Leadership Focus, November/December 2015, issue 71

LEADERSHIP F O C U S Child sexual exploitation P.28 The magazine for NAHT members November/December 2015 • £5

Issue #71

The complexity of SEND funding P.36 The true value of NAHT Aspire P.40

The funding issue School finances are fast approaching breaking point

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Last year, 99% of our teachers completing their first year achieved 'outstanding' or 'good' in their Qualified Teacher Status grade

99% 9%

We can support your school.

Find out how at teachfirst.org.uk/partnership

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EDITORIAL WE N A T I O N A L P R E S I D E N T

T

his issue contains articles that highlight some crucial issues for school leaders: TONY DRAPER funding, assessment and a piece every leader should read, Rotherham survivor Emma Jackson who told her harrowing story of child sexual exploitation at NAHT’s Education Conferences (see page 28).

We work in challenging times and the Education and Adoption Bill is creating a climate of fear due to its emphasis on We have no issue with academies. However, we are committed coasting schools and the coasting standards by which regional to fighting forced academisation. There is no evidence that it schools commissioners can intervene. That their job descriptions improves schools or raises standards in the long term: 54 schools require them to achieve as many conversions as possible in their have changed sponsor since 2012 due to failing academy chains regions is wrong and creates perverse incentives. My view is being forced to relinquish control. that the government’s aim is to encourage schools to convert Academisation should not be the only game in town. The where there is no need. Until Autumn 2016 there are no coasting structure of the school doesn’t matter, it’s what goes on in the schools, however, and if you suspect your school may fall into school that counts. NAHT promotes local solutions for local issues that category, contact NAHT for advice. and schools working collaboratively to bring about improvement.

It was heartening to see the House of Lords stand up to the This ties in with NAHT Aspire, which is proving successful in government and push back over its welfare reforms. There is a moving schools from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ (page 40). growing coalition of parents, governors and support workers, With 100 schools involved now, research shows it is more along with teaching unions, that has come together to persuade successful than traditional local authority interventions. peers to do it again over the Education and Adoption Bill.

WELCOME

FIGHTING BACK

Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation: 28,060 (July 2014-June 2015)

ASSOCIATION AND EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES NAHT 1 Heath Square, Boltro Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 1BL www.naht.org.uk Tel: 0300 30 30 333 Editorial board: Tony Draper, Heather Forse, Lesley Gannon, Nicky Gillhespy, Kim Johnson, Magnus Gorham, Chris Harrison, Russell Hobby, Gail Larkin, Christine Milburn, Stephen Watkins and Paul Whiteman. @nahtnews @LFmagNAHT

EDITORIAL TEAM Managing editor: Steve Smethurst Assistant editor: Rebecca Grant Designer: Adrian Taylor Senior picture editor: Claire Echavarry Production manager: Jane Easterman Cover image: Alamy Columnist illustrations: Lyndon Hayes Printed by: Wyndeham Peterborough

ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES Advertisement sales: Joe Elliott-Walker Sales director: Jason Grant Leadership Focus is published on behalf of NAHT by Redactive Publishing Limited, 17 Britton Street, London EC1M 5TP www.redactive.co.uk Tel: 020 7880 6200 Email: naht@redactive.co.uk

ISSN: 1472–6181 © Copyright 2015 NAHT All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be copied or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publishers. While every care has been taken in the compilation of this publication, neither the publisher nor NAHT can accept responsibility for any inaccuracies or changes since compilation, or for consequential loss arising from such changes or inaccuracies, or for any other loss, direct or consequential, arising in connection with information in this publication. Acceptance of advertisements does not imply recommendation by the publishers.

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

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DISCOUNTS FOR HEAD TEACHERS

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Official Government Test Environmental Data. Fuel consumption figures mpg (litres/100km) and CO 2 emissions (g/km). Astra Excite 1.4i 100PS 5dr: Urban: 38.2 (7.4), Extra-urban: 57.7 (4.9), Combined: 48.7 (5.8). CO 2 emissions: 136g/km.# *£2000 Scrappage Allowance towards a new car is offered on condition that the traded-in car must have been registered in your name as the owner for a least 90 days and the registration document must be in your name and address. ^Astra offer applies to cash purchases only and include a Retailer contribution. Model featured Astra Excite 1.4i 100PS 5dr in Power Red from £12,795 on the road. £10,795 represents the on the road price minus Scrappage Allowance of £2,000. Offer available to Vauxhall Partners only; can be used in conjunction with Scrappage offer only, no other offers apply. Offers available on orders or registrations between 8 October and 15 December 2015, subject to availability at participating Retailers only. UK-supplied vehicles only. For Partners Terms and Conditions go to www.partnersprogramme.co.uk/terms-and-conditions. #Official EU-regulated test data are provided for comparison purposes and actual performance will depend on driving style, road conditions and other non-technical factors. See Retailer for further details. Correct at time of going to print 15/10/2015.

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CONTENTS

EN

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EWS Classroom refuge Thousands of Syrian children who’ve fled their home country are now receiving an education in Turkey, but thousands more are waiting for that opportunity Funding crisis Cuts to school budgets are set to have an adverse effect on school performance, say respondents to an NAHT survey

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Forced academisation NAHT president Tony Draper claims the Education and Adoption Bill is creating a climate of fear

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Work experience It’s ‘crucial’ that schoolchildren receive an insight into the working environment, says Russell Hobby

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Redundancy pay Proposed changes to exit payments for public sector workers could remove ‘safety net’ for heads

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Pay rise cap The education secretary has claimed there is a ‘strong case’ to cap pay rises for another three years

10 NAHT successes A round up of the different ways the association has secured victories for members during the past year 12 Securing a better fit NAHT’s governance structure is changing for the better, but what will the new model look like?

Caroline Roberts offers a preview of what’s to come

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FEATURES

26 NAHT Education Conference Delegates were urged to ‘unite as a profession’ at this year’s events in Manchester and London 28 I will survive Emma Jackson, a survivor of the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal, offers a harrowing insight into the world of grooming

EV

IEWS

16 NAHT partners With many schools facing a recruitment crisis, Eteach may be able to help, while Aviva offers car and home insurance at the right price 17 Legal update NAHT senior solicitor Simon Thomas’s update on employment contract law

32 Head for figures?

With two thirds of schools predicting their budgets will be untenable by 2020, Carly Chynoweth finds out how heads are coping with spending cuts

19 Rona Tutt’s column Education politics has welcomed a host of new faces since May’s election.

NAHT past president Rona offers members a ‘who’s who’

36 High needs, unfair funding Susan Young discovers that the complex SEND funding systems is presenting extra challenges for leaders at special schools

21 Russell Hobby’s column The government seems intent on slashing budgets where it can, says the general secretary, but NAHT is fighting back on behalf of members

40 Building success More schools are reaping the financial and educational benefits of signing up to NAHT’s improvement programme, Aspire. Susan Young reports

22 Best of the blogs Budget cuts, assessment changes and pupil safeguarding have been on our bloggers’ minds this issue

44 Setting a good example In the wake of the scrapping of national assessment levels, NAHT is producing new material to make assessment easier for members 48 The power of sport The Youth Sport Trust is NAHT’s chosen charity for 2015/16. To emphasise the importance of the partnership, one head reveals how sport has transformed his pupils’ prospects

50 Susan Young’s column Forest schools are teaching pupils to embrace the outdoors and unlock their learning potential

LEADERSHIP F O C U S

25 NAHT training Next year’s NAHT calendar is packed with opportunities for continuing professional development

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NEWS FOCUS

NEWS • FUNDING • COASTING SCHOOLS • WHO’S IN HEALTH? • FORCED ACADEMISATION • NAHT SUCCESSES

WE N E W S F R O M T H E W O R L D O F E D U C A T I O N

HUMANITARIAN HELP

Classroom refuge THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT IS WORKING TO ENSURE SCHOOLAGE SYRIAN REFUGEES DO NOT MISS OUT ON AN EDUCATION

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Many Syrian children who’ve fled their home country along with their families because of the ongoing civil war are now receiving an education thanks to the government and humanitarian workers in Turkey.

Last year the Turkish government spent £600m on the education of Syrian refugees and says 110,000 Syrian children are attending schools around the country.

Unfortunately, these children are in the minority.

Turkey’s deputy under secretary for education, Yusuf Buyuk, said a further

400,000 child refugees are not currently at school and he expressed concern for the welfare of these children in an interview with news agency Reuters.

“If we cannot educate these students, they will fall into the wrong hands, they are going to be exploited by gangs and criminals,” he said.

However, Mr Buyuk added that the Turkish government is set to improve standards, “which means also improving standards for Syrians”, and that it aims to have 370,000 Syrian children in education by the end of the next school year.

PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY

04/11/2015 16:08

Government ‘not listening’ to parents

Parents want greater say in schools 1 PTA UK has published the findings of two recent surveys of English parents that reveal 85 per cent want more say in how their child is educated.

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The survey revealed only 18 per cent feel the government listens to parents on what they want for their children’s education

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Future looks bleak for school budgets, say NAHT members Stay up to date with School leaders are under intense pressure to balance the books, and the latest association are expecting their budgets to be cut further in the coming years, news on Twitter NAHT has reported.

The findings of a recent member survey, published this month, have revealed that 67 per cent of school leaders believe their budget will be untenable by 2020. Seven per cent of those who took part admitted that their budget was already in deficit.

NAHT members are also concerned that the pressures put on them to work within a tight budget will have a detrimental impact on school life. More than 80 per cent of school leaders believe that operating within their current budget will have a negative impact on school performance, while many schools may have to reduce investment in school equipment or make cuts to A slide from NAHT’s teaching assistant time in an effort to Education Conference make ends meet. sums up heads’ thoughts on school funding “The education budget should not be regarded as a cost, but as an investment,” said NAHT general secretary, Russell Hobby. “Cuts in education will just mean greater expense further down the line to pick up the pieces. Our full ambitions for young people cannot be met if underfunding persists.”

He added that the challenge that school leaders face in the next five years will be “challenges of capacity: how we support hundreds of thousands more pupils with less money and fewer teachers. The government’s narrow focus on structural changes and target setting seems increasingly distant from the real needs of our schools.”

NAHT has formally called on the government to increase school funding. In September, its deputy general secretary Kathy James wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer, in response to the Comprehensive Spending Review, to put forward the association’s case for improved funding.

@NAHTnews

Funding feature, page 26; Russell Hobby, page 19

www.naht.org.uk/schoofunding

NAHT welcomes Childcare Bill amendments Extending free childcare is a ‘great idea’, but it must resourced and planned properly, said NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby.

Commenting on the passing of an amendment to the Childcare Bill, which would ensure a funding review is undertaken prior to the Bill’s provisions coming into force, Mr Hobby said: “We welcome the passing of this amendment. It is crucial that the government works with the sector to determine how the extension of free childcare to 30 hours a week will be paid for.

“NAHT has consistently highlighted the issue of funding – over half of our members are underfunded, and four out of five of those are currently funding their nurseries from their school budget, showing the need for a thorough review into how early years is funded.

“We are proud that our report, An Early Years Place for All, helped inform yesterday’s debate, and we look forward to working with the government and the private sector to develop a funding system that makes this policy a real success.”

PHOTOGRAPH: STEVE SMETHURST

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Almost all parents (96 per cent of those surveyed) said being consulted made them feel included in their child’s education

Who’s in Health? month Primary school pupils can now access a firsthand insight into the work of Britain’s healthcare professionals thanks to a successful NAHT-backed campaign which launched last month ‘Who’s in Health?’ was run as part of Primary Futures – a free-to-access project that encourages volunteers from a range of professional backgrounds to go into schools and speak to children about working life.

The month-long campaign, run jointly with the Education and Employers charity and the Medical Schools Council, succeeded in offering schools access to volunteers working in a wide variety of healthcare roles, including GPs, nurses, surgeons and pharmacists.

Steve Iredale, NAHT past president and manager of Primary Futures, is delighted with the feedback he has had from both schools and healthcare workers over the past month.

“Not only has the campaign succeeded in getting more schools registered for Primary Futures, our partners at the Medical Schools Council are delighted that healthcare professionals now have the great opportunity to engage fully with children in state primary schools, helping to raise their future aspirations,” he said.

So far, more than 2,100 schools have signed up to Primary Futures. www.inspiringthefuture. org/primary-futures

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EDUCATION & ADOPTION BILL WE Stand up to threat of

forced academisation WORK EXPERIENCE

Job insights are crucial The Education and Adoption Bill is creating a climate of fear across England due to the emphasis on coasting schools and the accompanying coasting standards through which regional schools commissioners can force academisation, NAHT president Tony Draper has said.

He told delegates at the NAHT Education Conference: “Regional schools commissioners’ job descriptions specifically state their role is to achieve as many conversions as possible in their region. This is wrong as they will approach the role with a mindset, which on a most basic level is: ‘I’m being paid to find a sponsor to force academisation on this school.’

General secretary Russell Hobby added: “There are substantial areas of concern. We are reassured by comments to the effect that, ‘where a coasting school can demonstrate that it can improve sufficiently, it should be allowed to do so.’ So there is not a default presumption of academisation. Nonetheless, the judgement is at the discretion of the regional schools commissioner and we need more transparency and consistency about how these decisions will be made.

