ‘It has to be about teaching and learning.’ Continuing professional development (CPD) is one of her passions. The CPD plan for the current academic year runs to an impressive 15 pages – and that doesn’t count the informal advice sessions and discussions taking place within classrooms and corridors every day.
How did a staff body coming from a period of instability cope with a barrage of ideas from an enthusiastic new arrival? ‘You can’t do everything at once,’ admits Jennifer. ‘You have to give people time, particularly when you are implementing change quickly. You need to acknowledge that they are really good teachers – that’s really important. If you’re changing things, teachers might feel it’s personal, like they’re not doing their jobs properly.’
But after taking on a school with poor results, Jennifer had a point to prove. ‘The first year I was here, our attainment rose significantly,’ she says. ‘But Ofsted said to me, ‘Now you’ve got to show us that the results you achieved last year are going to continue.’
The first thing that needed to be established, Jennifer explains, was where the children were and what steps the school needed to take to improve. ‘A lot of it was about supporting the teachers. They were good teachers, don’t forget. They just didn’t have that leadership.’
Establishing a senior leadership team from within the school was one of the first priorities. ‘You can’t always bring in people from outside,’ Jennifer says, ‘so you have to look at who you have and spot talent and those that are keen – those who already, in their classroom, have an impact and would be able to share that best practise.’
From the skeleton leadership structure she inherited, Jennifer now heads up a team consisting of a deputy, an assistant deputy, two phase leaders, a SENCo and a business manager. ‘Now, every teacher is a leader,’ she says. And it’s not just the core teaching staff taking on a leadership role either. ‘Our school council is led by our teaching assistants,’ she explains. ‘There are always opportunities for leadership.’
By shunning a hierarchical, top-down model, the middle leadership team has had a big impact on teaching, learning and attainment, in Jennifer’s opinion. ‘Now I step back and it’s driven by them. For me, it’s about acknowledging and valuing what people do, and trying to give them release time so that they can be effective.’
2. Always learning
You might be wondering how the staff fit in all this extra CPD, and where the money comes from to fund it. By being clever, is Jennifer’s response. ‘We have the normal programmes of traditional staff meetings and inset days. It’s all about being creative with your budget and time. If you can get your whole staff to the right level, a certain flexibility comes along with that.’
For instance, St Mark’s is heavily invested in training up its teaching assistants and uses them as cover supervisors to minimise costs. In addition, Jennifer is eager to utilise the unique skills of teaching assistants to free up teacher time. ‘One of our TAs teaches art,’ she says. ‘She’s amazing at it. As a school, you’ve got to look at what your skills are and who is the best person to deliver certain things.’
One of St Mark’s teaching assistants is working towards qualifying as a teacher herself. ‘We’re flexible with her contact time,’ says Jennifer. ‘We’ve put her 15 hours into four days, which means she can go and do the course. While I can’t always say, ‘Yes, we can take that out of our budget’, I will always try and find some way to facilitate learning. Sometimes we can’t, and sometimes it’s not a school priority, but hopefully my staff feel they can at least ask.’
The risk of giving so much training to staff is, of course, the prospect of them progressing in their career at another school, but Jennifer sees it as her job to encourage people to work at their full potential. ‘Eventually they may leave you – that’s just the way it is. You don’t want them to, but I had great support in my career to progress to where I am, so while I understand that, potentially, another employer might benefit from that hard work, while they’re here I’ll still do it.’
St Mark’s is part of the Aquinas Trust, a network of eight primaries and one secondary school. This allows Jennifer to offer her staff CPD on a wider scale. ‘Leaders from each school come together to talk and share best practice,’ she explains. ‘Schools in the trust say what kind of training they can share with others, then other schools sign up.’ Belonging to the trust also makes visiting other schools easy.
‘We’ve been to other trust schools to look at marking and feedback and people have come here to look at maths mastery. Recently the primaries got together and looked at more able students.’ Jennifer has also taken on the role of supporting new headteachers in the group. ‘Because we are a wider trust, we can really work together to look at effective practice. Even some of our schools that are lower attaining can still teach us something.’
Measuring the impact of all of the CPD on offer does have its difficulties. ‘Some things can’t be measured by percentages,’ Jennifer says, ‘but we try and assess it in different ways: progress, attainment, learning walks, pupil voice. Sometimes the impact can simply be measured by if students were more enthusiastic or engaged in the lesson.’
The traditional post-CPD feedback sheet is less effective, in Jennifer’s eyes. ‘I don’t like paperwork for paperwork’s sake. Are people really honest, especially after in-house training? When you’re in a school working side-by-side with people every day, that hard-cut, black-and-white method isn’t as effective. I want to move our mentoring and coaching along and receive feedback that way, rather than someone saying, ‘I don’t think that CPD you delivered was very good’. I’d rather boost people than be brutal.’
