Leadership Focus, April 2023 (issue 95)

THE MAGAZINE FOR NAHT MEMBERS

Food for thought

How schools are making sure hungry learners are getting fed

Collective cohesion

NAHT’s upcoming conference celebrates our strength in unity

Action on disability

Members of NAHT’s Disabled Members’ Network open up about their experiences

PAUL GOSLING: NAHT president 2022/23

Conference A time to be together

I hope this issue of Leadership Focus finds you well. If all goes according to plan (and our communications team assures me that it will), this edition should be arriving on your doormat the same week as our Annual Conference, which this year takes place from 28 to 29 April in Telford.

NAHT’s Annual Conference is always a huge highlight for me, but this year feels even more special. We have increased the capacity of the conference and, as a result, are expecting nearly twice as many delegates to attend compared with recent years. This feels apt given the significant growth in our membership numbers, and as the association’s sovereign body, I think it’s imperative that we have as many representatives as possible in attendance to help set our direction and debate the issues that affect us all. The theme of this year’s conference, which you can read more about within the pages of this magazine, is ‘Strength in Mutual Support. Power in Collective Endeavour’, and I think it really speaks to what we’re all about at NAHT, especially at this time. Ask any of our most engaged volunteers what it is they value about their involvement, and I’ll bet good money that their answer will reflect on the support they have received from fellow members during times of challenge and the sense of being part of something important. Nowhere does that resonate more powerfully than at the Annual Conference. So, if you’ve been a member for a while and have never attended our conference, please talk to your local branch

about how you get to come along next year. I’m confident that if you do, you’ll return feeling energised, reinvigorated and with a sense that you’re helping us build something that matters.

Elsewhere in the pages of this magazine, you’ll find a long read exploring the current state of meal provision in schools –specifically the provision of free meals to those pupils that need them. The article is a thoughtprovoking piece touching on issues around equity, practicality and affordability, to name but a few. As ever, with matters such as these, school leaders find themselves in the difficult position of wanting to do more but being constrained by what’s available to them. With proposed changes being discussed in this area, the feature presents us with an opportunity to assess the lie of the land and take in the viewpoints of school leaders and other experts.

On a final note, I’d like to express how pleased I am to see that our incoming president Simon Kidwell has nominated Education Support to be his charity partner

Above:

Paul Gosling for the year. There’s no need for me to highlight to you the stress it is possible to feel as a school leader, and Education Support plays a huge role in supporting school staff in overcoming these challenges. NAHT and Education Support have worked in partnership for a long time, and those of you at last year’s conference will remember the fantastic address given by its CEO, Sinéad Mc Brearty. We’ll be sharing more about Education Support’s work with members over the next year, but if you or a colleague would benefit from the charity’s support now, please remember you can contact its counselling, information and support helpline by calling 0800 917 4055. Let me take this opportunity to wish you all the best with your plans for the remainder of the academic year.

The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Strength in Mutual Support. Power in Collective Endeavour’, and I think it really speaks to what we’re all about at NAHT, especially at this time.

Contents

ASSOCIATION AND EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES

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Editorial strategy board: Stuart Beck, James Bowen, Tim Bowen, Nick Brook, Mark Cornell, Iman Cornwall, Ruth Davies, Laura Doel, Guy Dudley, David Gilmore (chair), Magnus Gorham, Clare Fisher, Steve Iredale, Helena Macormac, Judy Shaw and Paul Whiteman.

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The views herein are not necessarily those of the publisher, the editor or NAHT.

7 Staying strong collectively

We look at Annual Conference and other ways to become an engaged union member.

18 Hungry for change

How schools are going above and beyond to keep children fed despite the spiralling cost and current infrastructure, labour and supply pressures they face.

26 Disabled Members’ Network

An insight into NAHT’s informal group for members who identify as disabled, where they can share, learn from and support each other.

34 The future of qualifications in England

NAHT head of policy (practice and research)

Sarah Hannafin looks at the possible qualification pathways that lie ahead for students and explains why NAHT is calling for a more balanced and varied approach to assessment.

38 Northern Ireland policy update

NAHT Northern Ireland (NI) director Graham Gault highlights the dire funding situation and crumbling special education needs provision in NI and how your union is working hard to bring about positive change.

39 Wales policy update

NAHT Cymru director

Laura Doel provides an update on the work being done in Wales to protect, support and empower NAHT members.

40 Paul Whiteman

A message from the general secretary.

41 Stay protected in retirement

Paula Porter, solicitor and NAHT director of representation and advice, outlines the type of legal support we offer life members.

45 The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)

In the first of a two-part series, NAHT head of advice Kate Atkinson explains the framework and background of the LGPS.

46 Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Neil Todd, a partner in Thompsons Solicitors’ Trade Union Law Group (TULG), discusses the bill.

48 New Heads’ Conference Leading with your head and your heart – the ultimate balancing act.

50 The final word Journalist Susan Young talks to former head teacher turned learning consultant Dave Harris about his mission to change an inadequate process.

Staying strong collectively

Journalist Nic Paton looks at this year’s Annual Conference and other ways to become an engaged union member.

Our message to head teachers, teachers and classroom assistants is: ‘Thank you for your brilliant work; we need it to continue and in difficult economic circumstances’.”

T hose rare words of recognition came from chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the autumn statement (November 2022) as he announced a surprise £2bn extra spending package for schools in England over the next two years (approximately £4bn in total).

School leaders undoubtedly welcomed them after a challenging and bruising few years, operationally and politically, for the profession.

But NAHT members can also, to an extent, thank themselves for having been instrumental in wrestling this money out of a Treasury purse drawn otherwise tightly shut.

As NAHT head of policy (professional) Ian Hartwright explains: “You, the members, are the union. Together you are stronger. And the more you act collectively, the more your union can achieve.

“We won £2bn extra funding when, as

IAN HARTWRIGHT, NAHT HEAD OF POLICY (PROFESSIONAL)

a union, we were balloting on industrial action and had just published our ‘The Cliff Edge’ report (www.naht.org.uk/RD/ Funding-Cliff-Edge) on school funding. The findings of that report were so powerful because 11,640 of you responded to our survey. More than half (54%) said their schools couldn’t afford the teaching and support staff pay settlements in 2022/23. That rose to 76% in 2023/24.

“That was a powerful message to the government that gained mainstream media traction, forcing the Department for Education (DfE) to go back to the Treasury and negotiate for more money. We also magnified that message by working with other unions to reboot the ‘School Cuts’ campaign and website (www.schoolcuts.org.uk), bringing more pressure to bear. It’s not so much ‘what is NAHT doing for me?’, but rather ‘what can we achieve together?’,” he adds.

T H A K Y O U N

More than half (54%) said their schools couldn’t afford the teaching and support staff pay settlements in 2022/23. That rose to 76% in 2023/24,” says Ian.

endeavour. And last summer, when the government came forward and said, ‘yes, we accept the recommendations of the pay review body, the 5% pay award, but we’re not going to put any money in for that’, it just ignited at that point. That’s when the calls for us to ballot and be strong came through.

JAMES

BOWEN, NAHT DIRECTOR OF POLICY

“That money obviously doesn’t solve things; schools need more,” agrees James Bowen, NAHT director of policy. “But it is an awful lot better than it otherwise would have been. It was £2bn going into school budgets that probably wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had that sequence of events. That is why Annual Conference motions matter; the conversations you have in your branches matter.”

This year’s NAHT Annual Conference is coming up fast, from 28 to 29 April, in Telford. It is the moment where, traditionally, members come together to reflect on the year just gone and to set and direct policies and priorities for the year to come.

“Members have been giving us very strong messages about ‘we want to stand up and be counted, but we don’t want to damage our relationship with the children, their families and the communities we serve’. That came through loud and clear; there was proper engagement around what they wanted to do and how we should go forward. That was really, really encouraging.

“I’ve said we will ballot our members again on an offer if we get one. Or if we don’t get an offer, we will ballot on what we do next. We will be balloting members again, so all members need to understand how important it is to participate. Even though, in England, it didn’t hit that 50% threshold target, our members’ voices were heard very loud and clear. And we are in a position now where the government knows we are serious and need to be taken seriously,” Paul adds.

The common thread running through what Paul, Ian and James are saying is that it is not just membership that has made a difference here, but engaged membership, involved membership. As NAHT national secretary Rob Kelsall points out, last year was the 125th anniversary of the foundation of NAHT. And last year also saw NAHT hit what he calls “a staggering” 35,680 in-service members (as of 31 December 2022), compared with around 27,000 five years ago.

Above: NAHT was at London Pride, led by its LGBT+ Network

“We were involved in London Pride, led by our LGBT+ Network. We’re drawing in members from underrepresented groups, who perhaps wouldn’t previously have been drawn into what the union was doing, to participate and fly the NAHT flag at the Pride event.

ROB KELSALL, NAHT NATIONAL SECRETARY

PAUL WHITEMAN, NAHT GENERAL SECRETARY

This year, especially after NAHT’s unprecedented balloting on strike action in the autumn, we can expect the conference to send a strong, mobilised message to the government. As NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman concedes, the fact the ballot did not meet the threshold in England was disappointing – and may, in part, have been the result of the postal ballot coinciding with Royal Mail strikes. But the strength of the collective voice with which NAHT has already spoken, and possibly more to come, should – by rights – be making the government sit up and listen even more than it did back in November.

“It might be me in front of a TV camera, on the radio or talking to a journalist; it might be me in the corridors of power in Cardiff, Westminster or Belfast. But when politicians aren’t listening, the union’s strength is within its membership,” he tells Leadership Focus

“I talk a lot about the strength of mutual support and the power of collective

“That increase, think, is a direct result of NAHT taking a more assertive stance in regard to its campaigning and organising strategy. What will also stand us in good stead for the next 125 years is the union’s ‘infrastructure’ – in other words, the 172 branches that support our members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. All but a handful are now active, fully supported by local school leaders. We now have 900 regional and local officials, two-thirds of whom are serving head teachers,” Rob says.

“Those branches are flourishing as a result of new members joining us with a sense of optimism that the union can deliver for its members. And that we represent what school leaders see day in, day out in their schools – the lack of funding, punitive accountability, child poverty, pay erosion of almost 20% over the last 10 years and the incoherence of government education policy,” he adds. With the worst of covid-19 now (hopefully) in the rear-view mirror, NAHT has become increasingly active on the ground. Last year, in July, a delegation, for example, attended the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival in Dorset for the first time. “We did a fringe event with the Child Poverty Action Group, the biggest fringe event over that weekend,” says Rob.

“We supported the Durham Miners’ Gala and its effort to celebrate not only the trade union struggle of the mineworkers but also the solidarity that the LGBT+ groups gave them during that strike. We attended Merthyr Rising in Wales, again for the first time. We’re working with our regions to ensure that in 2023, our presence at all those events is maintained and that we build on that work.

“Our organising strategy has created an emboldened union membership, which has seen the emergence of newly organised groups and activism; this has been the bedrock of our success, not only a growing membership but a courageous membership that’s prepared to take action, for themselves, their schools and, ultimately, the children and young people in their communities,” Rob adds.

Above: NAHT attending Merthyr Rising in Wales

PAUL GOSLING, CURRENT NAHT PRESIDENT

“People have a trade union membership, and it is a bit like an insurance policy. You have it in case things go wrong. But you can get so much more out of it by putting something in of yourself, by attending things,” agrees current NAHT president Paul Gosling.

SIMON KIDWELL, INCOMING NAHT PRESIDENT

For an executive leader, the NAHT membership fee is a smidge more than £40 a month, with a sliding downward scale from there. Many members, at least initially, invest in membership because of the insurance protection, representation and support it brings, as incoming NAHT president Simon Kidwell concedes.