“But we are told ‘a higher progress bar will be set for the coasting criteria in 2016 than for the floor standard’.

This is a serious concern. The floor for progress is already over 90 per cent and there is no real room for an increase.

We are also already in the academic year leading to 2016 results. The government had previously promised not to introduce major changes with a notice of less than one academic year. This decision seems in conflict with that.

“NAHT will push for open, fair and stable criteria for decision making so that we can be clear what will free a school from the threat of intervention. Above all, we will ask government to reduce its over-reliance on sanctions and focus on building capacity, investing instead in the quality of teaching.”

NAHT Education Conference, page 26 NAHT Aspire feature, page 40

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NAHT has applauded the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) for urging the government to give more recognition to the importance of work experience for young people.

The BCC’s call came after a survey revealed 79 per cent of businesses believed that work experience helps young people develop vital skills for the workplace, but 88 per cent believe most school leavers currently lack those skills.

Russell Hobby, NAHT’s general secretary, said: “We agree that pre-16 work experience is crucial to help young people form opinions about their future, whilst providing them with valuable lessons in the world of work.

“We support the business community’s call to make

work experience available to all young people. And we ask that schools are supported with appropriate resources, common sense regulations and good connections with local businesses.’

Mr Hobby added that NAHT also believes that school-age children are never too young to get a taste of working life.

“NAHT would like to see advice go even further, giving primary age children an insight into different careers. This is why we helped set up Primary Futures; a scheme which gets people from different careers into schools to talk about what they do.” www.inspiringthefuture. org/primaryfutures

Academy data questioned NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby has spoken out against the way the government uses evidence to support its education policies. Speaking at the recent NAHT Education Conference, he said: “Converter academies are performing higher than average in terms of GCSEs and newly created sponsored academies are improving faster than the average in terms of GCSEs. “But if you consider that converter academies were already high-performing schools, you would expect them to be out performing the average. And if you consider that sponsored academies are, for the most part, under-performing schools that are being turned around, you would expect them to grow at a faster rate.

“You have to unpick the data and question the policy,” he said.

PHOTOGRAPH: TEMPEST

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E

SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN WALES are set benefit from a pilot project that aims to change attitudes about mental health. The project, run by Time to Change Wales, will help debunk myths about mental health problems and help to reduce the stigma attached to them. www.timetochangewales.org.uk

‘Strong case for pay cap’, says Morgan

Public sector redundancy pay changes ‘remove safety net’ Public sector workers who are made redundant could see their compensation cut, following government plans to restrict exit payments.

Following a government consultation in the summer, the government announced it will set a £95,000 limit on the amount that can be paid out to anyone working in a public sector role.

NAHT is strongly opposed to the changes. General secretary Russell Hobby said: “We believe that this is an ideological response to a few isolated high-profile cases that have been highlighted in the media and that a proper evidence-based evaluation of the issue would not have arrived at this policy proposal.

“To limit the absolute safety net that exit payments represent in the way proposed will act as a further deterrent for head teachers to take on the most challenging school settings and will add to the school leadership recruitment crisis, particularly for schools working in areas of high deprivation.”

NAHT has also rejected the government’s proposals to ‘simplify’ redundancy payment exemptions, as it means only those with 25 years’ continuous service will benefit from full tax-free limit on payouts – currently, the first £30,000 of any redundancy payment is exempt of tax and National Insurance.

In a statement, NAHT argued that it “fundamentally disagrees with the underlying premise for this consultation that the current arrangements are confusing and poorly understood.

“Our school leader members and their employers are very clear about the difference in the payments that are liable for tax and National Insurance and those that are not. We believe that the current approach is effective in providing additional support to those losing their job and income.”

GREEN PAPER PROFESSIONAL BODIES HIT BACK AT TAX PROPOSALS Twelve professional organisations, including NAHT, have joined forces to challenge the government’s proposals to reduce tax relief on pensions.

NAHT has been working alongside other professional bodies, including the British Medical Association and the Chief Police Officers’ Staff Association, to issue a joint response to HM Treasury’s recent Green

PHOTOGRAPH: JAMIE TOPLISS-YATES, PW PHOTOGRAPHY

08_09 News.indd 9

Paper, Strengthening the incentive to save: a consultation on pensions tax relief.

In the written response, the professional bodies argued that the changes could affect their members’ incentive to pay into pensions.

“Our associations believe we should maintain the current system of pensions tax relief as it is, in our view, the most effective method of achieving the legitimate aims of government – to foster a culture of saving and provide all working people with a satisfactory standard of living in retirement.”

Teachers’ pay rises should be capped at one per cent for another three years, education secretary Nicky Morgan has insisted.

The news comes after Ms Morgan issued her annual remit to the School Teacher’s Review Body (STRB).

She also urged the STRB to consider “additional flexibilities that could be introduced to support schools,” such as making it easier for teachers to move down from the upper pay range to the main pay range, to receive non-consolidated payments – one-off lump sums that don’t form part of their ongoing base pay and feed into pensions – and to extend the salary sacrifice scheme to provide scope for a salary advance scheme for rental deposits.

NAHT has expressed concern at the news. General secretary Russell Hobby said: “This announcement is troubling for a sector with increasing concerns over recruitment and retention capabilities. Tempting graduates into the profession without the promise of a review for several years could put many off joining in favour of a more financially enticing role in the private sector.

“We believe that all teachers should be entitled to a cost-of-living increase if their salary is not to fall in real terms, and that this should be a separate issue from performance-related progression.”

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NAHT NEWS AND INFORMATION

NAHT ACHIEVEMENTS

2015 in review: how we’ve helped members With the support of our members we’re proud of what we’ve achieved for school leaders this year. Here are some of the ways we’ve represented your interests at a national and local level: Stopped the return of no-notice Ofsted inspections; Blocked dozens of unjustified forced conversions into academy status; Secured a commitment to retain universal infant free school meals (UIFSM); Persuaded the government to properly review funding for 30 hours free childcare a week; For now, prevented the re-introduction of external tests at key stage one;

Achieved an independent review panel for Ofsted complaints; Persuaded the government to abandon a dangerous model parental complaints policy; Secured the eventual publication of performance descriptors; Helped to place a fair funding formula on the agenda; Supported the creation of

schools regarding inspection notice periods and initial teacher training; Launched our own alternative inspection model – Instead – with hundreds of schools registering interest; Involved more than 100 schools in our Aspire project to help them become better protected from the threat of takeover; Established a charity with partners to take on the ownership of our profession’s leadership qualifications.

If you’re a member and have a query about any of our campaigning or lobbying please get in touch using the email address below.

a College of Teaching; Ensured that progress rather than attainment is used as a measure of school performance, having persuaded Ofsted to look beyond raw data; Encouraged the government to consider widening the definition of EBacc subjects and to engage in discussion over year seven re-sits; Gained parity for special

info@naht.org.uk

Don’t miss: last chance to benefit from referral scheme You may know the many benefits of NAHT membership – but perhaps your colleagues don’t.

You can refer head teachers, executive heads, principals, deputy heads, vice principals, assistant heads and school business managers to NAHT, or middle leaders to NAHT Edge.

Applications need to be received by 30 November.

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Referral benefits If a colleague you refer joins NAHT we will send you a £20 Marks & Spencer voucher, while those joining the organisation benefit from 50 per cent off their membership fees until 31 December 2016.* If a colleague you refer joins NAHT Edge we will send you a £20 Amazon voucher, while those joining will benefit from 50 per cent

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off their membership fees for 12 months.*

colleagues to enable them to benefit from this offer, and allow us to send your vouchers when they join.

How do I refer?

You can refer online at www.naht.org.uk/refer You can also download referral forms to give to colleagues. Please note that your name and NAHT membership number will be passed onto your referred

* New joiners are required to be a member for 30 days before vouchers are issued to the referring member.

Please allow up to three months from the applicant’s joining date for your vouchers to arrive.

PHOTOGRAPH: JAMIE TOPLISS-YATES, PW PHOTOGRAPHY

04/11/2015 14:40

Conferences offer new heads the chance to build confidence

Professor Barry Carpenter speaking at the 2015 event

Those who are new to the head teacher role will know there is no other job with quite so much potential to make a difference. But the role also presents many challenges, so it’s important to continue to invest in your own skills and find the time for reflection.

Being a successful school leader requires resilience, confidence and collaboration, which is why NAHT is giving all new heads the opportunity to build on these skills at two dedicated ‘New Heads’ conferences it is hosting in spring 2016.

The two events, which are aimed specifically at those who have taken up the role of head within the past two years, are being held in London on 18 March and Manchester on 20 May. The content of the events has been formulated by successful and experienced head teachers from all sectors. Each conference will provide new heads with information and inspiration, designed to offer them a firm foundation to develop their leadership vision, as well as how to prioritise the daily demands of the role.

There will be a chance to hear insights from practitioners, helping you to gain a picture of the changing educational landscape and to consider ways to continually strengthen your personal resilience throughout your career. The conferences also provide an opportunity to meet peers who can relate to your own concerns and experiences and also help you to identify and develop the skills you need to improve your confidence.

Keynote speakers will include Andy Cope, author of The Art of Being Brilliant, and Phyllida Hancock of Olivier Mythodrama, an organisation working to develop world-class leaders. NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby will also address delegates and there will be a choice of six workshops focusing on topics such as dealing with difficult people, emotional health and wellbeing, and demystifying Ofsted.

A place on the conference costs £155 for members, £195 for non-members.

Please book early to avoid disappointment.

www.naht.org.uk/newheads

Leicestershire will play host to NAHT’s popular SEND conference in 2016.

The two-day event will be held at the Hinckley Island Hotel in Leicestershire on 10-11 March and will cover topics including SEND funding provision, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and cyberbullying.

Among the speakers will be Marcus Orlovsky and paediatric neurologist Dr Andrew Curran. You can book your place at the website below.

www.naht.org.uk/send2016

NAHT IN BRIEF NAHT news direct to your inbox Members can keep themselves up-to-speed with all the latest NAHT advice publications at the click of a mouse button, thanks to the association’s e-alerts service. There is also the option to sign up for regular news alerts.

First aid certificates for early years staff Paediatric first-aid (PFA) certificates could become a mandatory requirement for all early years staff. The government recently launched a consultation outlining proposals for this change. NAHT will be responding, but members can also submit their own responses. The consultation closes at 5pm on 10 December.

naht.org.uk/welcome/my-naht-portal For the record If you haven’t provided NAHT with up-to-date contact details, you could be missing out on important information and benefits.

Your membership entitles you to a range of benefits, services, offers and updates but we can only let you know about them if we have your current contact information. Members who have yet to update their details should look out for a letter on referrals which will be with you shortly.

PHOTOGRAPH: UNP

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gov.uk/government/consultations/paediatric-first-aid-eyfsstatutory-framework-amendments Correction: British values article, LF September/October Last issue we attributed a quote to Hazel Pulley, head teacher at Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, regarding an Ofsted inspection in March. It should have been attributed to Rae Aldous, head teacher at Westwood Primary School in Lowestoft. We would like to apologise for any confusion or inconvenience this caused.

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GOVERNANCE

NAHT’s Regional Review is under way.

Caroline Roberts reports on how the new structure will improve democracy and decision-making AT MAY’S AGM, DURING ANNUAL CONFERENCE, NAHT delegates voted overwhelmingly in favour of a significant restructuring of the association. The Regional Review will introduce changes that hand much more autonomy to the regions, allowing them to build stronger professional communities locally and focus on the issues that are important to them.

It will also result in a smaller National Executive, with members elected directly from the regions, and better representation for individual sectors at national level.

NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby explains what the changes will mean for the association. “The review will strengthen our democracy and help us to grow as an association, both in terms of the people we represent and our influence at national and local levels,” he tells LF. “It will mean regions can adapt what we do to better suit their needs and there will be a more direct line of communication

EE “The review will strengthen our democracy and help us to grow”

Securing a better fit 12

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from the regions to the top of NAHT. In addition, the slimmed down National Executive will mean faster and more effective decision-making.”

Key changes • Electoral districts will be abolished.

• National Executive members will be elected directly from their region. It will be up to regions to decide how they nominate representatives and ensure they reflect the diversity of the region.

• Each region will have a minimum of two seats on the National Executive, with an extra seat for each additional 1,000 members (or part thereof above 3,000).

• National Executive members must be within two years of last serving as a school leader so their experience is current.

• Regional executives will have more control over funds and the power to spend these on local needs, creating a funding model that combines a central allocation with regionally generated income. Local revenue could be generated through the promotion of NAHT services, such as Aspire, Assure and continuing professional development (CPD).

• Sector committees will be replaced with more influential sector councils. Extra sector representatives will be elected nationally to ensure there is more focus on sector needs.

• Changes in the electoral arrangements will result in the National Executive being reduced by about 20 per cent.

Why the change?

The move to a more regional administration is because NAHT has more than 170 branches and it has become increasingly difficult to centrally administer that number of small organisational units. Districts have no function other than electing National Executive members and have often been the cause of confusion over representation and accountability.

Another challenge for the present structure has been the fragmentation of the education system over recent years.

“The traditional branch system, where members coalesced around a local authority structure, has completely changed,” says Magnus Gorham, NAHT’s director of democracy and governance. “The new structure will make it possible to take a strategic approach across each region and find out how we can represent members better within different structures such as academies and free schools.”

