Joining the Harris Federation

A guide for standalone schools and trusts

This is Harris

The

Harris Federation is an education charity led and run by teachers.

Our first school opened in 1990 and there are now 52 primary and secondary Harris academies in London and Essex. We also develop and train thousands of teachers per year from the Harris Federation and beyond.

Much of this prospectus has been written by our frontline teaching and leadership staff, to bring you their perspective on what being part of the Harris Federation means to them.

We hope you enjoy reading it.

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A Proven Track Record

Our pupils are twice as likely to go to Russell Group universities

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Our academies are judged Ofsted ‘outstanding’ at around 3.5 times the national rate

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4 applications for every place available at a Harris academy

9 primaries joined Harris after being judged as failing by Ofsted; today, the majority are ‘outstanding’ and all are at least ‘good’

52 Harris academies, educating 40,000 children and employing 5,000 staff

150+ £5m

60+ £10m

60+ highly-skilled teachers in our central team, available to our academies as a resource to use as they need

150+ Harris pupils, almost all from under-represented backgrounds, have taken up Oxbridge places over the past four years

£5 million extra to spend every year on our pupils’ education, generated by negotiating high quality, but shared and therefore less costly, contracts and services between our academies

£10 million in fundraising over the past three years, invested in ground-breaking initiatives for pupils

You can find a list of our academies and see where they are located by following this link.

Our Story,

…our longest serving staff members as told by…

Harris City Academy Crystal Palace is one of England’s most oversubscribed schools. It was the first school to open in the Federation and is now celebrating more than thirty years of success.

Wonderfully, there are still staff within the academy who were amongst the first to arrive when it first opened in 1990.

These include Science Technician, Richard Scott, who describes how he has seen the academy change and develop over the past thirty years:

Today, Harris City Academy Crystal Palace has a series of ‘outstanding’ Ofsted inspections under its belt and thousands of parents turning up for open events each year. But when it first opened more than thirty years ago, it replaced another school, called Sylvan High School.

Sylvan had a poor reputation in the community with many classrooms half empty and if you would have told the staff then what we know now – that the school would become one of the most successful in the country – they would never have believed it.

It has been amazing to be able to contribute to this and, as the Federation has grown, our school has also helped others on their own journey of improvement. It’s been a great place to work and, however much the school has grown and changed over the years, the staff have always been incredibly friendly and supportive of each other.

Richard Scott, Science Technician

Harris City Academy Crystal Palace

Barbara Sales is a DT Teacher and Looked After Children Coordinator at the academy, where she has worked since 1995. She explains why she has stayed for nearly thirty years:

I have enjoyed the way my role has changed and developed over the years but the best thing about working here is the mutual respect between staff and how everybody buys into our ethos, which is to put children at the centre of everything we do.

Barbara Sales, DT Teacher and Looked After Children Coordinator

Harris City Academy Crystal Palace

…a recently-appointed Headteacher

Working for the Federation is the perfect mix of support and autonomy. I have the freedom to create a school culture and set of values specific to my school, whilst being supported by a network of likeminded Heads to bounce ideas off, share best practice and challenge me to continuously improve.

With the curriculum being such a major focus of all our work, being able to call on such a broad range of experts from the secondary and primary teams means I can offer a curriculum that I know offers challenge and rigour in all subjects. Having the central team support for subject knowledge and CPD means our non-specialist teachers can provide excellent teaching day in day out. We follow the Federation curriculum so we know the sequencing and progression is excellent and high quality planning is in place, meaning my team can spend their planning and preparation time adapting the curriculum to make it bespoke to the needs of our children.

There is always someone on the end of the phone to help me. Whether I am calling my Assistant Director, the Health and Safety team, my finance business partner or the HR team, I know that whoever picks up the phone is working hard for the same outcome as me: the very best possible school for our children to attend. Having experts in different fields to lean on frees up my time to focus on what brings me the most job satisfaction, and that’s ensuring we are providing an outstanding quality of education.

Emma Catley, Headteacher Harris Primary Academy Beckenham Green

Emma Catley is Head at Harris Primary Academy Beckenham Green. She says:

…and a star pupil turned star teacher

Robert Primus was a star pupil at Harris Academy South Norwood; always a passionate historian, it was no surprise to staff when he decided to pursue the subject at university.