“My first few years of membership were quite uneventful; I just used it as an insurance policy and status thing,” says Simon, who is head teacher at Hartford Manor Primary School and Nursery in Northwich.

“But when I was in a school as a new head teacher, and it was a really challenging school (I was facing challenges from Ofsted, the local authority and the school community), I reached out to our branch secretary, who was always there at the end of a phone to listen to my issues. He was always there to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with me.

“That showed me the value. It is an important network; we have some of the most experienced and highly qualified school leaders. Using that really can help members,” Simon adds.

“Whether you’re politically active, looking for continuing professional development (CPD) or interested in joining one of our equalities networks, there’s something for you. Or go to a conference or branch meeting. Sometimes you can’t beat a union meeting for a good old moan, to get things out of your system – and a good laugh, as there is an important social side to the union too,” Paul explains.

“When started as a head teacher, I wasn’t very active in the union initially. I got involved because of the sense of not being on my own.

“School leadership can be quite an isolating job sometimes. So, you get that sense of solidarity and coming together, and we’re all in the same boat and all fighting the same battle. You get energised by other people,” he adds.

Simon Kidwell progressed from joining his local branch to becoming branch secretary, then attending his first Annual Conference in 2011, when Michael Gove was the new coalition education secretary. “It just gave me that motivation to see the bigger picture, get involved with national campaigns and not just focus on my school. I was becoming a more established school leader at that point, and so I was able to raise my head and get involved in some of those big ideas, discussions, and debate around assessment and accountability,” he says.

Members have been giving us very strong messages about ‘we want to stand up and be counted, but we don’t want to damage our relationship with the children, their families and the communities we serve’. That came through loud and clear; there was proper engagement around what they wanted to do and how we should go forward,” says Paul.

“I have now been a head teacher for 18 years, and without NAHT, I don’t think I would have been able to sustain the long career that I’ve had. It has enabled me to look beyond my school and network and reach out to amazing colleagues nationwide. It’s like anything else; you get what you put into it. If you put effort into it, the professional rewards are returned in spades.

“But, also, being a head teacher is a job where it is known that we don’t have particularly good mental health outcomes. I’m 53, and see my colleagues around me either retiring or planning to retire, so it is challenging,” Simon adds. All of which is one reason why Simon’s nominated charity for his term as president is Education Support (www.educationsupport.org.uk), which supports teachers’ and education staff members’ well-being.

findings from the ‘Fixing the Leadership Crisis’ report have had. NAHT can also link surveys to its analytical work to produce other reports, such as, for example, its recent report on retention, ‘Gone for Good: leaders who are lost to the teaching profession’ (www.naht.org. uk/RD/Gone-for-Good). This enables NAHT to amplify the message and feedback from members in pursuit of NAHT’s wider policy goals.

were happening and whether school leaders’ and teachers’ voices were being heard, influencing policy change.

Initially, I wanted to find out if the views of school leaders and teachers from diverse backgrounds were represented.

“The conference gives us our agenda for the key things that members want NAHT to pursue. School leaders see first-hand things that are and aren’t working, government policies or whatever. It is an opportunity for them to try to steer and influence that,” he adds.

Last year, for example, Annual Conference was dominated by the issue of the chronic underfunding of the education sector. “We had speaker after speaker come and talk about that,” says James.

“That meant a big focus of our work over the last 12 months has been on school funding, and it is one of those areas where we have had some success.

MAGNUS

frankly, is quite broken,” says James.

“In the ‘Fixing the Leadership Crisis’ survey (www.naht.org.uk/ FixingTheLeadershipCrisis) nine in 10 said the role impacted their sleep, 83% reported increasing worry, and three-quarters of school leaders said the role had a negative impact on their mental health,” he says. “So I think my mental health focus and the focus on longevity will be very well supported by Education Support and the work that it does in being proactive in supporting school leaders before they get to the point where they have to finish,” Simon adds.

The fact Simon is highlighting the findings from an NAHT survey shows another important way for members to get involved. At one level, attending a branch or regional meeting outside of work or sitting at a screen to fill in a survey outside of work may feel like a busman’s holiday for a head teacher, especially given the intensity of the working day. But it does make a real difference, as Ian Hartwright emphasises.

“I’d like to thank members for their great response rates to our surveys. For most surveys, we get more than 2,000 responses,” he says, pointing to the traction that the

“The first question the DfE officials always used to ask me was, ‘well, how many responses was it?’. As I kept saying ‘more than 2,000’, they’ve stopped asking that question.”

“Now feel like I have a voice. I am being proactive in influencing change. Politicians who make decisions for our children and colleagues may not hear it fully. Still, I’m representing a voice, and that consists of not just my views and opinions but also those of colleagues,” Nazma continues.

“Yes, it is about your willingness to give the time. Head teachers are very busy, and it is a level of commitment.

I am lucky to have a very supportive governing body, and I never thought I would have done anything like being part of the national executive. But I have found a real camaraderie and friendship in the union. I feel heard, what I have to say matters, and I can influence change and make a difference,” Nazma adds.

“It is important to remind people that Annual Conference is probably the most important date in the diary for us as a union. Because it is at the conference that members have the chance, formally, to come along and set the direction of the union for the year ahead,” says James Bowen.

“Look at the link there. We started with Annual Conference and members highlighting that school funding remained a top priority for them and a major issue. In the autumn, as a result of NAHT’s campaigning, policy, survey work and press work, it led to an additional £4bn from the government.

“I wouldn’t want to suggest for a second that the issue of school funding is solved, far from it. But it is a good example of how members get their voices heard at the Annual Conference; they highlight the major issues and ask NAHT to go and work on those. We can have an impact, and we can make a difference,” James adds. For this year’s conference, funding will almost certainly still be a ‘live’ issue. Pay and workload, too. Plus, recruitment and retention and, alongside this, highstakes accountability pressures. “I think there will be some issues that will be a continuation of previous years. I think the ongoing issues around special educational needs and disabilities will likely arise. It is a part of the system that,

“Clearly, pay and conditions will be a significant part of the conference, I do not doubt that,” agrees Magnus Gorham, NAHT director of democracy and governance. “Other than that, we may be at the point where there are some discussions about the future shape of the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) and that whole process and how it will work.

“The other exciting thing about this year’s conference is that we are encouraging our branch network to fill their places. Average delegate numbers over the past few years have been around 250. We’re aiming to fill 450 places, and we think that’s possible because we have had such a significant increase in activism, fuelled largely by the activity going on in the last six months with ballots.

“It means a greater proportion of members are in the room making decisions on behalf of colleagues. It is about getting members together in an environment where they can talk honestly and derive comfort from people, sadly, going through the same things, and about talking to other people doing the role,” Magnus adds.

Certainly, the thought of spending your downtime sitting in a meeting about schooling and education after having had a busy day at your own school may not initially sound like the most appealing of prospects, agrees Nazma Jassat, Leicester City NAHT branch president, NAHT national executive member and head teacher at Charnwood Primary School in Leicester City. But a) in reality, it isn’t too onerous, b) there can often be a social and important networking side to national, branch and regional meetings, and c) this is a small step to influencing change.

“Being present at union meetings does make a difference. There is a level of frustration among school leaders and teachers with the current education landscape as it stands, and politicians are making decisions that impact the lives of children and our colleagues,” she says.

“I started attending union meetings for this reason. wanted to know why things

Below: School leaders gather outside parliament to call on the government to reverse more than a decade of chronic underfunding in England’s schools (October 2021)

NAZMA JASSAT, LEICESTER CITY NAHT BRANCH PRESIDENT

Now I feel like I have a voice. I am being proactive in influencing change. Politicians who make decisions for our children and colleagues may not hear it fully. Still, I’m representing a voice, and that consists of not just my views and opinions but also those of my colleagues,” says Nazma.

GORHAM, NAHT DIRECTOR OF DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE

FINALLY, THEN, WHAT ABOUT THIS MONTH’S ANNUAL CONFERENCE? WHAT CAN MEMBERS EXPECT?

I do feel we are facing a mental health crisis within education,” says Simon.

I want to emphasise that your voice really matters and makes a difference,” Ian adds.

NAHT in Wales and Northern Ireland

While, as we have seen, NAHT’s ballot on industrial action in England did not reach the required threshold – and so is set to be a key talking point at Annual Conference there – in Wales and Northern Ireland, it was a very different story. Members in both nations voted for action short of a strike, hoping to ramp up pressure for change on both the Welsh Government and, with the government in Northern Ireland still suspended (at least as of the time of writing in March), Westminster.

The big success of the last year in Northern Ireland was members voting to take action against inadequate pay and the gradual decline of funding in education in Northern Ireland. Our children are funded much less per head than any other part of the UK,” emphasises Liam McGuckin, NAHT Northern Ireland president.

“During the autumn of 2022 and spring of 2023, NAHT(NI) has been trying to galvanise the opinions of members to respond to these issues. Members voted strongly to take action short of a strike and possible strike action. This is a huge step to overcome, especially for principals,” he adds.

NAHT has also been hard at work running events and webinars, for example, recently on pension planning. “That was very successful; we had around 13% of our membership on that webinar,” says Liam. “Events like that are a great way to get people together and remind members about the importance of things, like upcoming webinars and our

Annual Northern Ireland Conference. We’re putting a real emphasis this year on education and encouraging members to think about their roles.

“We provide a lot of information to our members about what is going on in education in Northern Ireland, both with the ongoing lack of a devolved administration and the breakdown in support being given to principals. We’ve found ourselves plugging a massive gap there,” he adds.

“I think that demonstrates the strength of feeling from our members, not only that the erosion of their pay by 20% over the last 10 years is something they have got to take a stand against but also the wider implications of that for the education profession. In terms of recruitment and retention, we are struggling to keep those great teachers and leaders in schools.

“It is also what it says about the profession as a whole; the fact it is not being valued by the government and therefore not becoming an attractive proposition for postgraduates, which is a real concern, particularly with around 50% of teachers who come into initial teacher training leaving in the first five years – absolutely devastating.”

Assistant or deputy head teacher?

Beyond the current action, NAHT Cymru remains active in campaigning on the rollout of the new curriculum in Wales and, in particular, the failings around the implementation of the new additional learning needs coordinators (ALNCos).

Get involved with NAHT policy

Sector councils are vital in ensuring members’ views in representative areas are served effectively as part of NAHT’s national executive* structure.

For Liam, all this activity emphasises why not just joining NAHT but being an engaged and active member is so important. “It improves you as a head teacher; it also improves you as a person. It gives you a better perspective of what’s going on nationally. It has helped me go back to my school and see things in a different light. It is just good to know there are so many people doing a really important job who think in so many similar ways to you.

“Sometimes being a head teacher can be a very lonely job. It is great to get the chance to talk to people in a similar situation. And NAHT, above all, gives that opportunity,” Liam adds.

“There have been significant struggles, particularly with the rollout of the ALN system. As we warned the Welsh Government when it first mooted the idea, it is all very well to have a great system in place and something that puts learners at the heart of everything we do – we support that ethos – but the mechanics of the implementation of such a huge shift in the system just weren’t thought through.

“There wasn’t the funding put into the system to be able to release teachers to become ALNCos, and there isn’t the support for those ALNCos who are struggling with what is a mammoth responsibility – because it is a legal obligation and there are very real implications for them personally and professionally if we get this wrong.

One such example is the Deputy and Assistant Heads (DAH) Council; this is formed of serving school leaders, some as elected national executive representatives but with the majority as co-opted council members.

The DAH Council supports deputy head teachers, assistant head teachers and vice principals across all phases and school types. It meets at least three times a year, helping to steer and develop NAHT’s policy and campaigning priorities. It also ensures the union’s advice and guidance reflect the needs of these members, who are the backbone of the senior leadership team.