National president Tony Draper adds: “The previous system E was unwieldy in many respects and regions didn’t really have

IMAGE: GETTY

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GOVERNANCE WE The new-look

National Executive W an oversight of professional development and finance. The review will give regions greater control over many aspects of their activity, such as finance, strategic direction, local campaigning and organisation.

“The desired outcomes are to create stronger local advocacy and resilient branches, to reignite dormant branches and to set up good lines of communication so you don’t end up with two branches near to each other spending £1,000 each on the same CPD when they could have done it together. But it’s up to the regions to determine how they want it to look. It’s about them owning it.”

More clout for sectors The review will also give a stronger voice to individual sectors: deputies and assistant heads, primary, secondary, early years, special schools and school business managers.

To date, the association has been very good at focusing on one sector at a time, says Russell. “It’s currently a bit like a lighthouse. We shine our attention on one thing, then the beam moves on, leaving people in darkness. We don’t want that; we want perpetual illumination.”

The plan is to move from sector committees to sector councils with enhanced status. Extra sector representatives will be elected nationally to ensure there is more focus on the particular needs of sectors. Each sector will report directly to the National Executive, and Executive members will have more opportunity to gain an overview of what’s happening in each sector.

“We want the groups representing them to be more powerful and influential bodies inside our association,” says Russell. “The move to councils involves directly electing the chair of the council from the membership and giving them more say over their own affairs so we make sure we’re keeping our attention on all the different phases we work in.

If you have each sector with its own leadership, which has a strong role to play, then they can keep us focused on that.”

Regional seats North East North West Yorkshire West Midlands East Midlands Eastern South West South East South Central London Wales Northern Ireland National treasurer

2 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 2 2 1

Sector councils Deputy/assistant heads Primary Special Secondary School business managers Early years

2 2 2 2 1 1

Eligibility: serving school leader within two years

“Another item that’s coming over the horizon is facilities time. Our serving school members are having diminished amounts of time paid for at a local level to enable them to fulfil some of these roles. It’s clear we need to find alternatives, but they need to be alternatives that work on the ground.

We need to make these volunteer posts attractive so we are working with the early adopters to find some solutions.”

The South East pilot A gradual process Each region is expected to take up to two years to effect the transition and a full programme of support and advice will be available. Some are beginning the process this autumn, with a staggered roll out across the country planned throughout 2016.

It’s hoped that the entire process will be completed by 2018.

There will be challenges, and regions – particularly those that are first to embark on the transition – will need to feel their way through the changes. “It’s important that regional roles are set up so they are doable and members want to do them,” says Magnus. “We absolutely accept that people are volunteers and certainly those serving as school leaders don’t have that much time, while retired members don’t want to be doing something that’s taking up huge amounts of their time either.

14

Michael Gavan is regional officer organiser for the South East, a pilot region for the changes, which began the process in February. “The main challenge was to try to find a way to get branches to become more active,” he says. “We’ve held campaign meetings around the Education and Adoption Bill in Surrey, East Sussex and Kent, which have been well attended and generated a lot of interest. In other places, we’ve focused on Ofsted, and we’ve just done some advocacy training at Medway branch, which was attended by 24 members. Of those, six want to move on to the next stage so that’s quite an exciting development.”

It’s not about forcing members to take over the role of regional officers, he adds. “We’re saying that regional officers aren’t the fount of all wisdom and can’t do everything. We’ve got

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such an able membership and it makes sense to use it. It’s a chance for colleagues to step up and help our association grow, and be a part of an organisation that defends its members in a really powerful way.

“We have a very strong advice system in the NAHT, perhaps the best of any union in the country. But any trade union has to be about more than just providing advice; we have to get involved in issues and be a campaigning organisation, and that’s what we are trying to do. We’re seeing a big change in the South East and I think that’s a change that other parts of the country will embrace.”

Michael feels that having members of the National Executive elected directly from regions will make it clearer who they represent and to whom they are accountable. And submitting plans to the regional executive, rather than to NAHT in Haywards Heath, will mean more local coordination and better use of resources.

“For individuals, it will mean an even better service than before, because head office and regional advice will still be there but there’ll be more high profile branches operating and they can get support from them as well. It will reinforce the presence of NAHT in localities and make it a more powerful organisation. That will be good for everyone. It’s a turn towards a much more campaigning style of organisation. It’s definitely what we need in the current climate and I think it will serve us really well.”

The South East is planning a regional conference in February 2016, at which it plans to take stock of the progress so far.

EE “It’s a bit like a lighthouse. We shine our attention on one thing, then the beam moves on, leaving people in darkness. We don’t want that; we want perpetual illumination”

The new structure means a more efficient response to issues in the region, he says. “The regional officers know the points of crisis, such as how central government is going to fund or part-fund the 30 hours of nursery education and the universal infant free school meals programme. Some local authorities lack efficient data sharing so some schools aren’t receiving the correct funding.” There will also be more awareness of local cost pressures when it comes to CPD, he adds. In Cumbria, for example, more than 60 per cent of schools are small and can’t afford significant sums to go to training events, especially as they have to travel long distances.

The main priority is to maintain the level of advocacy for members in difficulty. “Local authority resources are dwindling due to cuts. The people who might have supported a head no longer exist, so more of this will fall to the region.

The new structure means that more low-level issues needing support are likely to be picked up.” But, he points out, working as a region isn’t just about dealing with things that are going wrong. “It’s an opportunity to share and celebrate things that are going right.”

Implementation schedule The North West pilot The North West region is at the beginning of the process, having had its first meeting in October. “It reassured some people that it’s not going to be imposed from the top; it’s going to come from the region taking a proactive stance,” says regional secretary Mike Wilson. “We’ll have a group working on a development plan with NAHT staff that will give us our strategic development plan for 2016-17.

For him, the initial challenges are around making the best use of available resources and defining the volunteers’ activities. “We’ve identified a few areas we want NAHT to look at in respect of the workload, as it’s going to be a change for the regional secretary and treasurer, especially as the North West is the second largest region in the country. If we’re going to fill those roles, we need clarity about what they are going to involve.”

For each region, the support process is likely to last around 18 months. The first few months will focus on building regional capacity and developing an operational plan.

There will be four tranches of regions going through the change process, with three regions in each. The first two tranches will begin the process in 2015 and early 2016 with staggered starts, as follows: • Tranche one: South East (September 2015); Yorkshire (October 2015); North West (November 2015).

• Tranche two: South West (January 2016); London (February 2016); West Midlands (March 2016).

• Tranches three and four will follow in 2016, with timings decided in conjunction with the Regional Secretaries’ group.

The plan is to learn from the experience of the first tranches and embed good practice as the roll-out continues into 2016.

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04/11/2015 14:41

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But despite the wealth of potential candidates, schools are struggling to recruit and retain teachers for STEM and leadership roles. Worrying shortages are being experienced at primary schools, with only one suitable candidate for every two leadership roles on offer. Eteach has seen 8 per cent more jobs advertised at this level versus last year.

Eteach CEO Paul Howells said: “Running an advert, particularly for shortage subjects or leadership roles, isn’t enough. Schools need to have a wider candidate attraction strategy, and we’re delivering results via a combination of online recruitment, targeting the passive market and social media, combined with our 1.2 million database.”

To find out how Eteach may be able to help you, visit www.eteach.com, telephone 0845 226 1906 or email info@eteach.com

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SERVICES FOR SCHOOLS NAHT ASSURE HR, payroll, property, health and safety 0845 519 7001 Email: helpdesk@nahtassure.co.uk www.nahtassure.co.uk Online DBS checking 0845 519 7001 www.nahtassure.co.uk/online-dbs ETEACH Online staff recruitment 0845 226 1906 Email: info@eteach.com www.eteach.com GL ASSESSMENT Pupil assessment 0845 602 1937 www.gl-assessment.co.uk GL PERFORMANCE Kirkland Rowell Surveys 0191 270 8270 www.kirkland-rowell.com THE EDUCATION BROKER Staff absence insurance 0845 600 5762 www.theeducationbroker.co.uk

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NEWS FOCUS

LEGAL UPDATE

Withdrawal of job offers We are regularly contacted by members who have had job offers withdrawn, writes NAHT senior solicitor Simon Thomas.

The problem is particularly acute when it happens after the member has handed in their resignation from their current role.

This gives rise to a number of legal issues, some of which are covered below.

Did the offer of employment result in a binding contract with the future employer?

If there is no binding contract the offer can be withdrawn at any time. For there to be a binding contract there needs to be offer, acceptance and certainty. Acceptance may be inferred from conduct but it must be communicated to the employer (resigning from one’s current post is unlikely to amount to acceptance of a new post).

‘Certainty’ does not mean every aspect of the employment must be set out in detail, but the essentials (job title, start date, place of work, salary or at least pay range) should be agreed. An offer that is ‘subject to satisfactory references’ is unlikely to be binding unless, and until, the employer has received and is satisfied with the references.

Can a ‘binding’ contract be enforced?

No. Courts will not compel an employer to honour its agreement to employ an employee. The employee’s remedy is almost always limited to a claim for financial compensation (damages).

If a claim can be brought, how will damages be assessed?

Damages tend to be worked out on the basis that, had the breach not occurred, the employer would have terminated the contract as soon as it could lawfully do so. This generally means the maximum damages will be equivalent to net earnings (plus the value of any other benefits) for a period equivalent to the notice period under the contract. In maintained schools (and often in academies and independent schools) this generally means one term.

What issues may arise in a claim for damages?

Assuming there is a ‘binding’ agreement, an issue that often arises is whether the employee/applicant gave dishonest or misleading information during the application/appointment

PHOTOGRAPH: PLAINPICTURE

17 Law.indd 17

process and/or whether the employee failed to disclose information they knew, or ought to have known, would have been of interest to the employer.

The legal position is that the applicant must not give dishonest or misleading information. If they do, the employer is entitled to withdraw the offer or, if the employment has already started, terminate the employment, usually without notice. The issue may be whether the information was ‘misleading’. There is often a fine line between not disclosing and misleading.

However, the applicant is under no legal duty to volunteer information they have not been asked for, even if they know, or ought to know, that the information may be of interest to the employer. An employment contract is not of ‘utmost good faith’, unlike insurance or partnership contracts, for example, where there would be a duty to disclose. Neither does an employee generally owe a fiduciary duty to their employer, unlike a company director.

In the case of Nottingham University v Fishel (2000), the court said: “The fundamental feature of a fiduciary relationship is the obligation of loyalty, which means a duty to act in the interests of another. The employment relationship is not a fiduciary relationship in this sense since its purpose is not to place the employee in a position where he is obliged to pursue his employer’s interests at the expense of his own. The relationship is a contractual one.”

Of course, it is all very well to point out that the applicant has no legal duty to disclose, but given that the court won’t enforce performance of the contract, and the limited damages available, the legal duty may not be the overriding consideration. Does one disclose and risk not being offered the job or keep quiet and risk it coming out later?

One thing an applicant can try to do is to check that pre-employment checks and, in particular, references have been received and are satisfactory before they give notice to their current employer.

If you need professional advice, call 0300 30 30 333

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26/10/2015 11:05

OPINION

VIEWS IN EDUCATION • RONA TUTT • RUSSELL HOBBY • BEST OF THE BLOGS

WE V I E W F R O M A P A S T P R E S I D E N T

A

change of government is usually of greater significance than a RONA TUTT party in opposition electing a new leader.

So far, however, moving from a coalition government to a Conservative party which doesn’t have the LibDems attached seems less of a change than Labour replacing its leader.

As the TES put it: “Jeremy Corbyn WHO’S WHO IN EDUCATION? YOU has surprised almost everyone, possibly including himself.” And with the new MAY RECOGNISE DAVID WALLIAMS, leader comes a new shadow cabinet.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POLITICIANS? Lucy Powell, who entered Parliament as recently as 2012 and is the Labour that we forget the one in ten who suffer from a mental health and Cooperative MP for Manchester Central, has been appointed disorder? Is it because it is far too taboo to talk about our mental shadow secretary of state for education. In her first major speech health?” Natasha has been given the opportunity to be at the she said the ‘relentless mission’ of her team would be to hold the forefront of tackling this neglected area and helping to remove government to account for its failures. the stigma attached to it, so we wish her good luck.

Another person who plans to do this, despite being a Conservative, is Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud, who has taken Read all about it over from Graham Stuart as chair of the Education Committee.

Meanwhile, secretary of state Nicky Morgan has been roping in Judging by his interests, which include hedgehogs, herbs and the great and the good – or at least the well known – to further tractors, he may turn out to be an interesting character. some of her causes. David Walliams, famous for his double act Already, he has put a more modern stamp on the committee by with Matt Lucas and writing children’s stories with titles such as launching a blog and encouraging stakeholders to express their Gangsta Granny, has joined the secretary of state to make pupils views on what the select committee should investigate. So do in England the most literate in Europe within five years. feel free to write to him – the invitation is there.