We were delighted when he found his way back to Harris after graduating, initially as a teaching assistant. He excelled in his work with SEN students and decided to train with us to become a teacher.

Robert Primus, Teacher

Harris Academy South Norwood

I wanted to make a difference to the lives of young people by sharing my passion for history. I’m stretched and challenged every day but feel fully supported having been a participant on the Federation’s Diverse Leaders Programme, which exists to support teachers from diverse background to achieve career progression.

I have also worked towards an NPQML qualification and am proud to be Head of History at Harris City Academy Crystal Palace, as well as a mentor for trainee and newly qualified teachers. I have loved being able to enrich the History curriculum with the lost pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that I’d picked up in my studies and know that, through great teaching, our school is having an impact on the lives of young people in south London.

Support

The Harris Federation provides the structure and services needed for our schools to amount to more than the sum of their parts.

We are a Federation rather than a chain and the autonomy of our Principals and governing bodies is at the heart of our success.

Harris provides a range of efficient and time-saving support services, but Principals run their schools with autonomy determining the best curriculum and other policies locally to suit the context of their school.

Our vision, from the start, has been to provide the structure and services needed for our schools to amount to more than the sum of their parts, and to free-up our teachers and leaders to focus on one thing and one thing only: the outstanding education of all their pupils.

The support you can expect

From our HQ in East Croydon, we have expert, hands-on teams in finance, estates, IT, HR and recruitment, legal, marketing and, most importantly, educational support services.

The Ockendon School joined the Harris Federation in September 2019, becoming Harris Academy Ockendon. Here, Principal Jo Rainey describes her school’s journey:

I took my school on after a difficult Ofsted inspection and we joined Harris because we needed effective educational support alongside high quality support services. All of this has been extremely useful in helping me to get the school to where I want it to be, transforming education provision for our community. Whether it is educational support we need or assistance with finance or IT, the backup and support available are first class. As a new headteacher, I have benefited from being able to work under the tutelage of an experienced Executive Principal and to be part of a smaller close-knit community of Principals where it is easy to share ideas and draw on support from colleagues.

Jo Rainey, Principal Harris Academy Ockendon

Educational Support at Harris

The Harris Federation employs over 60 subject specialists across primary and secondary, known as our ‘Consultant Team’.

Their job is to create curriculum excellence in every subject in the national curriculum. Schools are able to access full support for every subject to ensure the most effective curriculum intent, implementation and impact.

Here, they describe their roles and impact:

Growing Careers with Harris

Meet…

Genevieve Bent, Assistant Principal Harris Invictus Academy

I joined the Harris Federation as a Newly Qualified Teacher in science, excited at what teaching would have in store for me. Some years later, I am now an Assistant Principal responsible for leading Sixth Form.

Early on in my career with Harris I began to shape my aspirations of having a greater influence on students, not just in my classroom, but beyond. When I became Head of Science I knew I wanted to raise the profile of STEM subjects and careers within my academy.

With the support of my colleagues, we held our first annual STEM fair for students and parents, where students could explore engineering, human biology, paramedic science, biomedical science, and more. We built partnerships between my science department and institutions such as London Southbank University, St George’s Hospital, East Surrey College (Engineering Department) and more, leading to bigger, and better, projects over time. I was awarded a ‘Harris Federation Transforming Lives’ award in 2018 which recognised this work.

My love of STEM and promoting this with our students, some of whom arrive at secondary school with little ‘science capital’ led to me creating a small grassroots organisation, Young Gifted and STEM, which provides Black and minority ethnic students with opportunities to take part in STEM learning and activities outside of school.

Moving up into Assistant Principal for Sixth Form means I am now responsible for the attainment, quality of education, pastoral provision, and so much more. The challenges of leading Key Stage 5 are demanding yet fulfilling.

Being a part of the Harris Federation network has been fundamental to my professional development. During my time I have worked with (and led) amazing and inspirational colleagues, and I am fortunate to have built my career alongside them.

The support and encouragement I have had from those in leadership has allowed me to grow and thrive in my career and continue to raise my own aspirations.

Meet…

Megan Greet, Assistant Principal

Harris Academy Tottenham

Working within the Harris Federation has given me great opportunities to develop as a leader and build a really flexible skill-set and knowledge base. I joined as a lead practitioner and a year later gained promotion to Assistant Principal; here benefitting from outstanding line management as I oversaw data, curriculum and assessment.