Over the years, the council has exercised significant influence on NAHT’s policy development, having led the creation of a series of illuminating questions investigating the mental health of assistant and deputy head teachers in NAHT’s report ‘Fixing the Leadership Crisis’, which found that more than a third of assistant (35%) and deputy (38%) head teachers had identified that they needed mental health or well-being support.

DIRECTOR

In Wales, action short of a strike commenced in February, and as Laura Doel, NAHT Cymru director, highlights:

“It is the first time our members in Wales have taken national industrial action over pay and funding. We had a resounding response from our pay ballots and successfully managed to jump through the anti-trade union hoops to get there.

across the school system. Co-optee members form an integral part of the council. They bring valuable insight and experience of assistant and deputy head members’ challenges, helping amplify their voices across NAHT and beyond, including directly with senior DfE officials. Applications for DAH cooptee members are sought in recruitment rounds, so keep an eye on your inbox and NAHT’s website for future openings. Assistant, deputy and vice principal members from all backgrounds are welcomed and encouraged to apply for co-optee positions on the DAH Council.

FIND OUT MORE…

You can learn more about the DAH Council, including details of any future co-optee vacancy application rounds, by visiting www.naht.org.uk/DAH-Sector-Council

*National executive is the governing body of elected representatives of serving school leader members that oversee the policy direction we take between our Annual Conferences.

“Rather than being reactive to policy, thanks to our members, we now enter into co-construction of policy. Instead of complaining about it afterwards, we are now in the room discussing the practical challenges and, crucially, the solutions,” she adds.

The council has also played a pivotal role in providing feedback to the DfE on implementing the Early Career Framework, particularly the impact on mentors’ workload.

Looking forward, the council will begin discussions on the leadership pay structure, particularly considering how it can best support the progression of assistant and deputy head teachers as they move

LIAM MCGUCKIN, NAHT NORTHERN IRELAND PRESIDENT

LAURA DOEL, NAHT CYMRU

We are in the middle of a massive reform agenda in Wales, with a new curriculum, and we are only at the beginning of that journey,” says Laura.

More than a third of assistant (35%) and deputy (38%) head teachers had identified that they needed mental health or wellbeing support.

All this shows is that engaged members are more important than ever at the moment, and I think we have demonstrated that in leaps and bounds.

EDI networks

NAHT operates three EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion) networks: the Disabled Members’ Network, the LGBT+ Network and the Leaders for Race Equality Network.

“Members tell me that one of the core values of the networks is being able to speak to other leaders, knowing that you are not alone and that there are other leaders like you who have similar backgrounds and experiences. Members who have overcome some of the same barriers and challenges to get into leadership or have grappled with that throughout their working career before becoming life members. It is a great space to share that.”

NATALIE ARNETT, NAHT SENIOR EQUALITIES OFFICER

“These are informal groups created and driven by members. This is something members have told us that they would like to have and the value they find in this kind of peer-to-peer support. It’s just another way to engage with NAHT,” explains NAHT senior equalities officer Natalie Arnett.

We examine the Disabled Members’ Network in more detail elsewhere in this edition. All three networks, Natalie emphasises, are designed to help amplify the voices of members within NAHT and provide support, information and networking opportunities.

The groups meet every half term online for one hour and then have an annual face-to-face event at the end of the school year. “There is no expectation that you need to come to every single one, although hopefully, members find it valuable and will want to come anyway. We try to move the meeting times around; we tend to have them in the evening, but we are also exploring whether to hold some during school time,” Natalie explains. Each network also has a WhatsApp group for those who wish to communicate and share resources and learnings – or vent about their day – between the meetings.

The networks are already making their influence felt.

Leaders for Race Equality, for example, led the development of the ‘You Are Not

NAHT

for life

NAHT is not, of course, solely for serving school leaders. There is a thriving and vibrant community of now-retired NAHT life members whose longstanding experience and knowledge are hugely valued by the union.

“Life members now have an NAHT National Sector Council, which we didn’t have before, so we have 12 representatives, one from each region in England and one from Wales and Northern Ireland. In addition, we have a member on the national executive; before that, we reported to someone else and had them making our points for us at executive,” explains NAHT life members’ communications officer Michael Wilson.

“We also now have an annual review of the NAHT life member charter in relation to what services should be available to NAHT members. And we’ve also affiliated with the National Pensioners Convention.

“Being active and engaged as a life member has been good for me. NAHT volunteering provides a real physical and mental reward. When you’re a head teacher, you’re enormously busy, and it’s a 24-hour-a-day job, so when you first stop, it can be a bit of a shock. You’re often looking for things to do to use your skills,” Michael says.

professionally Grow

NAHT offers members several pathways to grow, develop and improve professionally.

The NAHT Discovery Education Pathway online CPD programme (www.naht.org. uk/pathway) offers a blend of resources and materials that brings consistency to your school’s professional learning, with the aim of supporting the whole school. There is also a busy calendar of courses (www.naht.org.uk/courses), webinars (www.naht.org.uk/webinars) and conferences (www.naht.org.uk/ conferences) for members to attend. These can be on topics as varied as leading school safeguarding through to joining or forming a multi-academy trust, holding more successful ‘difficult’ conversations, and much more. All courses are held online, with recordings available for up to 30 days after the event has ended. NAHT courses aim to help school leaders with statutory compliance, enhancing the curriculum and achieving a work-life balance.

FIND OUT MORE…

Mentor

your peers

NAHT runs a highly regarded mentoring programme that enables members to share their experiences and knowledge and guide mentees towards their future career ambitions.

Working with a mentor enables mentees to learn from someone more experienced, work on their career progression, gain impartial advice and an alternative perspective, have a nonjudgemental sounding board for ideas and focus on overcoming challenges. But, equally, being a mentor brings its own benefits, too. These include passing on personal knowledge and experience to help others grow, having the chance to ‘give something back’ and support others, and gaining the chance to work on new and exciting challenges.

FIND OUT MORE…

To find out more about NAHT’s mentoring programme, visit: https://thehub.naht.org.uk/ management/4289/

Alone’ book (www.naht.org.uk/RD/YouAre-Not-Alone), which brought together 14 stories from members of the group. It also helped to shape NAHT’s anti-racism statement and position on the need for mandatory anti-racism training in schools.

The Disabled Members’ Network has led to the union adopting the social model of disability. “That has all come from members’ experiences and feeds into our more formal democracy,” Natalie says.

“We’ve seen people become members of NAHT to join the networks. They’ve then gone on to engage with their branches or regions or join the national executive as well. It is another route into NAHT’s more formal structures,” she adds.

FIND OUT MORE…

Learn more about the networks at www.naht. org.uk/EqualitiesDiversity-Inclusion

“You still have fantastic skills; you don’t lose them. Stopping might be fine for a few weeks, but once you’ve done the retirement cruise, I’ve found it healthy to get back involved and engaged in education.

“Once you’ve retired, you can choose what you want to do. You can say, ‘I’m not working on Fridays’, even though I’ve not managed that in five years! Just make contact with your local NAHT branch and the branch secretary.

“In the next 12 months, we’re encouraging all branches to have a position on their committee that is a life member representative so that life members can contact someone,” Michael adds.

Catch up on previous webinars by visiting the NAHT ‘Hub’: https://thehub.naht.org.uk/

We know how difficult the leadership role is and how isolating it can be. If you are a school leader with a particular protected characteristic (or multiple protected characteristics), there is that additional load or feeling of isolation,” says Natalie.

in Sheffield; we are almost the twelfth most deprived in the country. The free school meal threshold is really low, and many of our families are just slightly above it. But because you’re above the threshold and, on paper, can feed your child, it doesn’t mean that you are. We feel that penalises the child.

“Our energy bill has increased from £20,000 to more than £50,000. So, money that we would probably have spent on the buildings, we’ve had to cut that back. Our number one priority is our free meals; that would be the last thing we would cut back on. I keep a close eye on it, and I think last year we overspent by £480 – that was it. It is so important,” Kathryn adds.

Hungry for change

Journalist Nic Paton looks at how schools go above and beyond to keep children fed despite the spiralling cost and current infrastructure, labour and supply pressures they face.

You see headlines in the media and on social media of cooks having to turn children away because they can’t feed them.

Or them having to chase parents for money for food.

It is awful; that is heartbreaking for the staff. We would never do that and have never done that.

It’s not hard to find the sort of headlines Kathryn Fox, school business manager at St Patrick’s Catholic Voluntary Academy in Sheffield, is undoubtedly referring to here. ‘School meals are “moving towards a crisis”’ (ITV News in January), ‘School forced to sack teachers and staff as energy bills rocket by more than 300 per cent’ (Daily Express, February),

‘Cost of living crisis: 1.8 million children facing poorer quality school meals as food costs rise’ (Sky News, October 2022) and ‘School meals will shrink without help to tackle rising costs, warns food boss’ (The Guardian, May 2022).

Between soaring food inflation and energy costs, labour shortages and rising levels of deprivation and need, it is clear schools and school leaders are facing significant challenges right now, especially over school meals and keeping children – all children, not just those eligible for free school meals – fed and warm. What help the government has offered (for example, increasing the funding for free school meals last year

and including schools in its energy support scheme) is barely touching the sides when it comes to the need, NAHT members have told Leadership Focus. However, just as with how schools and school leaders responded to covid-19, members have been going above and beyond to think creatively and keep children from going hungry, often even, in fact, managing to enhance their food offers.

In Kathryn’s case, for example, the school now provides a free breakfast and hot meal to all its 280 children, irrespective of their parents’ incomes. “Back in 2018, we brought our catering in-house,” Kathryn explains.

“The quality of the food wasn’t very good, and it was how the company dealt with its staff; plus, it was making a profit, and we didn’t think that was right.

“We are in the most deprived constituency

“We wanted to remove that stigma completely. Then covid-19 kicked in, and we decided we needed to support families on furlough or who weren’t working. We decided, at that point, that we would give free meals across the board to everybody.

“We already did it for the universal infant free school meals and the income-based free school meals, but we decided just to do it across the board, no questions asked; it is a free meal for everybody,” Kathryn adds. Of course, funding all this has been challenging. “We discussed it with our governors and agreed that we could put it in the budget each year. But then I apply for charitable grants and donations and hire out our premises a lot; we do quite a bit of fundraising throughout the year. We recently won a Tesco community grant from its blue tokens scheme for £1,500. We’ve received grants from Marks & Spencer. I just did one to Spar. So there are lots of small grants – £500 here and £1,000 there – but it mounts up,” Kathryn explains.

“Our staff pay for their meals, so we make a little on that. What we say to people is that 50p to 60p is going to buy a meal for a child. Anybody who donates just that is fantastic. But we had a parent donate £200 the other day, which was unbelievable.

Andrew Moorcroft, head teacher at Boughton Leigh Infant School in Brownsover, Rugby, has a similar story. However, his school’s focus has been as much on providing a warm community space as on keeping tummies full. The school has established a Brownsover Families Winter Project with the support of its local church and community association.

The school provides a daily free food market, a ‘warm hub’ for its families and those from three nearby primary schools; it also provides hot meals in the evenings seven days a week.

“From feedback, we could see all the way back in the spring last year that families were finding life increasingly challenging,” Andrew tells Leadership Focus.

“We could also see the position was going to get worse, not only with food prices going up but also with the imminent hike in energy costs, causing bills to soar in the winter.

“Families can also reduce their energy usage by accessing the warm space. This warm, bright space is available for children at school to use when completing their homework and to enjoy social time with community members. This prevents families from unnecessarily heating and lighting their rooms at home.

“I spoke to the local church, and it had been having similar thoughts regarding its congregation. We set out trying to think about how we could do it. We met with the Brownsover Network, which is a range of charities and agencies, and shared our idea.