Speaking (appropriately) at the Charles Dickens Primary Also in the limelight is the latest in a long line of behaviour School in London, Ms Morgan spoke of the children for whom experts. Tom Bennett has blogged that a pupil’s love of iPads reading is a closed book, pointing out that, although our nine doesn’t necessarily lead to a love of learning, but rather to an and 10 year olds are ranked sixth in Europe, this puts them interest in Kim Kardashian and Jessie J, among others, who may behind Finland, (the most phonically regular language as or may not be appropriate role models for the young. opposed to the most irregular), and Northern Ireland, which is one up to our members there.

Lest we forget There are many other new names – too many for a single article More recently, and, for the first time, a mental health tsar – but at least it makes a change to concentrate on people rather for schools has been announced: Natasha Devon, a writer than policies. If only governments would let us concentrate on and founder of two organisations to do with self-esteem and pupils rather than processes, practices and procedures. body image. Since BESD (behaviour, emotional and social development) changed to SEMH (social, emotional and mental health difficulties) in the 2015 SEND Code of Practice, there has Rona Tutt is a retired head been a belated focus on the mental health needs of pupils. teacher and a Indeed, on the YoungMinds website, there is a telling quote: past president of NAHT “One in 10 children and young people have asthma. How is it

VIEWPOINT •

PEOPLE WATCHING

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Ć&#x;žĞͲĆ?Ä‚Ç€Ĺ?ĹśĹ? Ć?ŽůƾĆ&#x;ŽŜ ƚŽ ŏĞĞƉ Ä‚ĹŻĹŻ Ç‡Ĺ˝ĆľĆŒ Ć?Ä?ŚŽŽů ƉŽůĹ?Ä?Ĺ?ÄžĆ? ƾƉ ƚŽ ĚĂƚĞ What is the fastest way to keep school policies updated and introduce new policies when needed?

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26/10/2015 11:08

OPINION

EE “I am tired of hearing politicians talk about education as a cost. It’s not. It’s an investment”

W

hen I last wrote to you in this magazine I made RUSSELL HOBBY some predictions for the academic year ahead. I also talked about what NAHT is doing at a national and local level to ensure school leaders everywhere are represented and afforded the respect they deserve.

Front of mind – and on the front cover of this issue of LF – is the topic BUDGET CUTS ARE A ‘SHORTof funding. We have taken an in-depth TERM FALSE ECONOMY’ THAT look the measures schools up and NAHT WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT down the country are taking to balance their budgets this year. recognises the need to match the overall level of funding to the Our Breaking Point report was published at the start of real cost pressures in schools, including meeting the shortfalls in November and the findings were every bit as concerning as funding for early years, sixth forms and for services previously you might imagine. Nearly two thirds of school leaders (64 provided by local authorities. Furthermore, turmoil and change per cent) say they are making ‘significant’ cuts or drawing exact a high price in education, as schools must change staffing on reserves to stave off deficits. Four in five of you (82 per requirements and buy new resources – a period of stability cent) said that budget cuts would have a negative impact on would help manage costs as well as improve performance. standards. You can read the full story on page 26.

We also need a fair national funding formula to ensure that Flat cash education funding at a time of rising costs is pushing limited funds go where they are most needed. You will see the many schools closer to breaking point. The money coming fruits of our efforts to influence government plans in the next into schools is not keeping up with the expenditure you face. issue of this magazine.

As the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out recently, the Children eligible for the pupil premium should be registered government’s post-election funding commitment equates to a automatically, rather than forcing schools to discover their cut of about 8 per cent – the first real-terms cut in education eligibility. This could increase take up significantly and reduce spending since the 1990s. I am tired of hearing politicians talk administrative workload. Our lobbying efforts are bringing this about education as a cost. It’s not. Education is an investment nearer to reality. in the future; cuts to this budget are a false economy.

We should also invest in the further development of school business managers (SBMs), who can help schools navigate this A fight for every penny difficult territory. This includes a genuine freedom for schools We are using the data gained from our report to lobby to pay SBMs at a level commensurate with the leadership pay the government as hard as we can in the run-up to the scales in order to attract and retain their expertise.

Comprehensive Spending Review on 25 November. Unless No matter what the pressures are, I’m proud that NAHT we fight for every penny, the government will trim and chop members are always leading from the front. We take ownership away at the fringes wherever they can. That is why it was so of standards and we take responsibility for each other. That has pleasing recently to see the prime minister bow to pressure always been the NAHT way. And you can’t put a price on that. from NAHT and other voices in education and confirm that universal infant free school meal funding was safe. With all the other cuts coming to hit lower-income families, this is the Russell Hobby right decision in my view. is NAHT general secretary We will continue to press the government on funding until it

VIEWPOINT •

BREAKING POINT

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04/11/2015 14:42

BEST OF THE

BLOGS Cutting costs at the expense of experience Susan Young There was a ‘crumb’ of good news for schools when the Institute for Financial Studies (IFS) forecast recently that per-pupil spending will fall by around eight per cent by 2020, rather than the 12 per cent it predicted at election time. But, Susan Young writes: “It’s not going to come as a surprise to any English school that they can expect to ‘feel the pinch’ over the next five years.

“Also, to the surprise of nobody in schools, the IFS reckons it will be ‘a significant challenge’ to recruit the required number of teachers, ‘of sufficient quality and motivation, at a time of continued public pay restraint and rising pupil numbers.’ Either, it says, 30,000 extra teachers would need to

Where now for teacher assessment?

Warwick Mansell Reporting back from the recent Association for Achievement and Improvement through Assessment (AAIA) conference, Warwick Mansell found that one ‘fascinating’ debate on the future of teacher assessment gave him plenty of food for thought.

“Several important issues lay underneath our small debate around the lunch table at this conference,” he writes. “These include the implications of the kind of learning this part of the high-stakes accountability system may encourage; the perennial issue of the backwash effect on teaching of that accountability apparatus; and the very future of teacher assessment.”

In his blog, Warwick outlines his thoughts on some of the issues raised during the discussion, particularly on how the new ‘interim’

be recruited, or the pupil/teacher ratio might have to rise.”

She adds: “At a time of rising rolls and a recruitment shortfall, getting qualified bodies in front of your classes may be enough of a problem in itself even without considering how good they are at the job. I have a vague memory that during the last financial squeeze there were lots of new teachers around – and it was the comparatively cheap NQTs who were snapped up for available jobs rather than the experienced but expensive.”

She concludes that working collaboratively could help school leaders stay afloat in times of austerity, but also thinks education workers could learn from NHS campaigners and “get the public to understand the money schools get – and the miracles they’re expected to achieve with it.”

www.naht.org.uk/susan-young

guidance on assessment will ultimately affect pupils.

“The rules say that, in order to meet any of these different levels of performance, the pupil has to fulfil all of the bullet-points within that particular level, as well as all of those within the level below it.

“This has quite profound implications, it was agreed during our discussion.

The most obvious is the requirement that pupils meet all of the bullet points would seem, all other things being equal, to represent a serious raising of the bar in terms of expectations being made of pupils.”

He also ponders if some talented children may be penalised because they are less capable at other aspects.

“Is there not a danger that the child who is, perhaps, OK across all aspects of the subject rather than inspired in one area and not good in another, will be rewarded?”

VIEWS IN EDUCATION • BUDGET CUTS AND STAFF RECRUITMENT • TEACHER ASSESSMENT SPARKS DEBATE • COUNTER-EXTREMISM IN SCHOOLS

Doing our duty to prevent extremism in schools Russell Hobby School leaders faced another new challenge this term: implementing the Prevent Strategy, which has been introduced to help tackle extremism.

In a recent blog, NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby addressed the challenges that the new policy brings for schools. He writes: “From a school’s point of view there are two major concerns. Is this something we should really be doing and, if so, how do we do it? To put it bluntly, teachers are not counter-terrorism experts, have no wish to be ancillary members of the security service and lack the training to do it well even if they did.

“The duty, however, is important.

The majority of teachers and staff in schools do want to play their part to protect young people from developing extremist viewpoints and from the dangers of radicalisation. So, yes, it is something schools should be doing; the tricky question is, what is ‘their part’?

He directs members towards detailed guidance, produced by the NAHT on the issue, as well as the training it provides – something which he believes is vital for all schools.

“Acting appropriately in safeguarding terms does require an understanding of the risks and how to address them.

It requires knowledge of the sources of reliable expertise and advice. And this is where teachers are being let down. There is a worrying lack of training and support for staff in understanding and addressing the risks of extremism. Without support, it is particularly hard for example to spot early warning signs of genuine radicalisation and to differentiate those from the traditional challenging and probing behaviour of young people throughout the ages.”

www.naht.org.uk/warwick-mansell www.naht.org.uk/russell-hobby

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26/10/2015 11:09

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CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

2016 New Year courses Embedding the SEND reforms: keeping on the right side of Ofsted and the law NEW London, 13 January This course will cover the latest information on the SEND reforms and how to embed them in your early years, school or college setting. As well as outlining the changes and the timetable for implementation, the legal implications will be covered, along with how to meet Ofsted’s expectations.

The new inspection framework: understanding, preparing and managing London, 13 January Manchester, 4 February Ofsted’s new common inspection framework came into force in September and this course brings you up to date with all the changes. You will have the opportunity to examine each aspect of the new inspection in relation to your own school.

Building leadership capacity for new deputy and assistant head teachers London, 15 January Designed for newly-appointed deputy and assistant head teachers, this course explores your role and responsibilities and helps you to identify a personal development plan to support or complement your induction into your new position.

Exploring academy status Bristol, 21 January London, 23 February This comprehensive and practical course presents an impartial overview of the pros, cons and consequences of moving towards academy status. It will help you understand the key issues around constitution, governance and finance, as well as the implications for management. It will direct you towards sources of information and support should you want to take things further and cover the key considerations when making the decision.

Benchmarking: annual chore or beneficial strategic tool?

Birmingham, 28 January Professional insight from one of NAHT’s most highly regarded consultants will help you read and record the story that finances tell you about pupil outcomes and school effectiveness, by helping you create a personalised report tailored for your particular school to inform strategic planning and comply with the schools financial value standard (SFVS).

Working with cost centres NEW Manchester, 11 February School governors and leaders are under increasing pressure to direct resources to activities that deliver maximum educational outcomes and the best value for money. A cost-centre management approach to the organisation of finances allows for easier interrogation of financial information and brings clarity to decision making and budget setting. This new programme will help you prove and challenge budgetary allocations and support and defend the areas you want to protect.

Ofsted and the SENCo: the new NEW framework and expectations London, 25 February The course will give SENCos and senior leaders iin mainstream schools a better understanding of Ofsted’s new expectations with regard to outcomes for disabled pupils, those with special educational needs and those with mental health needs.

Improving school achievement through effective self-evaluation London, 26 February Continuous and rigorous school self-evaluation is at the heart of school improvement. This course will guide you to focus your improvements on the areas that matter through a mixture of informative, reflective and practical activities, delivered by a specialist consultant.

NEW Improving progress: avoiding coasting London, 3 March This course is designed to support school leaders rs who are striving to move their school forward.

Schools that are seeking to improve the progress of their learners, including those who may be at risk of being judged to be coasting in 2016, will receive practical support to ensure they are equipped with all the latest strategies and good practice needed to improve.

For more information or to book your place, visit www.naht.org.uk/trainingcourses

PHOTOGRAPH: JAMIE TOPLISS-YATES, PW PHOTOGRAPHY

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NAHT EDUCATION CONFERENCE

‘We can achieve great things’ NAHT’S EDUCATION CONFERENCE TOOK MANCHESTER BY STORM LAST MONTH, WITH A WIDE RANGE OF SPEAKERS AND WORKSHOPS More than 180 school leaders attended NAHT’s Education Conference in Manchester in October. What they experienced was a dizzying mixture of the profoundly shocking (see page 28), rewarding professional development, insights into the turbulent political landscape and a rallying call to unite as a profession.

The conference’s theme, set by NAHT national president Tony Draper, was ‘Catch the Energy – Release the Potential’. “How do we do that?” he asked. “By taking the risks that turn our good schools into great schools and our good leaders into great leaders.”

One of the ways NAHT is taking that on board as an association is through the work of NAHT Aspire, a school improvement initiative in partnership with EdisonLearning (see page 40). One of the workshops open to delegates featured Sarah Holland, head teacher at Lovers’ Lane primary in Newark, which was supported to improve from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ through the NAHT’s Aspire pilot, a scheme that is now open to all schools.

Mr Draper informed delegates that the day’s workshops offered something for everyone, and so they did. LF columnist Rona Tutt (see page 19) spoke at a session on mental health in schools, including the expectations of recent legislation and ways in which schools can support pupils. NAHT senior regional

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officer Rob Kelsall talked about safeguarding and challenging extremism, while workshops titled ‘Do Less Achieve More’ and ‘Achieving a Successful Work/ Life Balance’ offered the potential to make school leaders become even more effective than they are already.

The afternoon keynote speaker was Brentwood County High School head Stephen Drew, best known for his appearances on TV’s Educating Essex and Mr Drew’s School for Boys. His theme was ‘No excuses’.

He told delegates: “In education, if we try to explain something doesn’t work, we feel as if we are making excuses and ‘excuses’ is a dirty word. That’s a dangerous phenomenon because our entire ethos as teachers of young people is to encourage them to take risks and that failure is no bad thing.

I feel there’s a disconnect and it’s a risky position to be in.

“It’s almost as if you can have either results or excuses. If you talk about exam results in the context of losing science teachers halfway through the year or a particular cohort, you are told you are a bad leader and not trying hard enough.”