My line manager’s experience, candour and role as a “critical friend” was the perfect complement to my formal development through the Harris Teaching Alliance’s NPQSL Programme. This course paralleled my work neatly. The fact that we have this programme in-house is fantastic; it means that your regular school visits and sessions with Harris Principals give authentic insights into every aspect of leadership because there is a genuine desire for collaboration and cross-Federation growth: nobody hides anything within their schools and they are truly open about what successes and challenges there have been in the school’s improvement journey. I don’t think this, or the highly practical element, is something that can be replicated in leadership programmes that draw on leaders from disconnected sites.

I’ve since been fortunate to be supported by Harris to study an MBA in Educational Leadership with UCL, alongside joining the Harris Accelerated Principalship Programme. I’m not yet sure if I want to be a headteacher, but the Harris Federation certainly gives you the chance to find out – as I’ve moved into a new role in my fourth year with Harris as Head of Sixth Form, coming together as leaders from different sites to review key headship duties has been invaluable.

The central team at Harris is a key asset in ensuring that you can hit the ground running in the ever-shifting context demanded by senior leadership roles; whether learning from the central data team or having the chance to host sixth form leaders from the Federation post-16 team, I’ve been able to glean from others’ extensive knowledge at every turn and have not been left worrying “I wonder if this is a good way forward.”

Interview with Our CEO, Sir Dan Moynihan

Describe the vision and values of the Harris Federation

We see the Harris Federation as a system disrupter – whose purpose is to make life fairer for children in and around London so that they are able to get an excellent education and progress into top careers and the very best universities and apprenticeships regardless of parental background, class or ethnicity.

What aspects of the Harris Federation are most important to you and why?

We are highly effective in raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and those from ethnic minorities. We have regularly been mentioned in prestigious educational research reports as being amongst the very highest performers in the country for the achievement of low-income pupils. We are very proud that 150 Harris sixth formers in the last four years have progressed to Oxbridge colleges, including large numbers of ethnic minority pupils as well as large numbers to other Russell Group universities and to top apprenticeships.

What unites all 52 Harris academies? And how do they differ?

The secret of our success is that each academy is different, with its own culture and ethos determined by their leadership teams to suit the local context, but all are united by a determination to constantly improve, to quickly identify and share what works in order to ensure that every pupil is successful regardless of background.

How can a new school joining the Harris Federation expect to be supported?

New schools are welcomed in an established and successful community of schools. We provide a range of efficient, effective but low-cost business services designed to allow academy staff to spend more of their time focusing on pupils and less on administration. Schools are supported with everything from admissions, marketing and PR, finance, HR, sites and buildings, safeguarding, health and safety, legal advice and much more.

The Harris Federation employs over 60 subject specialists across primary and secondary whose job is to create curriculum excellence in every subject in the national curriculum. Schools are able to access full support for every subject to ensure the most effective curriculum intent, implementation and impact.

How are Harris academies funded?

Harris academies are funded in the same way as other state schools except that rather than having budgets arrive via the Local Authorities they come to our academies directly from the Department for Education. Additionally we are successful each year in raising millions of pounds in sponsorship which is used to meet any specific needs our academies have and also to enhance the curriculum and so increase the quality of education that we provide. Finally, through central purchasing by our specialist procurement team we are able to make school budgets stretch further by generating economies of scale and cost savings worth millions of pounds each year, all of which is passed back to Harris academies to improve what is on offer for pupils.

Community

“The introduction of two new Harris Academies in Mitcham and Morden has improved the lives of thousands of my young constituents. Even pupils who were struggling have grown wings and their aspirations have risen beyond all expectations.”

Siobhain McDonagh, MP for Mitcham and Morden

Harris Academy Clapham

“is one of the few schools fortunate enough to provide an onsite counselling service, and not just to children, but to parents and teachers where needed.”

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP for Streatham

“I look back at my school years and say: they were the best years of my life.”

Stormzy, Glastonbury headlining artist and alumnus of Harris Academy South Norwood

“My daughter’s teachers have eked out a passion for history and English and a surprising ability in maths and science. She has developed a flair for music and joined the choir and I have rarely met a teacher as dedicated as her drama teacher.”

Parent at Harris Academy Battersea

@HarrisFed

Tel: 0208 253 7777

Email: info@harrisfederation.org.uk

www.harrisfederation.org.uk