“Our biggest challenge was that we did not have the capacity to cook or the money to source the food. However, the church was able to provide volunteers who were happy to do the cooking for us.

“Our local community association jumped at the chance to help and agreed to fund us. The funding allows us to provide hot meals seven days a week and a warm space from 4.30pm to 6pm,” Andrew continues.

“We’re having to be very careful ourselves with things like putting the heating on. The community association paying for the extra hour-and-a-half worth of heating has limited the impact on us. The building is already warm, so it is just a matter of keeping it warm, and so it is only a marginal extra cost.

“We also provide hot takeaway meals. So if a member of the family is working and unable to attend, we will provide a hot meal, a bit like a meals-on-wheels, that the family can take away with them. They can even pre-order and come to collect it.

Plus, there can be a stigma around free school meals. I’ve had that myself; I had the opportunity to put my children on free school meals for a year when I wasn’t working –I didn’t do it because of the stigma I’d felt about it when I was younger.

KATHRYN FOX, SCHOOL BUSINESS MANAGER, SHEFFIELD

ANDREW MOORCROFT, HEAD TEACHER, RUGBY

We got our heads together to think about what we could do to help.

‘What physically could we do?’ We decided that providing food, a hot meal for families, would reduce their food bills significantly, allowing them to repurpose their finances.

PAUL JACKSON, HEAD TEACHER, LONDON

At Manorfield Primary School in Tower Hamlets, London, head teacher Paul Jackson has established a weekly food pantry for families, with food donated from The Felix Project, City Harvest and other charities or the wider community.

Working in partnership with Family Action, families pay a small £3 fee to access £25 to £30 worth of food per week, with the pantry currently serving around 30 to 40 families. In partnership with other charities, it also distributes several hundred frozen meals before each school holiday; these are given out in the

“Initially, we were thinking about our free school meal families who were really struggling, but actually, this current crisis is far bigger than that. It is also about those in full-time work who are struggling; they are finding it extremely challenging. It is humbling to see the level of need in the community.

“January saw a real upturn in demand. Perhaps benefits or salaries were paid a little early to cover Christmas, but January was also a very long month. The number of people saying they are struggling has really widened. The warm space and hot meals are a little something that we can do to improve our families’ lives.

“We all know that if you’re hungry, thirsty or cold, you can’t concentrate. Learning can’t take place until we’ve got all those things in place. We think of ourselves like a large family: we look after each other and help each other in any way we can. It is lovely to see the community supporting each other,” Andrew adds.

PAUL WHITEMAN, NAHT GENERAL SECRETARY

For NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman, this is an important point that mustn’t get overlooked in the positive fact that schools – yet again – are rising to meet a crisis head-on. “I think the current situation demonstrates two things,” he tells Leadership Focus.

In the edible kitchen: Ibrahim

Rima

Emelia

playground at the end of the school day.

Much like Kathryn Fox in Sheffield, Paul has brought his school lunch catering provision in-house, and while Tower Hamlets Council offers free school meals to all primary school children, his school is also running a free daily breakfast club for more than 100 children.

Recognising that staff may be feeling the pinch at this time, staff are also given a free meal if they eat their lunch with the children in the dining hall, with 90% taking this up.

we keep the plates spinning? With great difficulty. It is about making efficient savings wherever we can, prioritising this and generating external income.

“We have to rely on external fundraising campaigns that go well beyond the local community because the local community hasn’t got the money to give. So, we write applications to gain donations from businesses and other individuals and networks. It is just about making sensible decisions.

“The reward is huge, but it does take its toll. plan to leave at the end of the summer after 16 years as a head teacher. I’ve decided to take a break because it is having an impact on me, the pressure and the stress. I barely see my children – even though I choose to do those additional hours, it isn’t sustainable.

“We need to fund the system adequately. It is as simple as that. Yes, schools need to use their budgets as efficiently and effectively as they can. But we also need to fund the system adequately. Recognise where schools are doing this over and above; that we are filling the gaps that have gone missing from the local authority or other services. Recognise that schools are absolute centres of the community – and properly fund them.

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“Secondly, it demonstrates our members’ absolute commitment to children’s safety and development. And it is why it irks me so much when the government, around industrial action, tries to paint a picture that our actions will somehow damage children’s education. Well, actually, our actions are all designed around the fact that we’re the ones who truly care; the politicians in Westminster are wrapped in a cocoon of headlines, whereas we see and deal with real life every day. When we move away from the bald statistics and you see the reality, that’s where the caring profession steps in.

“Never, ever doubt the commitment of school leaders and teachers. And, frankly, anyone who insults them by publicly doubting them is foolish,” Paul adds.

NATALIE ARNETT, NAHT POLICY LEAD FOR SCHOOL BUSINESS LEADERS

“You cannot educate children and young people effectively when they’re hungry,” agrees Natalie Arnett, NAHT policy lead for school business leaders, highlighting that NAHT is part of the School Food Review Group (see panel at the end for more on this), calling for a government-led overhaul of school food policy and funding.

But it is, he concedes, an added pressure and burden on school leaders. “How

“If the government is really serious about supporting schools in deprived areas, then let’s go beyond the pupil premium and look at how we properly, adequately, support not just the learning side but the social side as well,” Paul adds.

Serving behind counter Sandra Tomkins, kitchen assistant

In teaching kitchen (left): Paul Jackson, head teacher Edwina Lewis, chef in residence

Children:

Wissam

Kayan

Sara Iftikhar

What we’ve found is that families have really opened up. We’ve had families being quite reticent to come forward – ‘oh, it’s for people who really need it’ – but we’ve been able to build that trust by breaking down the barriers. The word has spread, too, with many families becoming informal ambassadors for the project.

do

We’re really seeing a positive impact, which is children able to focus better in class, children’s behaviour is better. Having seen an increase in domestic violence and child protection and safeguarding issues, my concern was that if we didn’t have this food provision, how much more pressure there would be on families and how many more incidents we might see,” Paul explains.

Firstly, it demonstrates the complete failure of the services we need to wrap around vulnerable children. This shouldn’t be the job of schools at all, other than the provision of school meals, obviously. Having to beg, borrow and make do to do that. Teachers and school leaders are even putting their hands in their own pockets to subsidise what is going on for some children. That should never be the case.

JANE HILL, HEAD TEACHER, DERBY JULES HARDISTY, SCHOOL BUSINESS MANAGER, DERBY

Jane Hill, head teacher at Gayton Junior School in Derby, has implemented a ‘grab a breakfast’ scheme for children with her school business manager Jules Hardisty.

“When we came back in September, it was very clear we’d need to keep the cost-of-living crisis on our senior leadership team’s (SLT’s) agenda; it was something we’d need to keep coming back to. That we were keeping on top of numbers and patterns and asking SLT members to keep coming up with ideas for things we could try to run,” she says.

“We spent £40 on an Asda delivery, just on breakfast staples, for example, breakfast bars, cereal variety packs, crumpets and things like that. To begin with, we decided not to advertise it –because we felt we’d have everyone coming in – and instead to keep a record of the children. We could then start to build up a pattern, a picture, of the children who were starting to struggle the most.

“We spoke to the governors about it in January, and one of the governors, who is heavily involved with a church offering warm spaces, said, ‘how do you know you’re getting this to everyone who needs it?’. And we didn’t know, really.

“So we sat in the SLT meeting later that week, and our deputy Dan O’Donnell said, ‘is it something we could start offering to everybody?’ So Jules mentioned it to the guy who organises our supply teachers, and he immediately sent us £200 worth of Tesco vouchers,” Jane adds.

“We agreed that from the school’s budget, we would get some supplies in, but then we would have to look at external

funding because, obviously, our budgets are pressed like everybody else’s. We’d have to find a way of funding it,” emphasises Jules.

“So I put out a bit of a plea on my LinkedIn to people I know, basically saying children do not learn if they’re hungry and that we were seeing children coming in not having had breakfast, for whatever reason. We have no judgement on them, and we don’t want to stigmatise them, but we would like to be able to do something.”

The Tesco voucher donation was just the start, and community donations have now topped £1,000. “That money is coming from people who support us; for example, parents and grandparents have raised money for us (one raised more than £200 from charity football matches). Some has come from local businesses. Severn Trent, for example, which does some assemblies with us, emailed its office, and the company was immediately supportive,” Jules adds.

“We did initially say to parents that we’d do it for January to see the numbers before promising to do it continually. If we’d had to give away 100 breakfasts every day, we couldn’t sustain that. But we think that £1,000 will now see us through to the end of the school year,” Jane continues.

and thought, ‘this can’t be done; we don’t have the funds’. But I think you just have to believe you can do it because if we didn’t feel it was possible, we wouldn’t have left the starting blocks.

“We were very explicit to parents: ‘we are trying this’ and ‘we can’t promise that we can keep it going’. And they appreciated that. People are not resentful of those receiving benefits at the moment. People are very much willing to help,” Jane adds.

At Ysgol Trefonnen Primary School in Llandrindod Wells, Powys, head teacher Jessica Stuart-Lyon and family engagement officer Jen Craven have worked to set up a ‘community fridge’ scheme where people can, for £1, fill a bag with fruit, vegetables, bread, cake and frozen meals. The scheme was launched last October and has expanded from there.

What are other

schools doing?

To find out how members were going above and beyond to feed and support their students and communities, NAHT carried out a snapshot survey for feedback. The fact many members replied in minutes showed us just what an important issue this is for school leaders. Here is what some of them said.

“In the front lobby of our school, we have set up our own food bank,” said Mairead Waugh, head teacher at St Philip Howard Catholic Primary School in Hatfield. “It is open from 7am to 8pm on weekdays and Sunday mornings. The school provides links to our local food bank, too.

than 70 holiday club sessions. Children attended and were provided with a range of enrichment activities surrounding healthy eating, keeping healthy, physical sessions and craft activities. The children were each supplied with a hot meal daily. These sessions targeted the most disadvantaged children in our school’s community,” said Kim Webb, assistant principal and SENCo (inclusion manager) at Kingsland CE Academy in Stoke-on-Trent.

school’s budget on a coat and shoes for a pupil who had not dressed appropriately for the season. We have also arranged for domestic appliances, such as a cooker, for some families.

“We have recently worked with Greggs and a local business to sign up for the breakfast club, and this makes sure each and every child gets a good breakfast.”

“We are trying to help those people. The children come in, they get some breakfast bars and juice boxes, and there are no questions asked because we don’t want them to feel it is something to be embarrassed by. However, our free school meal numbers have skyrocketed since covid-19, too; absolutely soared. We’ve gone from 61 to 106.

“You have to be creative. You have to go out there and think outside the box a little bit. It can be done. We sat there

JEN CRAVEN, FAMILY ENGAGEMENT OFFICER, POWYS

to the whole community. We’re now getting roughly 70 to 80 people a week coming,” Jen explains.

“We put on events as well. For example, in December, we cooked a Christmas dinner with all the trimmings. It is helping people during the current cost-of-living crisis and creating a social aspect.

“We are lucky to have a multi-purpose room attached to the school, so people can come in during school time, get the food, have a cup of tea and so on. But even if you can only open it after school, I would recommend it. If you have the space, definitely do it,” she says, adding that if anyone wants to get advice on how to set up a similar scheme, she is happy to be emailed at jcraven@trefonnen.powys.sch.uk

“All our office staff have been trained to offer additional support to parents, from applying for Happy clubs during the holidays to making sure those with no recourse to public funds have access to help. We support parents in connecting to a local charity to help pay for school lunches. We also have emergency supermarket vouchers for crisis times,” she added.

“We have set up a food bank within my office (also a baby and toiletries bank) that children, parents and staff can access at any time,” said Andrew Carter, deputy head teacher at Sandal Castle VA Community Primary School in Wakefield. “No records are kept, and no logs are made. It’s simple: if you need it, take it,” he added.