His conclusion was that school leaders are the polar opposite of excuse makers – and sometimes they should make excuses.

He suspected that school leaders could be their own worst enemies. “If somebody writes a nice letter, we dwell on the emails saying the food’s not good

View from the top: NAHT members gathered at the Mercure Hotel in Manchester to hear from association leaders and keynote speakers

enough. We need to change that mindset. Collectively, we should be very proud of what we do.”

Then it was the turn of NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby to run through the latest policy developments, many of which are covered in LF’s news pages (see pages 7-9). During the next ‘challenging’ five years, he said, there would be more pupils, higher demands, fewer teachers, reduced funding and lower pay – all capacity issues – but that government strategy was “an old fashioned battle for autonomy and accountability”.

He also covered the definition of coasting schools as it appears in legislation. “Basically, it’s any school told by the secretary of state that they are a coasting school.” However, there are no coasting schools yet, as the definition requires three years of data, which will not arrive until September 2016.

“If anyone tries to tell you that you are

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E

DELEGATE SNAPSHOT Sale head teacher Anthony Dutton said: “I’ve come for the chance to network and the range of workshops. The programme is great. It’s an opportunity to keep abreast of current developments”

coasting before that, they are wrong,” he said, adding there is plenty of guidance on the NAHT website.

“How do we seize back control?” he asked. “We take responsibility for each other, we take back ownership of

PHOTOGRAPHY: JAMIE TOPLISS-YATES, PW PHOTOGRAPHY

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standards. It’s about groups of schools making sure they look out for each other, making sure no school falls behind. The era of the standalone school is coming to end. There are lots of ways to do this, like good old-fashioned federations. But it

needs mutual accountability and support to make it work.”

Wrapping up the day, president Tony Draper hoped the audience had been inspired and motivated. And he had a message: “Can I ask you to do something? I don’t worry about the people in this room today. You understand the importance of networks and continuous learning and getting out of the environment of your school, that it’s vital to get out. But we’ve all got colleagues who are basically locked in their offices waiting to be ‘done to’.

“When you go back to your schools, think of someone you haven’t seen for a while. Pick up the phone or email them; invite them to get involved with their NAHT branches or training, because schools working together have a strong voice and can achieve great things.” www.naht.org.uk

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04/11/2015 14:43

CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION

I will Child sexual exploitation tation survivor Emma Jackson ckson shocked delegates at NAHT’s nce Education Conference with the ordeal she went er through as a teenager EMMA JACKSON BEGAN WITH A SIMPLE statement. “I am from Rotherham and I am a survivor of child sexual exploitation (CSE).

I am going to take you through my experiences of being exploited.”

She explained that as she travels the countryy talking to victims of CSE, their experiences are thee same as hers, regardless of where they are from. The he only difference is that some are exploited online. ne.

“The tactics are the same. That fear is still the same. me.

Because if something works, why change it? That at is what groomers think. And it works brilliantly, because cause if it didn’t we wouldn’t have the figures that we have.” ave.”

She explained that CSE has been classified as a national threat and “is being taken very seriously. sly. To me, that is amazing because I have been campaigning igning about CSE for 13 years.”

Emma’s experience is that most people can comprehend prehend CSE, but not grooming. “We all groom,” she says. “The difference is most of us don’t groom to harm somebody, we groom oom because we want someone to like us. When I met my partner, er, I was quite selfish and thought if I revealed what I was like, he probably

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survive EE “I was never taught that sometimes rapists might text you, they don’t always hide in a bush, they are not always someone you don’t know”

w wouldn’t see me again. So I made out that I was the person he had o been searching for. When I knew that he loved me, I went back to who I really was and he accepted my good points with my bad.

“That’s why, when you are a victim of CSE, the question you get asked the most is, ‘why did you go back?’ You don’t go d back to t the CSE, you go back to the you are searching for grooming, because b that person that you first met and trying to get them to go back to being that person. It is very in that respect.” similar to domestic violence vi experience of being groomed came Emma’s first exper Sheffield’s Meadowhall shopping at 12 years old at She actions were age appropriate – she centre. Yet her actio was mixing with young people. She met a group yo of boys who were 114 years old, and although she didn’t realise it, they the started to groom her.

PHOTOGRAPH: JAMIE TOPLIS TOPLISS-YATES, PW PHOTOGRAPHY

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“I would meet them every weekend and we would do things like play on the car games in the arcade, get a McDonald’s or an ice-cream and I would go home. And if it had stayed there that would have been fine.”

But after a few months of building her trust, they brought older teenagers along. “They were friends of friends,” says Emma. “I trusted the younger boys, so I trusted whoever they hung around with.”

After another few months they brought people with them who were in their 20s. From Emma’s work in schools, she knows most children have a fixed idea of what a paedophile looks like, and it’s not friends of friends in their early 20s.

“I never saw it as a problem because, even though they were adults, they didn’t fit into the category of someone who could be of harm to children.”

It was at this point that the grooming stepped up a gear.

“I started going into Rotherham town centre and seeing them every day. The younger boys who I met originally stayed at Meadowhall to find the next group of young girls to groom on behalf of these adult males. The reason they use younger people to groom is because we would all know it was wrong if a 13-yearold said she was in a relationship with a 23-year-old. We don’t E

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CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION WE What about the perpetrators?

W question it if she is in a relationship with a 14-year-old.

“I was now being introduced to more and more men every day. They offered me soft drugs and alcohol and I took it because of peer pressure. That was one of the tools used on me, but at no point was I ever a drug addict or an alcoholic.”

Emma comes from a good, loving family and knowing they would disapprove added to the excitement, she says. “I was a good kid. I was in the top sets all the way through school, I was doing well and I was expected to go on and achieve whatever I wanted to achieve. I never had any issues with attendance or behaviour until my sexual exploitation started,” she says.

“Every perpetrator has attended a school and possibly still attends one. Many will still be children. I would look at how they are being groomed and what sort of abuse they are suffering. I think the boys at Meadowhall knew what they were doing, but I don’t think they understood the seriousness of it,” says Emma.

“I worked with a group of boys in Leeds from Beeston and they were involved in gang activity and drug dealing. They were also involved in grooming children for CSE. They had been made to play a part in the gang rape of a young woman and the older perpetrators had videoed them. When the young boys said they didn’t want to be involved any more, they used the video against them and threatened to show their parents and the police. What happens is that they go on to be our next generation of perpetrators who then go on to groom other young people.”

Perpetrator behaviour: a professional’s guide: bit.ly/CSE_perpetrators

‘It became normal’ The CSE began when one of her friends was exploited in front of her. “We were 13 at this point and men would take her down an alleyway and she would give them oral sex, one after the other.

These men were very open and honest about the fact that they were married and they had children.

“I used to watch and it became normal because everybody made out that it was normal. I thought she was the issue, because she never screamed, she never said no, they didn’t have to pin her down, she just did it.

“I tried to speak to her about it, but she wouldn’t speak to me. I found that strange, because teenage girls usually they love a good natter. I thought, ‘that’s fine, but when she gets bullied at school for being a slapper, she will have to deal with the consequences.’ Even at that point, I never thought it would happen to me. It never even entered my mind because I felt safe and secure and I trusted them.

“Then one of the men in the gang started to single me out.

He was quite feared, a bit of a gang leader. It drew me to him because it is about being popular and being in the ‘in’ crowd.

“So, when he wanted to spend time with me, I was fine with that. And he knew everything about me, and not just me but about my family and friends, my wider family, so I could run but I could never hide.”

All Emma knew about her perpetrators were their nicknames, what cars they drove and who they associated with. She told delegates: “That is a massive giveaway. In a true friendship you’ll know as much about that person as they do you. That is what young people need to be taught. Same as when you are talking to people online, what do you know about them?

Because if you don’t know as much about them as you do about your best friend, who sits next to you every day in school, then I suggest you cut that conversation off and you cut that relationship off.”

Emma then described what happened soon after on a dark January evening in Rotherham. “My main perpetrator took me to a market stall. We used to hang out around there and there was no one around. The next thing I knew, he was ripping my clothes off and other members of the gang appeared. I had my main perpetrator pushing me into the ground, I had a man

EE “I didn’t even know that what had happened was wrong, because nobody said it was.

Nobody taught me about sex. I’d had no sex education within school, I didn’t know what a normal sexual relationship was” 30

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WE Rotherham: the Jay Inquiry An independent inquiry into child sexual abuse in Rotherham was set up in 2013 and led by Professor Alexis Jay. The inquiry’s initial report, published in August 2014, condemned the failure of local authorities to act effectively against the abuse and, in some cases, to even acknowledge it was taking place. It conservatively estimated that 1,400 children were sexually abused in the town between 1997 and 2013. Abuses described by the report included the abduction, rape, torture and sex trafficking of children.

holding my wrists above my head and trying to shove his penis in my mouth, a man holding me down by my ankles and my main perpetrator on top of me, raping me. That was my first experience of CSE. “After he had finished, I started to panic because my clothes were covered in blood. I was a virgin and I had been raped quite brutally. I couldn’t go home like that, what was I going to say? That I’ve been hanging about with adult men, lying about where I have been, taking drugs and alcohol with them, and tonight I have let one have sex with me because I think I have led him on?

“My best friend, who I trusted with my life, said to me: ‘You need to stop crying, I am going to take you to the toilets, I am going to clean your clothes up enough so that you can go home, and then we are never ever going to mention this again, and we are going to forget about it.’

“She was the one who was there in my moment of need and I went along with it because I wanted somebody to make it better.

I went home, hid my clothes in my bedroom, I had a bath and when I got out of the bath my perpetrator had texted me to make sure I had got home safe.

“I was never taught that sometimes rapists might text you, they don’t always hide in a bush, they are not always someone you don’t know. In fact, most of the time they are somebody that you have a relationship with in some way or another.

“I didn’t even know that what had happened was wrong, because nobody said it was. Nobody taught me about sex. I’d had no sex education within school, I didn’t know what a normal sexual relationship was.

“People ask me why I didn’t know what a normal sexual relationship was from my parents, but my mum and dad were just my mum and dad. That is what I saw them as. And I still do, because that is what they are to me.”

The next day, Emma went to school and told her friend she had been upset the previous night because she lost her virginity: “And that must be how you feel when you lose your virginity.”

She went back into town, met her main perpetrator and had a “really good night”. She explains: “They gave me alcohol, they gave me drugs. He took me for some food, then he took me home.

I felt quite safe and I actually believed what had happened was a big misunderstanding, and that it wouldn’t happen again. Boy, was I wrong, because it was just the start of things to come.”

We’ll jump ahead in the story here, but, as Emma told delegates: “I quickly learned to do what I was told. I have met young women who had the ends of their fingers cut off with cigar cutters for saying no. Who have been raped vaginally and anally by smashed-up vodka bottles and who will never, ever, have babies. And I’m talking about children here, because that is what CSE is.”

Emma says it was years later that she found out her school was aware of what was happening. She claims her last school report stated: “Emma is a child prostitute and swaps sex for fags.”

Emma is set to appear as a witness in a prosecution case in December and says the school report will come up in trial. “It’s great for their barristers, because I was ‘having sex for fags’, so who is in the wrong, me or the defendant? It is really important that schools record information accurately and word it in a positive way, because that can have a massive impact, not just on that child’s life, but on getting justice. It can make them look like they are not a credible witness.”

The role of education As Emma travels the UK speaking about CSE, she says that nine out of 10 of the children she meets who are being sexually exploited have been permanently excluded from education.

“We need to keep them in education, we need to look behind that behaviour and find out what is causing it. We need to support them, we need to safeguard them, because safeguarding is as important as getting good results at GCSE and A level. Also to remember that children are children until the age of 18.

“So, please, if there are young people within your schools being exploited, and there probably will be, make sure you identify it and that you treat them with respect and dignity.

They are going through things that a lot of people would not survive and yet they still get up every morning and they put their uniform on and they come to school. So work with them, give them their education, give them their tools to move on, because a lot of people involved in CSE never, ever leave it. Make them realise what they are capable of, so they might decide that they are worth more than being raped multiple times a day.”

Emma escaped CSE when her parents moved abroad to save her. She says: “My parents supported me all the way through thick and thin. When they found out what was going on, they took me away, made sure I had the correct therapy and that is what kept me going. I am now back in education so I can go on to become a social worker because I want to make a difference.”

She concludes with: “We have got a long way to go.”

South Yorkshire Police teachers’ site: cseeducation.com National CSE working group: www.nwgnetwork.org National CSE Awareness Day: www.stop-cse.org

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SCHOOL FUNDING

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Head for figures?

School leaders are having to make sweeping cuts to balance the books. For many it feels an impossible task. By Carly Chynoweth MONEY IS TIGHT, AND IT’S ONLY GETTING TIGHTER. That’s the overwhelming message from more than 1,000 school leaders in England who responded to NAHT’s recent survey on the topic.

Nearly half the members questioned feel their budget will be untenable within two years. Look ahead four years and this applies to two thirds. Almost the same proportion, at 64 per cent, said they only balanced their budget this year by making significant cuts, and/or carrying over a surplus. One in 14 have already reached a deficit budget.