Jennifer is also a member of the Teacher Development Trust, a charity founded by teachers that is dedicated to raising awareness of the important of professional development. ‘I’m always learning,’ Jennifer says. ‘I talk about that all the time. It’s important that my staff trust me, but know that I’m still improving. At the moment I’m doing core lesson research with the Teacher Development Trust and am looking to become a lead practitioner in this.’
3. Sport for all
Aside from CPD, another enthusiasm of Jennifer’s is PE. She recently gave a presentation at a NACE conference about long-term athletic development and opportunities for all. ‘I majored in PE when I was training and my husband is a sports scientist,’ she explains. The school is focusing on building character through sport and has recently appointed a specialist PE teacher.
‘While I acknowledge that it’s absolutely right to celebrate winning,’ Jennifer says, ‘actually, it’s the journey that is important. You have to make sure all children get equal playing time. As a school you can’t just play to win and look great.’
Part of the new PE teacher’s role is to create a long-term athletic development plan. ‘We’re instilling something that will keep our children living as long as they can,’ Jennifer explains. ‘I’ve had the privilege of speaking to some elite athletes and they often say that their success is because they were in the right place at the right time. We have to give children the opportunity, because you never know what they might achieve.’ The specialist teacher will also be running extra clubs, CPD for staff and looking at the curriculum. ‘He’ll be checking those windows of opportunity are there, even at the early years stage.’
4. Family ethos
With the physical wellbeing of students a priority, another key area that interests Jennifer is the mental health of her staff and creating an encouraging atmosphere. ‘I’ve worked in quite a few different schools where the head walked in and everybody cringed. That doesn’t work. It’s about being interested in people.’
To that end, she made it her duty when she arrived back in 2012 to meet and greet every member of staff individually. ‘I wanted the chance to talk to them and find out where they were coming from,’ she explains. ‘It’s all about building up relationships at all levels. Last year, three members of staff were quite ill which was very challenging, but nobody would have known we were struggling and the children were not affected in any shape or form. We always have hope in this school – we work together because that way, we can overcome anything. We care about and support each other and have a family ethos.’
If this all sounds too good to be true, Jennifer does admit that it’s not peace and harmony all the time. ‘We’re not perfect. Life is life – you’ll have personal issues and invariably they may come into work and people react in different ways, but ultimately we’re in it together. My staff need to feel secure and that the SLT is there and has got everything under control. I say to my teachers, ‘You just go and do what you do – you are the best person to be in that classroom.”
Jennifer has taken on the role of headteacher consultant for the Aquinas Trust and now leads on issues of wellbeing. ‘We’ve secured a package that means all our staff and their dependants can access counselling and legal advice. Our staff are our biggest commodity and we have to take care of them. If you’re not in the right place, your children aren’t going to be.’
St Mark’s will fund six weeks of cognitive behavioural therapy or counselling for staff, and confidentiality is a big part of the ethos. ‘I need to sign it off in terms of invoices, but will just ask, ‘Is there anything I need to know?’. There are times where issues may impact on that member of staff or children in a detrimental way, and I would need to know that, but apart from that, we respect people’s privacy.’
And it’s not just school employees benefiting from the system. ‘We have trainee councillors who come in for parents,’ Jennifer explains. Parents are also offered after-school maths training with their children and can take part in an ‘art into words’ project run by an external consultant. ‘We do as much as we can to support the whole of our school. You can’t just look at your children or your staff. You’ve got to look at it as a whole body.’
Find out more about the Teacher Development Trust at tdtrust.org.
Pupil voice
Macy
‘The school and the church are really close. We have class friends from the church who come in and help out. Sometimes you might go and read with them. Our class friend is Mrs Hales.’
Arjun
‘We have got a new special PE teacher. I talk to him a lot. Yesterday he took me and the football team to a tournament. He does all types of sports. There are a lot of sports club after and before school.’
Dominic
‘I’m a house captain and this year we’re thinking about charity. We recently did a charity fair. We split up into groups and thought up a stall. Each group had to try and make the most money and whichever house made the most won.’
The school has strong links with the local church and runs a ‘class friends’ scheme. ‘Parishioners are assigned to a class and hopefully see that class the whole way through the school. They start with them in reception and see them grow and develop – it’s just lovely,’ Jennifer explains. ‘They come in as much as they can and do a bit of reading or spend time with the class.’ The school also organises regular trips to the church, although these are not compulsory. ‘We acknowledge those that do not want to take part or go to the church, but it’s just about learning,’ she says.
Georgina
‘Loads of girls applied to be head girl. We were given two weeks to make a two-minute presentation. We had to show that we understood our school values and that we were dedicated and organised. It was up to the children to vote.’