“We have a free breakfast club; approximately 60 children attend each day,” said Dee Bleach, head teacher at Mayflower Primary in Tower Hamlets.

“This means they are at school on time, having eaten a healthy breakfast. We are a healthy school, going for gold healthy school status for the second time. I’m on the working group for improving school meals; it’s really important that schools are models for healthy eating.”

“We run a free breakfast club,” said Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, head teacher at Anderton Park Primary in Birmingham.

“Our food bank was run on free donations; we now pay £70 a week for about three bags for 25 families. We work with a local neighbourhood scheme, which has funded £2,000 worth of loo rolls, sanitary pads, washing powder, floor cleaner and some extra food. A local restaurant has previously provided 150 hot meals a week; we’re looking to do this again.”

“In conjunction with the Hubb Foundation, we have provided more

“Over the past two years, we have distributed more than 700 meals to the vulnerable families in our community. We have a community freezer to store surplus foods from our school’s kitchen. These foods are blast-chilled as a ready meal and a dessert. The food is prepared on-site. We have a ‘blessings cupboard’, an on-site food bank where parents and carers have open access to food and hygiene items. We have distributed more than 500 hampers to the most vulnerable families in our community,” added Kim.

“We run a healthy snack tuck shop, which is run by the year five pupils,” said Vicky Harrison, head teacher at Tankersley St Peter’s Primary School in Barnsley. “It is very popular, and we have many year fives eager to help out.”

“We have a residential facility that we lovingly call The Lodge,” explained Nathalie Akhmatova, head teacher at Wolverdene Special School in Andover.

“Pupils whose families cannot afford heating and hot water often come to school and ask if they can shower in The Lodge. They might also bring in their dirty washing and ask us to put a load on.

“We have spent money from the

“Every pupil has breakfast in school every day,” said Victoria Hepburn-Fish, head teacher at Victoria Infant and Nursery School in Workington, Cumbria.

“We work with Magic Breakfast, funded by the Department for Education, due to the high number of free school meals to support this, and the school pays a subsidy towards the costs. Cumbria County Council has approved an initiative, which I was involved in discussing with cabinet members, to ensure ‘no child goes hungry’ and provided all schools with free school meals an amount of funding.”

“We have set up a food and essentials trolley for families to help themselves,” said Carol Bond, head teacher at Elm Park Primary School in Hornchurch.

“Additionally, we have used our own personal money to top up families’ gas or electricity meters. Our local community has helped to raise money to support us in helping families with rent arrears, school trips, food shopping and so on.”

“We run a breakfast club from 7.30am to 9am, with reduced costs for siblings and financial support if needed,” said Julie Kelly, head teacher at West Meon CE Primary School in Petersfield. “We also offer an after-school club with supper from 3.30pm to 6pm, with reduced costs for siblings and financial support if needed.”

The School Food Review Working Group is a coalition of 36 organisations spanning charities, educational organisations, catering companies, unions and academics, all committed to working together to improve children’s health by reforming the school food system. The group believes in the positive impact of an improved school food system on children’s learning and health and is campaigning to build a more resilient and fairer school food system, one that enables every young person to thrive, no matter where they live. The campaign focuses on five areas:

1. Entitlement: increasing eligibility criteria for free school meals so that millions of children won’t be left behind

2. School food procurement, operations and contract management: improving guidance and procurement processes to put a focus on value and quality

3. Accountability and quality assurance: putting in place effective and transparent mechanisms so that schools and caterers can report how they are meeting pupils’ nutritional needs

4. Uptake: introducing auto-enrolment so that 200,000 children already entitled to free school meals don’t miss out

5. Funding: make it fair, appropriate and transparent so that schools and their caterers can deliver nutritious school food for everyone.

In our area, we have this ‘squeezed middle’ – these parents who are just managing but aren’t entitled to any benefits that come with free school meals or pupil premium. And so, it is just giving them that little leg-up.

It started slowly because many people believed ‘it’s a food bank’, so there was that stigma. So it was about getting past that, telling people there were no referrals involved and that it is open

Disabled Members’ Network

Journalist Nic Paton looks at NAHT’s informal group for members who identify as disabled, where they can share experiences, and learn from and support each other.

T

eachers and school leaders work every day with children and parents who are disabled. They bend over backwards to make sure they feel welcome and accepted, that the school or learning environment is celebrating and enabling their ability rather than putting in place ‘disabling’ physical, social or cultural barriers.

Given this, it is perhaps surprising that this self-same acceptance, accommodation and even celebration of disability within school leadership is, arguably, often lacking.

don’t they tend to come into the profession?” he questions.

This lack of acceptance of ‘difference’ can be even more so with invisible disabilities, such as neurodiverse conditions (like autism), hearing loss, mental ill health, diabetes and many others. Indeed, the very role of a head teacher or senior school leader –its brutally long hours, high-stakes pressure and accountability, and the need to be always visibly ‘a leader’ for your children, staff and the wider community – can itself deter disabled leaders either from being public about their impairment or from stepping up into a senior leadership position in the first place.

a WhatsApp group for those wishing to communicate and share resources and learnings outside the meetings.

other people are thinking and feeling. They can be very focused on the task at hand; he explains, for example, that he can often (barring interruptions) write a school business plan in an afternoon. They can excel at logical thinking and processing – all skills and attributes school leaders need in bucket loads. Yet, in other areas, he concedes that he struggles at times. For example, handwriting – being able to write neatly on whiteboards or, in the early days of his career, chalkboards. Being on the receiving end of criticism can also be something autistic people struggle with – potentially a problem in our current high-stakes accountability system.

in a network meeting) was the first time I had ever met somebody, other than myself, who was an autistic school leader or teacher

It is very hard to cope with the amount of work – it is very hard for everybody, but for autistic people, you’ll often work and work and work but then hit a brick wall. In my early career, when I did struggle, I think that was one of the reasons. But it wasn’t possible to say, ‘I’m experiencing autistic burnout. Could you give me a few minutes?’. There isn’t always a culture in schools of listening to colleagues about those things,” Patrick explains.

Yet, as Patrick Foley, head teacher at Southborough School in Bromley, south London, explains, this is sadly the case.

“There is little visible disability within the profession, and there are many things to consider in terms of why people with physical disabilities don’t come into the profession. People with mobility issues, for example; why

To work to rectify this, a year ago, NAHT launched its Disabled Members’ Network, which sits alongside the union’s LGBT+ Network and Leaders for Race Equality Network. One-hour meetings are held online once a term by the network, with an annual faceto-face meeting at the end of the school year. It also has

“We know school leadership is a very intense role,” explains Natalie Arnett, senior equalities officer at NAHT. “If you’re having to navigate that with a disability, perhaps one you haven’t felt able to disclose for whatever reason, and so you haven’t got the adjustments that you need, then the expectations and trying to meet them can be really challenging.”

The sad thing is we all know that having a more diverse and inclusive team in your school enables it to reflect your community better and be more creative, collaborative and innovative, so there is a huge amount disabled school leaders can bring to the leadership table.

As Patrick points out, people who are autistic can be hyper-empathetic, so they are better able to understand how

“That feedback system of being told you’re wrong is something that can weigh heavily on someone who is autistic. So the processes with Ofsted can be traumatic. I’ve sat in Ofsted meetings that have been, at points for me, really terrifying and traumatic. They just make no allowances at all for me as a person, let alone me as an autistic person,” Patrick explains. Also, of course, there is the issue of the sheer workload that comes with school leadership. “It is very hard to cope with the amount of work – it is very hard for everybody, but for autistic people, you’ll often work and work and work but then hit a brick wall. In my early career, when I did struggle, I think that was one of the reasons. But it wasn’t possible to say, ‘I’m experiencing autistic burnout. Could you give me a few minutes?’. There isn’t always a culture in schools of listening to colleagues about those things,” Patrick explains. Having a forum to highlight these issues – for disabled members to hear that they are not alone – and advocate for change has been hugely beneficial, he agrees. “It (being

and was willing to talk about that, so that was positive,” Patrick says.

“It’s been a really good, cathartic process; listening to other people’s stories and telling

your stories. It has enabled some members to get more involved in NAHT; I think we’ve really helped people. It is about giving visibility to disabilities, which is an important thing in our profession.” While it is early days, the group is already proving influential in articulating and promoting best practices for the union and the wider school leadership community.

For example, it has been instrumental in NAHT embracing the social model of disability (see panel at the end for more details).

PATRICK FOLEY, HEAD TEACHER, BROMLEY

The network, very simply, enables disabled members to come together in a safe and confidential space in which they can support and learn from each other.

NATALIE ARNETT, NAHT SENIOR EQUALITIES OFFICER

JON BARR, RETIRED HEAD TEACHER

Life member Jon Barr, who retired as a head teacher in July 2021, recognised in his forties that he was developing hearing loss. “When went to have it checked, the audiologist identified that had moderate hearing loss and needed hearing aids,” he explains.

“I began to recognise it in the context of my work. I became more and more aware there were barriers within my work. One barrier for someone with hearing loss is the insensitivity, particularly at training events, to the need to use technology, such as a microphone.

“Head teachers would just say, ‘oh, don’t worry; I’ve got a really loud voice’. So, you have to stand up and say, ‘excuse me; you will have to use the microphone’. In my experience, there is a phase you go through where you become an activist; you actively want people to

address this because you realise it is not just a barrier for you but for others as well,” says Jon.

“However, one of the things I gained from joining the network was that although the advocate/activist element is good, you realise it is also rather tiresome! Almost everybody in our network has found that if you’re in a position to make people aware of your impairment and what they need to do to make sure it doesn’t disable you, you want to be able to tell them just once. You don’t want to have to tell them again and again and again.

“Just being able to come and talk and be open about your impairment and the fact that you regard yourself as a disabled person is empowering as a leader. For many people in the network, it is the first time they have told any fellow professional ever that they have an impairment and that they regard themselves as a disabled person. So there is the opportunity to share,” Jon adds.

Just being able to come and talk and be open about your impairment and the fact you regard yourself as a disabled person is empowering as a leader. For many people in the network, it is the first time they have told any fellow professional ever that they have an impairment and that they regard themselves as a disabled person. So there is the opportunity to share,” says Jon.

FRANCES AKINDE, HEAD TEACHER, KENT

Another head teacher who has benefited from the Disabled Members’ Network is Frances Akinde. Until recently, she was head of a special school in Kent before being diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, a condition of the inner ear that can cause dizziness, vertigo, tinnitus and hearing loss.

“It is a horrible condition. You know what it’s like when you’re a head teacher, all the pressure. I’d just had a quality assurance review, and the school came out as good. I’d led my school through covid-19, and Ménière’s can be triggered by stress,” she tells Leadership Focus She has also been assessed as neurodivergent, something that she had long suspected. She is now looking forward and working to retrain to become a workplace adjustment assessor and an assistive technology trainer, mentor and coach to support others.

“I was in the Leaders for Race Equality Group and saw information about the Disabled Members’ Network. was nervous about joining because, in a way, it was an ultimate statement of saying, ‘I am a leader with a disability’,” says Frances. “But it was like there was suddenly a whole community of people like you, people who have gone through a similar experience. Every single person I speak to has had a similar experience.

“It’s so lovely to find somewhere you finally feel like you fit,” she adds.

“But it was like there was suddenly a whole community of people like you, people who have gone through a similar experience. Every single person I speak to has had a similar experience. It’s so lovely to find somewhere you finally feel like you fit,” says Frances.

Being disabled is something you can be born with, something that can develop in later life, especially as we age, or – in the case of the estimated two million people in the UK who have long covid – come completely out of the blue and overnight knock sideways someone who was previously completely healthy, active and able.