One school grappling with a potential shortfall is Robert Mellors Primary and Nursery School in Nottingham, which has 225 primary pupils at the moment, but which will be expanding to 315 over the next six years. Head teacher Susan Laplanche (pictured) says: “We don’t have a deficit but each year our carry forward gets smaller and I have needed to use it to set the budget until I know my full income. I am predicting an additional £55,000 that I will need to find to cover increases in wages, superannuation costs and so forth.

It will mean I have to make cuts.”

Pension changes and the rise in national insurance have also hit 300-pupil Dobcroft Infant School in Sheffield Hallam – one of the wealthier areas of the northern city – with just 2-3 per cent of children attracting the pupil premium, says head teacher Cathy Rowland.

“We have made any savings we can. We’ve made all the easy cuts too. I don’t see finance getting better in the next five years – it will get worse – and I don’t see where else I can make more savings, or any way that we can attract more money into the school. My deputy has chosen to go down to four days per week. She is happy to do this, but the job that she was doing on that extra day hasn’t gone away. Sometimes

PHOTOGRAPH: TIM GEORGE/UNP

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she has to come in on supply on the extra day even though she hasn’t wanted to.”

Cathy has also reduced teaching assistant time and is being creative with limited cash. “You have to be economical and think things are good enough rather than getting everything you want,” she explains. She is doing all she can to minimise the effect the cuts are having on children and learning, but she acknowledges that she could do more if she had enough support staff. “We are creative. Pupils don’t know what they missed but sometimes we might have added more.”

One of her big concerns is that reductions in income will affect staff, both teaching and support. Not simply in terms of redundancies either, but because they are so committed to pupils they take on extra work and risk wearing themselves out rather than restricting what they offer children.

“I have to manage that, to make sure people understand they need work-life balance. I have to encourage them not to burn themselves out. They can’t work harder than they already are – they come in at 7am and don’t leave until 6pm.”

Cathy worries that another long-term effect of this growing burden on teaching staff is that more will leave the profession – earlier this year research showed the number of teachers leaving in their first year had risen sharply, to almost four in 10 – and that fewer will be inclined to move into leadership roles. Equally, heads themselves may be less likely to stick around, which would cause problems given that many schools already struggle to recruit replacements.

Head teacher pay has not helped here either, she says. “In the latest pay structure, there was no pay rise at the top of the scale, so the most experienced heads get nothing. I do not see any point in that given that there is a shortage of heads applying for roles.”

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SCHOOL FUNDING WE School budgets: winter is coming • Almost half (45%) think their budgets will be untenable in two W Cathy is not optimistic about what is years’ time (by 2017/18) or before; to come. “Schools take a lot of bashing but • Two thirds (67%) think their budgets will be untenable in four they do a marvellous job. Looking ahead, years’ time (by 2019/20) or before; all we can see is more cuts and it is hard • Almost two thirds (64%) say they balanced their budgets only by to see where they will come from without making significant cuts and/or carrying over a surplus; affecting the quality of what we offer.”

Fiona Downes, head teacher at Balliol • One in 14 (7%) has reached a deficit budget; and Primary, Tyne and Wear, agrees: “I have • Four in five (82%) agree or strongly agree with the statement always kept us in a small surplus but ‘operating with the current budget will have a negative impact looking at the predictions for the next on the performance of the school’. few years, it will be a struggle. With the current predictions it is extremely likely Half (53%) of those who had a surplus budget said it was because we will be looking at a significant deficit they were planning for a deficit in coming years. And to make their unless something changes.” budgets balance, members most commonly: Like others, she cites a significant increase in staffing costs as a big factor in • Use reserves (76%); direct costs. However, her school, which • Reduce investment in equipment (64%); or sits in an area of high deprivation, is also • Reduce number or hours of teaching assistants (49%). suffering from the knock-on effects of other public sector funding cuts, most notably in social care.

“We have seen a significant withdrawal support for adults has to be cut, children’s home of services. We have no local children’s centre any more and no outreach workers. We lives will be more difficult and there is only so used to have people in the community who much more additional support the school can could engage parents. We still have some from give. “We have found that when parents are other agencies but they are not based in this in a better place the children come to school community so it is harder. The local authority happier and are far more engaged,” says Susan. is very proactive but in terms of getting young “Since Women’s Aid is about to get its budget parents adequately supported there is just so cut I can see us needing to support a lot more little there now.” families with domestic violence issues. Budgets Fiona would love to employ a dedicated social are flat-lining and things that, in the past, the Cathy Rowland, head of an infant school in Sheffield local authority paid for we are now being asked outreach/family support worker to help parents, to pay for ourselves.” many of whom have not had good experiences This ranges from providing our own of school themselves, doing more to engage attendance support and parent liaison officers through to paying positively with the school and with learning for their children.

“A high percentage of our nursery came in with significant speech for legionella testing and NQT visits for two hours. NAHT’s Family and language challenges this year.”

Support Survey from May 2015 identified that this unfunded She emphasises that she is in no way criticising her pupils’ support from schools totalled £43.5m each year. “All these little parents, who love their children very much – the point is simply bits add up,” she explains. that they need a bit of extra support. “It’s frustrating as things She is trying to avoid making any redundancies, not least because all the staff employed are needed for the successful seemed to be improving as the support services that were in place running of the school. “What I will look at is where to skim off began to have an impact. So much was invested and had begun to little areas. A few years ago we had a tricky moment so I reduced pay off – only to be pulled from under us by budget cuts. hours in the office, with lunch staff, support staff, site staff and “But there is a bigger picture here than just school funding. We with senior management time release. We shaved everywhere so are having to do more as other services’ budgets are cut. Our staff no one area felt particularly targeted.” are wonderful so if we can possibly fill it we will.”

For Jan Marshall, head at Marston Thorold’s Charity primary Susan Laplanche agrees. “Families have such an influence in Lincolnshire, it’s the fact that the 80-pupil school is in a listed on their children’s attitudes towards school and their desire to building that has played havoc recently. “It means that any succeed. Research shows that if families don’t have ambitions for alterations or renovations that we have to do cost double and, of themselves then their children are less likely to too,” she says. If

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course, the funding streams for renovations have dried up,” she says. “We have just had two major projects that had to be done for health and safety reasons. One was that we had damp and condensation because our windows still have Victorian glass, they would cost £100,000 to replace – I don’t think they will ever be replaced – instead, we had to have ventilation units installed at a cost of £70,000.”

She is now in the middle of replacing the “dire” toilets, which were originally outside toilets that were later incorporated into the school. “Again, we have had to do that because of health and safety but there has been no acknowledgement of the extra moment is not fairly allocated. Funding should costs of listed buildings.” go directly to schools, with possibly an element The tiny school also has to deal with of top slice to the local authority.” significant budget volatility. “Our numbers As an academy, Sacred Heart of Mary Girls’ are five down on last year, which is a teaching School in Essex is separate from the local assistant’s salary,” she says. “Luckily we have a authority, says Stuart Beck, the school’s senior carry forward because we manage the budget leader for finance, personnel and premises, and well so we can ride it out this year, but if we have its company secretary. “When we became an a small intake next year as well it may mean academy we received £250,000 by way of the people having to go.” local authority central spend equivalent grant – Claycots School in Slough is the biggest primary Stuart Beck, senior leader for finance at an Essex academy basically the additional funding to compensate school in the UK, with 1,400 pupils on roll and a further 400 predicted, but it is also affected by for not being part of the local authority. That has volatility, says executive head Gareth Morris. dropped to closer to £80,000.”

“Our budget changes every year due to managing expansion, The academy is also being hit by cuts to 16-18 funding, as it has causing difficulty in forward planning, but it is also necessary to a sixth form. Dropping the sixth form was contemplated but it retain a large contingency because of constant capital development would hit pupil recruitment at lower levels, as many parents come demands,” he says. “With the loss of capital investment funding, specifically in search of all-through education. longer-term investment in assets and buildings will take a hit, “In September 2014 we had a surplus of around £620,000 causing tension between meeting health and safety compliance, because we had saved up some money as we knew a storm was ensuring world-class facilities and staffing requirements to meet coming. We used probably £120,000 of that this year just gone to ever more stringent and rigid performance targets. balance our budget. This year, because we have lost income in real There are two separate but connected factors when it comes to terms of around £240,000… we need around £430,000.

“The challenge is next year. We could be in the region of the current state of school budgets, says Valentine Mulholland, £450,000-£500,000 adrift even with the carry forward. We a policy adviser at NAHT. “The first is that school budgets have literally don’t have any reserves then. I have been involved in not increased for a number of years, which means that they have school funding for 27 years and have never been in deficit. We decreased in relative terms, and that this year there has been an have never had to face this before. It feels impossible.” increase of more than five per cent in costs from the increase in Sally Bates, head at Wadsworth Fields Primary School and chair national insurance and pension contributions,” she says. of NAHT’s funding sub-committee, says: “The government must “The key issue coming out of the survey is that 80 per cent of members were only able to break even by making cuts and consider the findings of our survey if we are to maintain choice and carrying over a surplus. That is not sustainable,” she says. quality across the education system. We will be pushing them hard NAHT has made a submission to the government making the before the Spending Review. It is time to stop viewing education case for more funding for schools but it is “pretty clear” that it spending as a cost and to start seeing it as an investment.” will not be coming, she says. “The second issue is that we need www.naht.org.uk/breakingpoint a national fair funding formula. The funding we have at the

EE “Budgets have decreased in relative terms, and there has been an increase of more than five per cent in costs from the increase in National Insurance and pension contributions”

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WE Funding anomaly

Special needs students in year 14 NAHT vice president Kim Johnson has uncovered an anomaly as a special needs academy.

While SEND legislation allows students who are 18 to stay on into year 14 to continue their studies if that’s what their Education Health and Care Plan says and the DfE agrees, the Education Funding Agency will only fund them to the age of 18. After raising this issue on a national committee, Kim says the only clarity is that there is no clear picture of what local authorities are doing on this.

High needs, Unfair funding The special needs sector needs more sustainable funding, reports Susan Young ESTABLISHING FAIRER FUNDING FOR MAINSTREAM schools is hard enough, but special schools have an extra layer of complexity on top of the everyday squeeze around pension contributions and pay rises as a result of rules that changed two financial years ago.

The ‘place-plus’ system gives a uniform pot of funding for each child in a special school, topped up by varying amounts for each child depending on the level of their needs. Crucially, the top-up switches from school to school “in, or close to, the real-time movement of a pupil or student”, according to the government’s explanatory document.

How that works in practice is left to each local authority: some track it on a daily basis, some termly. This means special

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schools that lose one or more high-needs pupils can lose a significant amount of their budget with little or no notice.

Add to this the funding challenges being experienced by all schools, variations in how well local authorities are funded and how they then allocate funds to different schools, and the increasingly complex needs of many children, and it becomes less of a surprise that some special schools are struggling with a perfect storm of problems.

NAHT’s SEND committee is concerned that this uncertainty is making it hard for schools to manage budgets effectively, and the organisation is lobbying for more sustainable funding.

“It’s a bit of a mess at the moment,” says SEND committee chairman Paul Williams.

“There’s no clear guidance on top-up schemes: they vary from school to school and borough to borough. There are also top-ups to top ups,” he adds, explaining how this can create a cheaper option than sending children out of the authority to independent providers. “It’s a massively complex area.”

As a result, the NAHT’s Fairer Funding campaign has a strong focus on special schools and their financial challenges, and is keen to hear from special schools who want to get involved.

Kathy James, the NAHT’s deputy general secretary, is leading most of the discussions. She tells LF: “The current system for high-needs funding isn’t delivering fairly for everybody and E

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W although there have been improvements we want to get to a place where schools feel they are receiving adequate funding for pupils with specific needs and they don’t want to feel any student is being disadvantaged. This fits in with discussions about a national funding formula (see weblink on page 39).

“The government has commissioned an independent review on high-needs funding and we are talking to ministerial teams about how they would implement the recommendations and what it’s like on the ground for schools because we want to make sure whatever is implemented is done so effectively.”

Kim Johnson, NAHT vice president and principal of Bradfields Academy in Chatham, Steve Hollinghurst says is an old hand at fighting for fair special needs his school has lost out on funding, and says it is such a complex area that much-needed funds it will take more than one government term of office to sort it out. “It’s a great man or turbulence could be reduced. Steve and other local heads woman who says they know the answers: it’s more: ‘Gosh, do are involved in what has become the county’s SEND Scoping you understand the question in the first instance?’” he says.

Group to consider all the pressures on funding and the general direction of provision across Hampshire.

Three leaders, three funding regimes Paul Williams, head teacher at Shaftesbury High School Ask any three school leaders in different parts of the country in Harrow, says his local schools forum has decided that any about their funding, and they’re unlikely to quote similar funding clawback will be done on a termly basis. figures. But they are likely to tell you similar stories about how He says: “I am commissioned for 165 places and I get £10,000 their level of funding was arrived at, which is why a fairer system cannot come soon enough. per head, with an additional three tiers of top-up and this So, for Steve Hollinghurst, leader of St Francis School varies with pupils who come from other boroughs. This year in Fareham, Hampshire – which caters for pupils with there has to be a clawback if you don’t have the full number of severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties, commissioned places and I’ve had to pay back the equivalent many with additional physical, emotional, behavioural and of one term’s top-up for four students. communication needs – the changes have meant his school “The schools forum decided it was going to do it on a termhas lost out in a big way. This is partly because of the high by-term basis and that a number of pupils attending school, complexity of needs his pupils have and partly because a high whether for two or three days or full time for the term counts number of his pupils are in residential settings. His school as being in school.” has expensive features such as a hydrotherapy pool, too. And Fortunately, it’s something he was aware of and budgeted although it receives a premises weighting for this, running for. However, he adds that some special needs are less clearly costs – including staffing for this activity – are “enormous”, defined now and some local authorities have very complex says Steve. formulae for funding, whereas others are very simplistic.

“It’s difficult because you can’t plan over a year: that’s the “I’ve compared what we get with schools in similar London boroughs and there is a difference in terms of the type of top-up main issue. Last year, I had three pupils, one whose placement they are offering and the rationale behind it. Some use very broke down and two who moved out of education early to sophisticated measures and some quite crude and simplistic. go to adult placements and on the day they left I lost tens of Some are looking at what schools previously received and thousands of pounds from my budget – and I still employed trying to work out a formula that results in no budget cuts.” the person who’d been supporting them.

With no immediate answer on the horizon, Paul’s pragmatic “That’s one of the biggest issues,” he says, adding that he view is that school leaders are having to become “more savvy understands the rationale for the money following the child in terms of the income that they get, the services they offer and in this way, and that he is not critical of the authorities in the value for money they get”. Part of his funding, for instance, Hampshire, which are reviewing the systems to see if such

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WE SEND in mainstream:

NAHT Edge campaign SEND in mainstream schools has undergone a dramatic reconstruction over the last year. The publication of the new Code of Practice, bringing various changes led by a refocusing on multiagency working and class teachers having primary responsibility for students with SEND in their lessons, should have led to a new, more strategic role for SENCos and more partnership working with health and social care. But has it?

comes from being a national support school. Support staff now generally go onto fixed-term contracts.

For Kim, the big issue is the low levels of funding he gets for his 300 pupils. “As far as special schools are Early in 2016, NAHT Edge will publish a specially-commissioned concerned I’ve kicked up a fuss about report on the effects of the SEND changes, based on a survey of school inequalities within my own authority. It leaders and SENCos, and highlighting both successful implementation has since commissioned an independent of seismic changes, and areas where problems exist. consultant to look at some of the issues.

I gave him as many questions to go away NAHT Edge will campaign on issues emerging from the report, with with as he came with,” says Kim. the aim of supporting school leaders and SENCos to fulfil their roles The irony is not lost on him that under the new legislation more effectively so that children get the best Audit Commission statistics showed possible start in life.

Bradfields Academy was in the bottom Supporting SENCos, schools, and children and young people with special 10 per cent of funding for special schools educational needs and disability: making the reforms work for everyone nationally, but in the top 20 per cent of will be required reading for both SENCos and school leaders, and all secondary schools for value added NAHT Edge’s campaign will include plenty of practical advice and and progress. support on how to best make the reforms work, as well as nationally Kim says: “I was extremely pleased highlighting and lobbying on external issues which are hampering the to tell that to the authority, but one new vision for children with SEND in mainstream education. member immediately said: ‘Well, clearly Look out for our campaign launch in January, and tell your SENCo we don’t need to give you any more about it if he or she isn’t already an NAHT Edge member – there will money then.’ I replied: ‘You could have be plenty of ways to get involved, and get practical support as well. said “well done” first.’”

Kim says that when he arrived at www.naht.org.uk/welcome/join-now/nahtedge the school in 2006 it was clear it was underfunded by more than £400,000 according to the audit levels for his students, and although funding improved over the years “they stuck firm on it” and he asked for moderation, a situation where an autistic student with profound learning which has finally been agreed, so that an educational psychologist difficulties could be funded to £40,000 for independent day will come to see children and staff working with them and get a provision but local authority provision within that same better idea of what is needed to sustain them. hosting authority may be funding at around £25,000. The Problems for Bradfields, which became an academy in 2014, local authority is keen to bring those students back but hasn’t include that it spends £200,000 on health and social care injected money into those schools to ensure provision can be therapy services to supplement the limited hours provided by as good, if not better,” says Kim. the NHS. Steve Hollinghurst also believes more can be done to keep This means 15 per cent of lessons cannot have a teaching children in local schools, mentioning one Hampshire project which funds staff members in each school to work with families, assistant. Moreover, Kim has learned that his is the least wellso helping children’s progress by strengthening families. funded special school in his local authority, with students Another issue troubling him is that the higher levels of losing funding as they transfer from year six to year seven, therapy on offer in independent schools often attract parents, even though their needs are likely to increase as education takes place in a wider setting than a single primary classroom. saying: “There’s a significant amount of the local authority “There’s no rationale. Nobody’s being transparent as to budget used for a very small number of placements in the what and the why,” he says. Kim has also refused to take independent schools. Why are those children in independent children from his own authority where the level of funding schools? How can we reduce the number of challenges? And would not have been enough to meet their needs. how can we publicise our schools and improve them further Another pressure on funding is where children are sent to so parents are content with children being in our schools?” independent special schools, which often cost much more www.naht.org.uk/schoolfunding than the equivalent local authority placement. “You can have

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INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE

Building success NAHT Aspire is all about wholeschool, long-term, capacity-building improvement, reports Susan Young “NAHT ASPIRE ISN’T JUST A PROGRAMME FOR SCHOOLS requiring improvement, it is for any school no matter what level they’re at. I truly believe the systems and processes that are part of the package would enhance any school with any values, because it’s not a one-size-fits model, it’s totally adaptable,” says Newark primary head Sarah Holland (pictured).

Thirty miles away, Julie Vaccari, whose school serves one of England’s most deprived communities, adds: “What we think about education has turned on its head. It was NAHT Aspire that started us thinking about it because once we’d put all their systems in place we had time to think creatively.”

Both schools - Lovers’ Lane and Springbank - joined the pilot scheme of the NAHT’s school improvement programme Aspire in 2013 when their Ofsted status of ‘requires improvement’ put them at risk of academisation. They are now officially ‘good’, with hugely improved outcomes for their children – like an estimated 70 per cent of that Aspire cohort – and they are evangelistic about the scheme.

Those benefits are now there for any school that wants to make the investment in its future: an investment of time, money and the willingness to involve everyone in a new way of working.

Having proved the worth of Aspire, NAHT and its partner in the programme, EdisonLearning, have quietly opened up the programme to interested members, and with little more than word-of-mouth, participation is growing by between three and six clusters of schools each term.

That may increase as the association starts to promote Aspire more widely but retaining all its crucial ingredients and quality control means it will be a steady growth, not a major expansion.

“We are being very careful about building the teams to

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WE Aspire

How it’s performed and the research that supports it In May 2013, a cohort of 30 schools in ‘requires improvement’ signed up for a three-year NAHT Aspire pilot supported by the DfE. By the end of this year, NAHT believes there will be 21 ‘good’ and one ‘outstanding’.

The programme is being evaluated by the University of Derby and its researchers have found teachers feel ‘reprofessionalised’; that 97 per cent of the leaders/teachers have ‘a lot of confidence’ their school would change for the better, and 99 per cent are confident that teaching and learning would improve as a result of Aspire.

deliver it: it’s really important to get it right. It is our precious baby and we want it to be really good quality,” says programme manager Ellie Johnson Searle.

Underpinning the principles of Aspire is Creating Highly Effective Underpinning the programme are Schools, a document distilling years of research into a set of features. years of research into what makes schools successful, a carefully-planned “It’s about leadership, the learning environment, assessment for model developing leadership at all levels learning, pedagogy and curriculum, and about student and family and support from specialist advisers and support,” explains EdisonLearning’s Tim Nash, adding: “You then get a wider group of colleague schools. All a set of descriptors, that in a highly effective school we think you will driven by the driving belief that the best see these qualities, and we’ve gone a stage further and said this is what way to protect NAHT members is by it might look like if it’s just starting in a school, right the way through providing the best professional support to this is what it will look like if it’s exemplary. to build capacity in every school.

“A school can look right the way across what it does, say: ‘right, we The programme is unusual in that understand where we are on our journey to being a great school.’ It’s it does everything from continuing not about trying to address things that don’t work but recognising and professional development (CPD) to building on the things that are good. And schools have a big moment developing distributed leadership, and when they realise each of these strands are entirely interdependent.” a turning point comes when everyone concerned realises how crucial it is that everything is joined up.

“It’s the whole thing: the distributed teaching, learning, leadership, pedagogy and developing a leadership that brings on your senior leaders and in turn high-quality assessment and curriculum. It’s those things that your middle leaders and in turn your subject leaders. It’s the make the difference to children. It’s all the things we should be development they get, the coaching strategies. People love that focusing on but sometimes we can lose a bit of the focus so it’s because it reinforces the CPD. A lot of them talk about how getting that focus in a coherent way, in a way that links it all empowered they feel and that it helps them really focus on what they are delivering. I remember one of the teachers saying together that means something.” ‘instead of 33 children buzzing round my head I can actually She adds: “I’ve heard NAHT general secretary Russell Hobby talk about seizing the agenda, building a self-improving system focus on one at once, know exactly where they are, what their and sustainable improvement with rigour and challenge and targets are how to build on that and improve,” says Ellie. that’s what I see in this programme.”

So which schools can benefit? The answer is all schools.

In simple terms, NAHT Aspire is about whole-school, Among the first 20 to sign up for the wider Aspire pilot, were long-term, capacity-building improvement. It’s about schools 12 ‘good’ and one ‘outstanding’ schools: a further seven have working together, with focused support, supported by extensive achieved ‘good’ since joining. research, concentrating on factors demonstrated to create “Schools don’t aspire to be good, they aspire to be great and effective, successful schools (see above). Its five key areas are that’s what this programme is about. We’ve had ‘outstanding’ schools in the programme and the thing about being ‘outstanding’ leadership, learning environment, assessment for learning, is you don’t do it on your own. NAHT Aspire received funding to pedagogy and curriculum, and student and family support. move schools from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’, but that’s Schools are put into clusters, each with an EdisonLearning not all it’s intended to do,” says Nick Ridley, the organisations’s advisor and a NAHT representative. The first task is a Collaborative Quality Assessment to establish the strengths and interim head of commercial services. priorities of each. Tim Nash, managing director of Sue Foster, a newly-retired Chelmsford head, is the NAHT representative in two Essex clusters, supporting 14 schools. She EdisonLearning, says: “It’s like trying to land a helicopter on a explains: “It’s supporting schools to focus on the right things – moving train – you want to keep the momentum going.” E

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EE “We ask schools to look at Aspire as their vehicle for achieving their development goals and to plan their budgets accordingly. When we do this, the investment becomes budget-neutral for many and the impact positive”

W Immediate priorities might include shortterm fixes, building leadership capacity, supporting middle leaders and teachers, and helping schools that are ‘swimming in data’. h The heads meet as a group for initial CPD and to learn what will happen next, then schools name a lead for each of the five strands, with leadership ggoing to the head and senior or middle leaders responsible for the others. re At the start of every term, all cluster leads for a particular strand meet to build a network fo aand for leadership development. Back in school, they work with leaders of the other four, with th development days that can include formal d training and also coaching or planning support.

Tim says: “It’s a very flexible way of working and the schools very quickly get to know how best they can use the resources. They get to the end of the term, say: ‘have we achieved what we said we were going to achieve?’ then move into next term and the process winds on again. It’s a cycle around those five parts of the model to help the schools progress and move forward.”

“It’s very simple but it has to be done smartly, rigorously, with really great people and with the school putting its heart and soul into making it work.”

All involved say it’s a lifestyle change, not a quick fix. Essex cluster representative Sue says: “One of the advisors worked with EdisonLearning in his school 10 years ago – it has been outstanding twice and he says the processes set up 10 years ago are still in place.”

Kathy James, deputy general secretary of NAHT, says: “Aspire is not so much a programme and more a way of life. It is

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a whole school improvement programme and delivers improvements across the board, involving governors, teachers and support staff working together to make sure all of the school feels the benefit.”

So what about the cost? Most schools can expect to pay between £3,500 and £5,000 per term, depending on size, which might be roughly 1.5 per cent of the average primary’s budget. But, say the NAHT and EdisonLearning, it is likely to compare well against many schools’ piecemeal spending on individual initiatives, a point made by several local authority school improvement advisors monitoring the programme. “Many schools currently spend a great deal of money, often in quite small chunks, on a range of relatively disconnected initiatives and CPD, and can find it difficult to link the investment to impact,” says Tim. “What we ask schools to do within Aspire is to look at their CPD and school improvement plans as a whole; to look at Aspire as their vehicle for achieving their development goals, and to plan their budgets accordingly.”

“When we do this, the investment in Aspire becomes budget-neutral for many and the impact – which is now transparent and clearly aligned to their improvement plan – positive.”

Kathy points out that because it is about whole school improvement and narrowing the gap, some schools have used pupil premium funding.

She adds: “Although it looks like a significant investment when you start off, schools are reporting that it’s delivered more than they hoped for and offers great value for money.” nahtaspire.co.uk

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WE Aspirational heads

What the Aspire journey actually means Julie Vaccari’s staff cried for three days when just 29 per cent of pupils at Springbank Primary in Eastwood achieved expected levels in their Sats. Now, thanks to Aspire, results in all three subjects were 94 per cent in 2015, the team have dried their eyes and are working in ways that would have been inconceivable to Julie five years ago.