Being disabled is something you can be born with, something that can develop in later life, especially as we age, or – in the case of the estimated two million people in the UK who have long covid –come completely out of the blue and overnight knock sideways someone who was previously completely healthy, active and able. This was the case for Alexis Gaffin, a head teacher at an independent prep school in Hertfordshire, who is slowly working her way back from what have been debilitating and disabling longterm after-effects following a bout of the covid-19 virus.

She caught covid-19 in October 2021 and ended up being off school for a year. “Covid-19 itself was not terrible, but then I had long covid and terrible symptoms,” she tells Leadership Focus. “I couldn’t walk or eat, my speech was badly affected, and I couldn’t bear bright light. There was terrible brain fog, fatigue and an inability to digest – even just getting dressed was tiring. A friend commented that

it sounded like I’d had a stroke.

“It has, thankfully, improved a lot, and I started a phased return to work in the summer term last year, initially just a couple of hours a week and then, from September, doing a half day in school on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

“You put on a brave face; you put your war paint on and hope for the best. I’m halfway through the year but still not fully up to capacity. Sometimes have to come home and sleep during the day. This week, I’ve got the balance wrong because you feel ‘I must have a school presence; I need to be visible all the time’. Also, if you look OK, people just don’t realise or think that you are anything other than exactly the same as you used to be.

“My school has been very supportive and very respectful of the advice that has been given. But the problem is there isn’t a lot of clear information out there about long covid. I have weeks that are a black hole; I just don’t remember.

“A year ago, I was looking into an abyss as to whether I could ever work again. But it is possible to work again,” Alexis continues.

“For me, the network provides support, reassurance and a safe space to talk about how you’re feeling and how challenging it is to return to work. Although we all have different things, there is collegiality because we are all simply trying to manage in the workplace. All the meetings have been remote, so none of us has actually met each other yet.

But you know that when you go to the meeting, there will be a smiling face,” Alexis adds.

PAUL WHITEMAN, NAHT GENERAL SECRETARY

“I’m really proud of the groups we have put together,” agrees NAHT general secretary Paul Whiteman.

“The response we’ve had from

The social model

of disability

The social model of disability, which both NAHT and the TUC have adopted, focuses on the ways in which society is organised and the social and institutional barriers that restrict disabled people’s opportunities.

The social model sees the person first and argues that the barriers they face, in combination with their impairments, are what disables them.

Barriers can be physical, like buildings not having accessible toilets, or social/attitudinal, such as assuming disabled people can’t do certain things.

The social model is important because it shifts the focus away from what disabled people can and can’t do and instead onto the barriers that cause difficulties.

members is fantastic; the fact members are picking up and running with those groups, almost as self-organised groups, which is exactly what they should be.

“The traditional approach from unions has sometimes been to create guaranteed seats on formal committees and within structures that are often more than 100 years old. And there can often be a degree of disappointment with what happens there. So, we decided on a slightly different approach, which was to say to members who have certain protected characteristics, ‘just come and talk; tell us what you want’.

“We’ve still got a lot of work to do on this, but am very proud of the effort we are putting in and the return that members are bringing. And I look forward to meeting members of the Disabled Members’ Network at the earliest opportunity,” Paul adds.

Finally, as Jon Barr points out, the NAHT Disabled Members’ Network may still be relatively new and finding its feet, but its voice is increasingly being heard. And it is keen to welcome new members.

“We are a very young network, but I think it is incredibly rewarding to see colleagues being able to be open about the challenges their impairments create for them,” he says.

Removing these barriers creates equality and offers disabled people more independence, choice and control.

As the TUC has argued: “Barriers can make it impossible or very difficult to access jobs, buildings or services, but the biggest barrier of all is the problem of people’s attitude to disability. Removing the barriers is the best way to include millions of disabled people in our society.”

Importantly, the social model was written and designed by disabled people through conversations with other disabled people about their experiences, and so is based on disabled people’s lived experiences.

You can learn more about the social model of disability in the previous issue of Leadership Focus (see page 29). Don’t have a print copy to hand? Read it online here: www.naht.org.uk/RD/Leadership-Focus-issue-94

FIND OUT MORE…

To learn more about the NAHT Disabled Members’ Network, visit www.naht.org.uk/disabledmembersnetwork

“It is about being emotionally open about what has happened to them because of those impairments and gathering the energy to both be the leaders we are and the advocates for all of those in our schools, whether leaders, staff or pupils. And we have to be because this battle is not won by any means,” Jon adds.

ALEXIS GAFFIN, HEAD TEACHER, HERTFORDSHIRE

You have to learn self-compassion; you have to understand that in order to get better, you can’t use up every bit of energy you have and then expect to keep going. It’s like an old phone battery that takes a long time to charge and doesn’t last very long. But the key is knowing how long you can go; that is what I’ve had to learn,” says Alexis.

We are a very young network, but I think it is incredibly rewarding to see colleagues being able to be open about the challenges their impairments create for them,” says Jon.

GET READY TO GET MENTORING

One of the great tools that you can access for free as a member of NAHT is our mentoring programme.

• Make time for personal learning with someone more experienced

• Work on career progression

• Gain impartial advice and an alternative perspective

• Have a non-judgemental sounding board for ideas

• Focus on overcoming challenges and developing new skills and knowledge

WHEN SHOULD YOU SEEK A CAREER MENTOR?

Our mentoring platform contains several tools to help you identify your key needs and set achievable goals. Once you pinpoint your motivation(s), you will feel more prepared to enter and progress in a mentoring relationship.

• The SWOT tool will help you determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

• The GSTAR tool will help you define your goals, the situation you are facing, current thinking, actions you are considering and the results you are expecting

• The SMART tool will give a purpose to your mentoring relationship and help you get real results.

AND THE BENEFITS FOR MENTORS:

• Being able to pass on personal knowledge and experience and see others grow

• Having the chance to “give something back” and provide support to others

• Gaining the chance to work on new and exciting challenges

SO HOW DOES OUR PLATFORM SUPPORT YOUR MENTORING JOURNEY?

Mentors can choose to accept or decline requests from mentees and can switch their availability for mentoring on and o .

The platform has an inbuilt meeting tool that allows you to arrange meetings, set agendas and record meeting notes and action points. A video chat tool lets you conduct virtual meetings from within the platform. Finally, the platform is packed with videos, guides and checklists to support you through your mentoring journey.

If you would like to find out more, or join our programme, scan the QR code or visit naht.org.uk/mentoring-platform

WORKING WITH A MENTOR IS A CHANCE TO:

The future of qualifications in England

NAHT head of policy (practice and research) SARAH HANNAFIN looks at the possible qualification pathways that lie ahead for students and explains why NAHT is calling for a more balanced and varied approach to assessment.

determine final grades using different evidence. Students taking VTQs with a more continuous form of assessment had already completed a number of modules to provide evidence to determine a final grade; simply put, there was more resilience built in to the VTQ qualification system.

The fragilities highlighted during the pandemic have fuelled an ongoing debate about reforming the assessment landscape in England.

Criticisms have been directed at the current system of linear, terminal exambased assessment (which emphasises short-term knowledge retention), the high-stakes nature of those exams and the potential impact on students’ well-being. This mode of assessment works well for some students but disadvantages others. And as demonstrated by the pandemic, this system is not robust in times of crisis if exams can’t be sat for whatever reason. However, at the other end of the scale, continuous, non-exam-based assessment faces criticism for being less accurate and consistent than exam-based assessments. More time is taken out of teaching and learning throughout the year, and there is an increased workload for teachers with marking and moderation processes.

the range of VTQ qualifications available. But, following the problems in summer 2022 with issuing the results for BTECs and Cambridge nationals/technicals, there is the potential that the government may seek to reform the very nature of some VTQs (ie reducing those inherent flexibilities). There is a risk that the government may decide that such qualifications should look (and act) more like general qualifications.

The introduction of T levels and the review of post-16 qualifications are changing the VTQ landscape significantly, with qualifications being withdrawn from funding and the development of new qualifications. The government’s approach creates a blunt choice for post-16 students: an academic or a technical route with limited qualification options. Some young people will be forced to make a choice that will have a lasting impact on their futures, and yet, they may not be ready to make that choice. Many students want, or need, more flexible pathways that include technical and academic study, creating a blended curriculum offer.

who perform relatively well at GCSE but who are not equipped to deal with the rigours of the new linear A levels. The applied general qualifications, including BTECs, are ideal for these groups of students, and in a comprehensive setting, they provide an offer of qualifications for post-16 students that is truly inclusive. School practitioners are duty-bound to be inclusive, and there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ regarding suitable qualifications for post-16 students. But plans to remove funding for qualifications that overlap with T levels threaten the existence of applied generals, like BTECs. If school sixth forms are unable to offer these, those students seeking a blended offer of academic and vocational qualifications will be forced to move to a different provider, which may make some school sixth forms financially unviable. The government is making too many unnecessary changes to the VTQ landscape and seems unwilling to do anything to improve the GQ one. It seems to have forgotten what’s really important in all of this: that all students have the opportunity to access qualifications that are right for them, that motivate them to achieve, that enable them to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in an appropriate way and that help them to progress to the next stage in their education, training or employment.

I

n the current landscape, qualifications at key stage four and post-16 are generally split between general qualifications (GQ) and vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs).

Today GQs, GCSEs and A levels are linear qualifications assessed through a series of terminal exams taken at the end of, usually, a two-year curriculum, except for a small number of qualifications that still contain an element of non-exam assessment.

VTQs – including BTECs, T-levels and other level one, two and three

qualifications – are assessed in a more continuous, modular manner.

Students are assessed throughout their course, completing work that contributes to an overall final grade.

The qualification landscape has not always looked like this. Historically, GQs have boasted more modular structures and contained more non-exam assessment (NEA) than they do today.

However, in 2013, reforms proposed by then-education secretary Michael Gove made exams the ‘default mode of assessment’, with internal assessment/NEA only being used

‘where exams cannot validly assess the skills and knowledge required’ (Ofqual, 2013). In addition, all GCSEs and A levels were to become linear qualifications, with exams to be sat only during the summer series, apart from English and maths resits. Although AS levels would be retained, these would become stand-alone qualifications and not a means of progression to A2. The covid-19 pandemic necessitated contingency arrangements to ensure that students still received grades for their qualifications in a world where exams could not be sat. This epidemic highlighted the fragility of a model of terminal assessment, and centres had to

NAHT’s Secondary Council has been debating these issues and believes that the reforms to GCSE and A level qualifications, which favour terminal assessment via external examinations, have led to a qualification system that does not meet the needs of all students or all subjects and has little resilience in the face of any challenging circumstances. As a result, NAHT is pressing the government for a more balanced and varied approach to assessment for the purpose of awarding general qualifications, which needs to include non-exam assessments and opportunities for modular assessments.

VTQ qualifications offer this variety of assessment opportunities. Many students don’t follow a purely ‘academic’ or ‘vocational’ pathway but follow a mixed curriculum, where qualifications from each pathway complement each other to meet their needs and ambitions. NAHT supports and values the flexibilities of learning, assessment and awarding provided by

Qualifications post-16, other than T levels and A levels, are chosen by schools to meet the needs of groups of students – those with special educational needs and disabilities, for example, or those

The fragilities highlighted during the pandemic have fuelled an ongoing debate about reforming the assessment landscape in England.

Northern Ireland

The political context in which NAHT Northern Ireland members work continues to be hamstrung by stalemate and brinkmanship.

It remains to be seen if British prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Windsor agreement will be enough to restart the Northern Ireland executive. We expect to see an increase in political negotiation as both the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland council elections approach.

Sadly, in a story that is all too familiar, it is our children and those who provide for them that pay the heaviest price for political failure. School funding is appallingly low, to the point that all the employing organisations have taken the unprecedented step of writing to the secretary of state to demand an immediate uplift. With children in Northern Ireland attracting the lowest per-pupil funding across these islands alongside the system-heavy distribution of funding that effectively diverts funds away from school budgets, the schoollevel provision is shamefully low. Many schools are now unable to provide even the most basic levels of funding, and more than half are operating from significant deficit positions.

Special educational needs (SEN) provision is similarly crumbling, with wholly inadequate specialist input available and schools left

Wales

POLICY UPDATE

to muddle through. There are huge numbers of parental complaints across our system now concerning SEN provision, vast numbers of tribunals and enormous disharmony between the parents and the lead professionals delivering education on the front line. With the totally justifiable agenda to ensure that all children receive a place in schools, there has been an overt move just to place children but little regard for the appropriateness of the setting. For example, children with complex additional needs have been placed in mainstream settings with minimal support. And schools must now rely unsustainably heavily on the goodwill of many individuals who are not adequately trained, resourced or paid.

What is the reason for this drive to place children in this way? Simply speaking, the special sector is gravely overcrowded – short of a staggering 1,100 places.

This overloading has meant that every special school has lost specialist rooms to convert them into classroom spaces. Therapy rooms are gone. Sensory rooms are gone. Libraries are gone. Even the

staffrooms are gone. This is a shameful decline that we must urgently right. Workload has increased substantially, and the profession in Northern Ireland is now facing clear evidence of recruitment and retention problems. And, of course, all the education unions are in industrial action, with a half day of strike action already undertaken by the teaching unions. However, facing such a dismal landscape has not distracted NAHT from continuing to lobby politicians from all parties, the employing authorities and the Department of Education on many different issues to bring about improvements at a system level. To this end, NAHT has been actively involved in the nine reviews agreed on in the teachers’ pay and workload agreement 2017/19, ratified by the Teachers’ Negotiating Committee (TNC) on 28 April 2020. The reviews have now been completed and have progressed to the TNC. An enormous amount of work remains, but NAHT is committed to ensuring that, outside of the pay dispute, the effective and meaningful delivery of the recommendations within the nine reviews will be expedited.

Court rules on relationship and sex education

The High Court ruled in favour of the rollout of Wales’s new relationship and sex education (RSE) curriculum following a legal battle with a group of parents.

Members of the Public Child Protection Wales group claimed children as young as three would be taught “sensitive and arguably inappropriate topics”, including gender ideology, and that parents were being disenfranchised by being denied the right to remove their child from sex education. The Welsh Government said these claims were incorrect and that all lessons would be age-appropriate.

On 22 December 2022, the High Court ruled in favour of the Welsh Government on all grounds. In its ruling, the court found that the guidance on the curriculum would “ensure RSE teaching is conveyed in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner and does not breach the prohibition on indoctrination.”

Mrs Justice Steyn, presiding over the case, said: “There was a disjunct between the actual contents of the code and guidance and the claimants’ allegations. On analysis of those texts, the court concluded that the contention that they fall foul of the rule against indoctrination was misconceived.”

The campaigners argued that the new curriculum’s mandatory element breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Article two, protocol one of the

ECHR reads: “No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and teaching, the state shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.” However, the court found that it could not be claimed that the absence of a parental right of excusal breaches the first sentence of this, and there was nothing in the code or guidance in breach of the second sentence of the ECHR’s protocol. This issue has been a source of concern for our members, many of whom were targeted by the campaign group and received dozens of emails and letters about it. Since the start of the spring term, the number of calls NAHT has received on this has reduced dramatically.

Consortia

School day/ year reform

The Welsh Government has refused to pause its reform agenda, despite huge objections from all education unions and no evidence to suggest that changing the school year or extending the school day will positively impact learners. Plans for a formal consultation on changing the school year will go ahead as scheduled this term.

Following the publication of three damning reports into the education consortia, specifically around inconsistent support for school leaders and the performance of the consortia themselves, there has been no movement from the Welsh Government in the way of a response. Despite our repeated calls for action, there has been no movement from the government’s letter to us at the time, which stated that steps would be taken to improve the performance of the consortia. However, this has become a focal point for discussions with the Welsh Government as part of our dispute talks.

LAURA DOEL, NAHT Cymru director, provides an update on the work being done in Wales to protect, support and empower NAHT members.

GRAHAM GAULT, NAHT Northern Ireland director, highlights the dire funding situation and crumbling special education needs provision in Northern Ireland and how your union is working hard to bring about positive change.

Many schools are now unable to provide even the most basic levels of funding.

PAUL WHITEMAN: NAHT general secretary

Catalyst for change

By the time this column reaches you, I, along with many NAHT members, will be in Telford for our Annual Conference, where, as well as debating and deciding on the association’s priorities for the year to come, we will no doubt be reflecting on the events of the last six months.

And what a six months it has been. For the first time in our history, we have balloted the majority of members to take industrial action over pay and funding, the mere prospect of which would’ve been unfathomable just a few years ago.

But why is that? I believe NAHT is a different union from the one it was five years ago, and that can partly be attributed to the changes we’ve made inside the association to allow it to move with the times. But to my mind, the biggest catalyst for change was down to the evolving views of our members.

When people talk about trade unions, it’s often couched in terms such as ‘radical’ or ‘moderate’, and ‘political’ or ‘neutral’. People do this to try to make sense of the landscape and where various unions stand in relation to their political views.

The only problem with it is that it’s largely nonsense. Perceptions of what is deemed ‘radical’ or ‘political’ change from person to person and unions aren’t driven by such things. What matters to us is securing improvements for our members, using the tactics our members wish us to use.

I don’t believe the school leaders we have in membership today fundamentally differ from their predecessors. But I think the collective tendency within

the profession to ‘bite the bullet’ out of a selfless endeavour to keep the show on the road is becoming impossible for increasing numbers of you. And this has accelerated dramatically over the last five years.

Of course, it all comes from the same place. For years, school leaders wouldn’t give their countenance to industrial action, mainly to protect our children’s education. Now, school leaders asked us to articulate to the government how seriously we were considering taking industrial action for the very same reason.

I haven’t written my Annual Conference speech yet (and I should, because it’s soon), but I know one thing I’ll tell delegates: how proud I am.

Proud to lead a union representing a profession that collectively evolved its stance around the prospect of taking industrial action to secure a better future.

Proud to lead a union that forced the government to increase funding significantly to the tune of £4bn when it became apparent how serious we were.

Stay protected in retirement

Proud to lead a union that has experienced a huge uplift in membership during a dispute, along with a surge in the number of engaged activists within our branches and regions.

What has been a surprise is how little let-up there’s been since the ballot closed and the result was announced. The energy among activists and the level of campaigning activity have remained high. Because of your clear dissatisfaction with the government – shown from the ballots results – but also your commitment to the children in your care, we remain at the heart of the dispute.

As I write, we are in intensive talks with the government to find solutions. Regardless of how our campaigning efforts manifest themselves, I can assure you we won’t stop until we get what we know our members deserve and, through them, what the children they educate deserve.

Thank you for the fantastic things you do in your schools and for being part of NAHT as we continue to grow and evolve alongside you.

Our life members might not require help with issues related to their current employment any more, but we do support them on a range of regulatory and criminal matters. As a regulated profession, teachers in England can be referred to the Teacher Regulation Agency (TRA) even after they retire. TRA investigations are usually complex, involving a lot of documentation, and our members find the process very stressful. We try to resolve the matter at the earliest possible opportunity while ensuring we achieve the best outcome for our members. However, the TRA process often takes more than a year to resolve, with some cases taking several years if a Professional Conduct Panel hearing is required.

Testimonial from a life member

Although life members may not be teaching, they can still require an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificate. Where life members are concerned about potential soft information on their enhanced DBS certificate, we advise them on how to challenge such disclosures.

Sadly, on rare occasions, life members are contacted by the police regarding historical allegations related to their time as serving school leaders. As part of life membership, we represent members with these cases.

We also provide legal advice to life members who the police have contacted to be a witness in a criminal matter, which is often of great reassurance to members.

“NAHT did more than just handle my case with professional expertise – I also found the legal officer showed real empathy and support for the circumstances I found myself in and was encouraging throughout.

“There were times when I felt particularly lonely and isolated in the last three years, but I never felt completely alone because I knew NAHT was there working on my behalf.

“I felt that NAHT had my back at all times, worked hard and provided me with the feedback and encouragement I needed to get through the process.

“Typical of the legal officer’s thoughtfulness, towards the end of the process, they phoned to let me know the TRA had come to a conclusion –knowing I had not seen the email, they asked if I wanted them to read it to me. I did, and I am so grateful that they immediately let me know the result.”

Trusted by school leaders since 1897, NAHT has you covered. Become a life member* and gain peace of mind that will allow you to enjoy your retirement to the full: www.naht.org.uk/lifemembers

PAULA PORTER, solicitor and NAHT director of representation and advice, outlines the type of legal support we offer life members.

Above: Paul Whiteman

I’m proud to lead a union that forced the government to increase funding significantly to the tune of £4bn when it became apparent how serious we were.

Inspiring Leadership Conference 2023

‘Time to pause and reflect on myself as a leader and how I can strive to be more effective for my community.’ Delegate, 2022 ‘This year has been by far the best conference I have attended. I have been able to take something of worth from every speaker. Absolutely brilliant!’ Delegate, 2022

two, three – and

The Local Government Pension Scheme – the basics

Right now, it probably feels like you’re in one of the toughest jobs going.

A huge 84% of school leaders admit they’re stressed – according to a recent survey by Education Support.

So, we fully understand the pressures you’re under.

Yet it’s also important to make time for yourself every now and again. Thinking about things like retirement could help you feel better about the future, and boost your mental wellbeing.

Retirement is your reward

Sure, retirement may feel like the last thing on your mind right now. For a while it was for John Ivens, an executive head teacher from London, until he realised just how important it is to prepare.

“Retirement wasn’t something I’d thought about since I started working – I’d had my head in the sand,” admits John. “I had no idea about pensions, how mine were doing, or how prepared I was for retirement. Then I thought it was about time I did.”

Here to help you build your future

For further support with his retirement plans, John turned to NAHT Personal Financial Services – provided by Skipton Building Society. Since 2006, they’ve helped school leaders, like you, prepare for retirement – through no obligation financial advice.

John feels Skipton has helped to improve his outlook on retirement, “I feel much better about the future now,” he beams. “I have a better idea of how much money I should need. I’m actually in a better financial position than I thought.”

A chance to think about your goals

To save time, John had an online review through Skipton’s video link service.

“This was very useful,” adds John. “I also found the process of booking an appointment really easy.”

Skipton’s reviews are a chance to talk about your retirement. Help you develop a clearer picture of what you want from it – and see if your goals could be achievable.

With retirement creating new opportunities, John is looking forward to this phase, “I don’t see it as being the end, where I’ll be sat doing nothing” John explains. “I’d like to see more of my grandchildren – who live in Norwich.

“I’m also inspired by my dad who, at the age of 73, impulsively bought a house in France. He spent the next 19 years there – and it was the happiest time of his life.”

Making you aware of your options

Through his adviser, Asif, John discovered ways to improve his current plans. He was able to go through old defined contribution pensions he’d taken out with previous employers.

“For decades I had four pensions sat doing nothing,” he adds. “Asif recommended putting them in one place – where they might do something better in the future.”

“I was completely unaware of some of the options available. Asif was great –and very clear when talking through my options, as well as the risks involved. His advice was delivered in a way I understood – and wasn’t overwhelming.”

No pressure promise

You’re under no obligation to act on Skipton’s advice. “Asif was a very good listener and didn’t try to push me into anything,” John explains. “He merely made suggestions and provided recommendations that were right for me.”

There’s no upfront charge to hear Skipton’s recommendations. A charge will only apply if you decide to act on their advice. And Skipton will give you the time you need to decide what’s right for you.

John concludes, “I found the process very simple, very successful – and I feel a lot better for speaking to Skipton. It’s reassuring to have this service available through the NAHT – I’d certainly recommend Skipton to other head teachers.”

Want a free initial consultation?

This friendly chat will find out if financial advice, from Skipton Building Society, might be a valuable step for you. Skipton offer financial advice to anyone with a lump sum of at least £20,000 or £500 per month to invest, or £400 per month for pension related investments. For existing pensions(s), you’d need a minimum of £50,000.

Important information.

Our recommendations are likely to include stock market-based investments. These are not like bank and building society savings accounts as your capital is at risk and you may get back less than you invested. The value of your investments and any income from them may fall as well as rise. Please note, Skipton cannot offer advice on Pension Transfers from Defined Benefit schemes.

The Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) is a valuable part of the pay and reward package for non-teaching staff in schools. In the first of a twopart series, NAHT head of advice KATE ATKINSON explains the framework and background of the LGPS.

The framework

The LGPS is a statutory pension scheme, which means it was established by Acts of Parliament and administered in line with statutory instruments (or regulations) issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

The LGPS is administered locally by pension funds across the country, and these pension funds decide how pension contributions are invested. A local pension board helps each pension fund administer the LGPS and comply with the LGPS rules.

Contributions

As a scheme member, you pay contributions to the LGPS. Your employer pays the balance of the cost of providing your pension benefits. This makes the LGPS a ‘defined benefit’ pension scheme, which means the amount you receive in retirement is based on how many years you’ve been a member of the scheme and the salary you earn. You do not have to worry about how well the underlying contributions perform to receive your pension promise. Employees contribute roughly one-third of the scheme’s costs, and employers pay the rest. The LGPS is a ‘funded’

scheme, which means each fund has a ‘pot’ of money from the contributions paid that is invested to provide the benefits promised. However, as noted above, if the fund performs poorly, the scheme will still be obligated to provide you with your pension promise.

An independent actuary calculates how much your employer should pay into the scheme every three years. The actuary takes investment returns into account when setting how much your employer must pay.

Information requirements

Your pension fund must provide basic information about the LGPS when you join. Your pension fund must also provide this information if you request it, so you can ask for copies if you have lost this.

You must also receive an annual benefit statement. Your benefit statement is a yearly summary of your pension entitlement. It tells you about the entitlement you have built up at the time the statement is issued and what it could be in the future. Keep your benefit statement safe – it may help you when making decisions about your retirement. Your pension fund must tell you if any material changes are made to the LGPS rules. It is worth keeping an eye on any material changes that are notified to you to ensure that you understand how your pension operates. It is important to note that material changes can’t be made to ‘accrued benefits’ – that is, the benefits in the scheme you have already built up on a particular basis. However, changes can be made to the scheme for ‘future accrual’, which means that benefits can build up (or accrue) differently in the future.

What else do I need to know?

In the next issue of Leadership Focus, we will look at how benefits build up in the LGPS, the discretions that employers can exercise and how to make a complaint if something goes wrong.

Yes, it’s time to take a quick break. Focus on yourself. And think about your future.

Strikes

(Minimum Service Levels) Bill

– what does this mean for union members?

NEIL TODD, a partner in Thompsons Solicitors’ Trade Union Law Group (TULG), discusses the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill –the latest in a string of anti-union attacks from the government.

T he Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, laid before parliament on 10 January, would allow employers to serve ‘work notices’ on trade unions organising industrial action in relevant services where the government has set minimum service levels.

The bill is far more sweeping than the government first suggested and could impact those working in the following areas:

• Health

• Fire and rescue

• Education

• Transport

• Decommissioning of nuclear installations and management of radioactive waste and spent fuel

• Border security.

What is a ‘work notice’, and what will unions have to do to comply?

If a union does not take ‘all reasonable steps’ to ensure its members identified in the work notice comply and attend work when they would otherwise have been taking industrial action, it is at risk of being sued. The employees themselves who are identified also face losing unfair dismissal protection and will be at risk of being fired if they don’t comply.

The only requirement of the secretary of state on making ‘minimum service regulations’ in the sectors identified above is that they consult ‘such persons as they consider appropriate’ before deciding what any minimum service level should be.

NAHT solicitor and director of representation and advice Paula Porter is part of a TUC working group challenging this legislation.

A work notice would identify the employees required to work and what work needs to be performed during the strike to meet the minimum service level. Employers will be able to serve these on the union no later than seven days before the strike action is due to begin. Before giving a work notice, the employer is required to consult the union about the number of employees required to work and what work needs to be performed during the strike. However, the employer has no obligation to follow any representations made by the union over this. If the union is judged to have not taken reasonable steps to ensure its members adhere to the work notice, it will risk losing its immunity from being sued. It is still unclear exactly what taking “reasonable steps” will require in practice.

What will this mean for union members engaging in strike action?

Any worker identified in the work notice as being required to perform work to meet the minimum service level and who fails to do so would lose the protection of section 238A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act. This provision ensures that any dismissal for participating in protected industrial action is unfair if it takes place within the first 12 weeks and may be unfair if it occurs after that period elapses.

Is the new bill legal?

The proposals in the bill ignore international labour standards the United Kingdom has signed up to. In our view, the introduction of minimum safety levels does not comply with the United Kingdom’s legal obligations under convention number 87 of the International Labour Organisation on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise and article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The fact there is no limitation on what minimum service might be required, no requirement to agree on it with other stakeholders and no mechanism by which it has to be referred to a third party if no such agreement can be reached makes clear – if there was any doubt – that this is a thinly veiled political act by the government to grab headlines, limit the power of unions and restrict a vital right of working people. We are not alone in holding this view. The parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), in a report on the bill published on 6 March 2023, makes clear it does not believe the

government has made the case that the new provisions are compliant with the UK’s human rights obligations.

In a highly critical assessment, the JCHR – which has MPs and peers on it

and more Conservatives than Labour –made a number of points reflecting our arguments above. For example, it stressed the requirement for trade unions to take “reasonable steps” to ensure their members comply with work notices; however, it did not provide sufficient clarity for trade unions to know what would be required of them. It was particularly concerned with the lack of limits on the level of service the secretary of state may impose as being the necessary minimum in the event of industrial action. It also felt the categories identified were extremely broad, there was inadequate evidence of the “pressing social need” for imposing minimum service levels, and it would be better if minimum service levels were determined through negotiation and independent resolution. The government has two months to respond to the JCHR’s report, and when it does, we will see if it is prepared to change course and halt its naked assault on trade unions and working people.

Before giving a work notice, the employer is required to consult the union. However, the employer has no obligation to follow the union’s representations.

WEDNESDAY 17 MAY

Leading with your head and your heart — the ultimate balancing act

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

are great at creating a strategy, systems and plans, setting goals, following a budget and holding their team accountable to the plan’s actions and processes. Leading with your head is about competence, skills and knowledge. Teams that need structure and struggle with managing their time work best under this kind of leadership.

are great at making people feel special, giving them a sense of purpose and appreciation for their work. They focus strongly on relationships and make team members feel that they are a part of the success of a school community. Heart leaders care about the team’s happiness, ambitions and welfare.

How do you strike a balance between the two?

There’s no need to choose one leadership style over the other, but rather combine and adopt the best parts of both.

SUCCESSFUL DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

with Beverley Haywood, head of representation and bargaining at NAHT

LEADERSHIP FOR SUSTAINABILITY with Alex Green, Schools lead for Ashden

THE POWER OF TRUST IN COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP

with Nicola Percy, founder of Making Schools Click

FIRST 90 DAYS OF LEADERSHIP with Jan Taylor DEMYSTIFYING OFSTED with Philippa Ollerhead

Pranav Patel Educator and coach

‘HEAD LEADERS’ ‘HEART LEADERS’

Katie Mobed Sports psychologist and co-founder of the Moonshot series

Andrew Hammond Head teacher, education adviser and author Ginny Bootman Experienced head

Want to improve educational outcomes? Get out of your office

Dave Harris is deadly serious. “Just imagine that the government decided every child would change to a different family when they were 11. You’d walk downstairs on your 11th birthday, and your parents would say, ‘hello darling, your new home is with Mr and Mrs Smith four streets away. We hope you have a good life’.

“We smile because that’s stupid – but that’s what we do in transition. How can that make sense when we know learning is linked to how we feel? Over the world, the statistics are damning on the effect of transition: at its best, it stalls kids’ learning, but too frequently, it is the point from which it never recovers.”

Dave – a former secondary head teacher and leader of a pioneering 3-18 school and now a leadership consultant – is a man on a mission. All too often, he says, the education system mistakes transition for induction days. In his book and at training days across the UK, he argues for a fundamental change to an inadequate process.

“Where primary and secondary schools are working well, children will have done projects in the secondary from year four or five, and relationships will be there. We should encourage a relationship with schooling and the concept that this is a journey for life.”

When Dave became a secondary head teacher, his first actions included getting to know local primary head teachers and building relationships. “It always upset me at transition meetings to find that primaries

sent head teachers while secondaries sent a senior teacher. Transition should be a way of life and very much under the remit of the head teacher.”

So, how does he think leaders in a fragmented system can improve things?

“I suggest going round as a group and watching learning, from the youngest kid in the area to the oldest. Drop into lessons, spend a few minutes there and get a feel. Is it a nice smooth development from the youngest to the eldest? If it is, that’s rare – you usually find lots of stuttering, and then you’ll need to talk about expectations.”

It’s vital to agree on those expectations. If schools linked through transition include one focusing on academic rigour and the other on building positive learning experiences through fun, then an effective transition will be hard.

“In too many places, I see secondary and primary schools doing what they think is right, but taken as a whole, it doesn’t make any sense because they have such different goals. Because it isn’t about doing different things the same; it is about the intentions behind the activities.”

Language is important: don’t tell children they “won’t get away” with something

at secondary or that lessons may be boring. Teachers and schools should see learning as a long journey rather than a relay race where children are handed over for the next stage. His experience leading a 3-18 school showed him how transition could work. He believes the demands of Ofsted and the pandemic have exacerbated the problems, but he’s optimistic change will eventually come – initially in Wales because of the national curriculum being discontinued in favour of a school-led system.

“I just hope we can get people thinking, not blaming each other, and wanting a relationship,” he says. “Don’t make assumptions. Work at it and persist and pester. If you’re a head teacher, don’t give the job to somebody else –be there yourself. Everybody is busy, but the strong relationship between primary and secondary school leaders is the biggest gift we can give kids.”

You can hear Dave talk more about transition on a recent episode of the School Leadership Podcast: www.naht.org.uk/rd/Talking-about-transition

‘Independent thinking on transition: fostering better collaboration between primary and secondary schools’, by Dave Harris is published by Independent Thinking Press.

Above: Susan Young

Journalist SUSAN YOUNG talks to former head teacher turned learning consultant Dave Harris about his mission to change an inadequate process.

The Computing Quality Framework

Supporting schools to deliver excellence in computing

Is your school delivering excellent computing education?

The Computing Quality Framework (CQF) is a new free online tool which enables schools to review and improve their computing education provision and access free support and resources. The CQF, which is now being used by over 500 schools, tracks progress and recognises excellence by awarding a Computing Quality Mark.

The CQF has been developed by experts at the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE), funded by the Department for Education, and support for teachers is available from the NCCE’s network of Computing Hubs based at schools across England.

“The CQF showcases the progress we’ve made in our computing department and helped us to review our aims and create plans to achieve our goals. As an NCCE Computing Hub, we’re also looking forward to supporting other schools to achieve the Computing Quality Mark.”

Sophie Barr, computer science teacher at Pate’s Grammar School, Cheltenham