She had taken on the school as “a challenge,” trying everything she knew but getting ‘satisfactory’ followed by ‘requires improvement’ in subsequent Ofsted reports.

“I came to the conclusion we didn’t have the systems for a challenging school,” she recalls. Springbank, in one of the country’s most deprived communities, is now ‘good’ with elements of outstanding.

At the core of what it does is the Family and Student Support element of Aspire, which has led it to do some extraordinary things, responding to parental desires for holidays and restaurant meals (both unaffordable for most) with whole-school family days out for 500, termly meals cooked by staff and served by children, at affordable prices, and tutoring for children and their parents.

“Parental engagement came because our systems ensured we’d got the time and the freedom of mind to be able to have a smoothly running school so each day we all go out and we all talk to our parents. I’ve got a distributed leadership group now, not just senior leaders rushing round putting out fires and everybody pulls together to give parents what they want,” Julie says.

“Five years ago I would have said that’s not what education is about but now our children have got so many valuable experiences, and so have our parents, that they’ve got lots of blueprints in their head to do writing and maths and know why they are doing it. Lots of people are asking about qualifications for high-flying occupations. What we think about education has turned on its head really and it was Aspire that got us thinking.”

Julia Brown, head teacher of Greenhill School, “grabbed the chance of Aspire with both hands” when it was offered. Though she had previously taken a school from ‘notice to improve (satisfactory)’ to ‘good’, once Greenhill got ‘satisfactory’ under a new framework that was “very challenging”, she and her deputy found it very difficult to cope with. “We lost belief in our own leadership... we were at the point where we didn’t know what else to do. We would pore over documents detailing what happened in a good school and we were doing it all. We were not doing anything wrong but it wasn’t working and we were at a loss for where to go.”

Aspire was great in two particular ways, says Julia: it gave new tools and new ways of looking at things, and it gave confidence back to her and her deputy as leaders.

“It was things like detail and following up. We would put things in place, and didn’t do enough monitoring to check up… it’s joining everything up and holding people to account really robustly.

“One of the reasons it worked so well is the Aspire model is what you do as a good teacher: start with what you can do and build on it. Ofsted makes school leaders feel like they are the problem: Aspire gets rid of that feeling.

Nobody cares more about our schools than leaders, nobody works harder for our schools than we do and maybe sometimes we just need a little nudge in the right direction and beating us up is not the way to do it.”

Julia is awaiting Ofsted again and, while she’s aware of some issues the school is still monitoring, she is planning to argue for ‘good’. “When we had ‘requires improvement’ I was at such a low, I let them do it.

Now I am not going to let them say that about my school.”

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LIFE AFTER LEVELS

Setting a good example Susan Young discovers how, through new exemplification materials and a partnership with Frog Education, NAHT is making assessment easier for members AS YOU READ THIS, A COMMITTEE OF WORKING HEAD teachers is putting the finishing touches to the latest piece in the life after levels jigsaw.

Since the government announced it was abandoning the national assessment system used by maintained schools for a quarter of a century, NAHT has been racing to fill the gap so every single member isn’t separately reinventing the wheel.

Within months of the announcement, NAHT’s high-powered Commission on Assessment had reported, outlining the principles and purposes of assessment, and instructing the association to create model assessment criteria.

That work – in the form of clear examples of what it looks like when children meet the standard in, say, year five writing – is about to be handed in to members. Not only does it clarify the key performance indicators (KPIs) already created for each year of the primary curriculum in reading, writing and mathematics, it is also – thanks to an innovative partnership with Frog Education – available on user-friendly software that

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EE “The KPIs and exemplifications are good hooks and anchors to find your way.

You are not on your own: everybody is trying to figure a way through this, which is why NAHT stepped up to the plate”

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WE Assessment

support from NAHT Look out for training courses on ‘NAHT’s assessment framework: good practice in a world without levels – emerging practice and implementation’, being held in Birmingham, London and Manchester bit.ly/assessment_framework

And also ‘Assessing pupil progress (SEND): life beyond levels’ bit.ly/assessing_progress

Information on Life After Levels www.lifeafterlevels.com/about.html

can do all sorts of other impressive curriculum and assessment tasks. And it’s entirely free to members.

Kathy James, deputy general secretary of NAHT, who led the process, says: “NAHT was aware that, when levels were removed, schools needed some way to demonstrate progress and move forward, so we founded the Commission on Assessment, and from that moved into exemplification material, which we feel will help schools and give them a basis on which they can build their whole assessment practice across the school – and hopefully lessen their workload.”

Nick Ridley, NAHT’s interim head of commercial services, adds: “Life after levels means there are a lot of things for teachers to consider. The KPIs and exemplifications are good hooks and anchors to help you find your way, offering a sense of security as well. You are not on your own: everybody is trying to figure a way through this, which is why NAHT stepped up to the plate.”

He hopes the exemplifications will be available within a couple of months to all NAHT members in a user-friendly

PHOTOGRAPH: EDUCATION PHOTOS

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form. Schools will be able to access a read-only version of Frog’s Curriculum Manager tool (rebranded as Life after Levels), which includes the KPIs and exemplifications, in the members-only area of NAHT’s website. Sign up for this and you can download the tool, make the changes to reflect your own curriculum and post it to your own website, also complying with the new regulation about this information being available to parents. In addition, members can access Frog’s Learning Locker tool, which allows you to link your own resources to Curriculum Manager.

Nick adds: “Frog is passionate about getting assessment right and not letting commercial interests cloud what they want to do, which is to help our members. The leg-work has now been done – the organisation and the descriptors, which are common to everybody – now it’s up to schools to demonstrate student progress.”

Frog’s managing director Gareth Davies says there has been good feedback about the software. “The response we often get is: “This is too simple. There must be something missing.”

Naturally, he is excited about the possibilities for technology to help teachers, and also highlighting to parents what children can and can’t do, with resources to help home learning.

“As a group we can take a profound step forwards in education.

It’s a massive opportunity, not just for NAHT, but for the country.

This approach has the ability to make a real impact in classrooms.

Part of that is that it allows parents and carers to get involved.

If they can see their child is struggling with something, E

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LIFE AFTER LEVELS WE ‘Seize the moment’

Assessment guru Mick Walker Mick Walker (pictured) tells some great anecdotes. In one, he recalls asking teachers to find examples of items children had made in their they can say: ‘Here’s stuff to help.’”

W classes and discovering that every year group had made Greek urns It’s a timely solution, because even the using balloons and papier-mâché. schools most on top of the changes admit “A couple of things were remarkable,” says the assessment guru the challenges have been daunting. A survey leading the NAHT’s work on Life after Levels. “One was that the staff of more than 1,000 NAHT members found were in hysterics over it – they didn’t know all the children were half have bought an off-the-shelf solution, doing same thing. The second was that the quality of the urns didn’t 42 per cent have devised or helped to devise improve. It peaked in year three!” their own, and 12 per cent have not yet put anything in place to replace levels. But the In another, he tells of a meeting where he brought the teachers schools who’ve been leading the way are of different year groups together to discuss the curriculum… and finding many positives. watched as some remarkable holes emerged, starting with a topic Amanda Hulme, head of Claypool that the year one teacher didn’t cover, although her Primary School in Bolton and chair of colleagues assumed she did – and the same happened NAHT’s Assessment and Accountability with the year two teacher and so on. “ The year six Group, says: “For me, the most teacher literally jumped up said: ‘Hang on a minute, positive outcome is that we’re having this explains the problems I face!” conversations about children rather Not sure how this affects assessment? Mick is: he than about data and that’s got to be a thinks content is being missed out and, in some good thing.” cases repeated, in many classrooms, with teachers Amanda is using the NAHT KPIs, completely unaware. He tells LF: “I’d like all schools to highlighting the most important be looking at their curriculum in detail – talking about curriculum achievements to track it, looking at progression, depth of understanding pupil progress. Those KPIs will shortly and challenge. Teachers should plan their curriculum be joined by exemplifications – clear together in school, year-on-year and in detail, to ensure you can see examples of children’s work, which a working progression in each year. It requires teachers to work out what comes group of head teachers and school staff have first, second and third as you build progression. In my experience agreed are of the expected standard. These teachers don’t do this enough and tend to work in isolation.” will give schools everywhere a comparison He adds: “My advice is to ensure the curriculum is fully covered and for their own assessments. every teacher understands the expectations of the teacher before and “We are using the KPIs because they give after. Once you’ve done that, pick out the key performance indicators us a better picture of where a child is with (KPIs). Think about what would tell you that a child had ‘got it’. You reading, writing and maths. Otherwise staff say get some fantastic arguments and debates with teachers as they sit he or she is ‘working towards the standard’ and down and slug it out as to what are the important elements a child that’s not precise enough. The KPIs support needs to understand before they can move on to the next work. It’s assessments taking place on a daily, weekly and a good exercise for all teachers to do. It flushes out their subject half-termly basis, so we know where the gaps knowledge and helps to focus assessment on the big ideas and key are. But it’s not set in stone: we’ve started with concepts rather than assessing anything and everything that moves.” the KPIs and added other things, which we feel are important, and taken other things out so it’s very much a working document,” says Amanda.

The new system, she says, means staff can look at the gaps is fascinated by what schools are learning about assessment in in children’s learning, rather than focusing on data. “When I the absence of levels. He describes a ‘lightbulb moment’ during had pupil progress meetings, rather than saying this child has the training about moderation and standardisation: “Schools moved so many points or sub-levels, we’re now saying: ‘What tended to use word moderation without fully understanding can this child do, what do we need to do next to support their the process. Establishing the standard is the critical part of the needs?’ We’re looking at them in terms of learning rather than process prior to moderation.” as a number, which has to be a good thing.”

In meetings to agree exemplifications for the NAHT website, each school taking part in the research project had a different In Wigan, Tim Sherriff, head teacher of Westfield Community set of exemplars on which they had worked. Westfield staff School, has been part of the group that’s been creating and road produced work they believed was meeting the standard in year testing the KPIs, led by assessment gurus Graham Herbert and five writing, which was agreed by colleagues in the room who Mick Walker (see above right). As an experienced head, Tim

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PHOTOGRAPH: STEVE SMETHURST

04/11/2015 14:48

Mick is keen that the KPIs produced by NAHT are not just “cut and pasted onto the school website” but used properly. “I want teachers to go through each of the KPIs, challenge them and take them apart so they get a thorough understanding of the curriculum and the KPIs. If they elect to follow NAHT’s KPIs after that discussion, that’s fine. It’s equally fine if they decide to develop their own – so long as they can justify their choices and consider the manageability of the process.

EE “Where some schools get into difficulty is holding on to the concept of levels and trying to fit it into a new system.

If you’re trying to do that, it’s problematic”

“Either way, they can then start to select children’s work to hang on the KPIs showing what the school believes to be exemplification of their expected standards of performance. If we say a child ‘uses capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences’, the exemplification should show what it looks like for a seven year old who has got it.”

teachers say whether or not a child is meeting the standard.”

There is a lot riding on the assessment, not least performance management where teachers All of this, he says, is fantastic professional development and, where will be judged against targets. Amanda and Tim schools use the NAHT/Frog KPIs, teachers will have a level of detail both identify progress and how to demonstrate and understanding of what a pupil can and can’t do, plus a clear idea good progress as one of the ongoing challenges of where help is needed before they can move on. for the profession.

Mick is also clear that teachers should work with colleagues – “There’s a need to change the way we think including those from neighbouring schools – to identify what’s about things,” says Tim. “Where some schools expected of children at different ages. Moreover, what’s expected get into difficulty is in holding on to the concept should not remain static. “Challenge it, take it apart, rebuild it. But of levels and trying to fit it into a new system – make it yours: focus it on the children in your school. By identifying if you’re trying to do that it’s problematic. We KPIs, we articulate essential learning for our children and, if they can’t are all having to rethink the issues like how to do it, ask what are you going to do about it?” measure progress, which is important at pupil “My hope is that in five years’ time we will have a teaching level and at school level but also important at profession that can give us a more robust and well-rounded teacher level, because heads are sitting down assessment than 20- or 40-minute tests. But the profession needs to with teachers to set targets for the year, which earn this trust by demonstrating clearly its integrity and reliability. has been a difficult conversation in terms of Just saying ‘we can do it’ isn’t enough. how you assess what is good enough.”

“The removal of levels has stimulated discussion about assessment Amanda, too, says measuring standards over and is a great opportunity. But the profession must seize the time is slightly more difficult where children moment and develop professional dialogue around assessment – its don’t fit into the average – but the value of the purposes, methods, validity and reliability. High-quality assessment KPIs on NAHT’s website is that you can really is the thing that empowers great teaching and learning. Simply see where children are in their learning. looking for a quick alternative to levels will fail to do this.”

However, both leaders are delighted with progress. “Many of our teachers were taught levels themselves and that’s all they’ve known,” says Tim. “It’s been so ingrained in their went back to their own schools with the examples to use. thinking that I speak to colleagues who are quite daunted by “What we’ve got are pieces of writing annotated by year five the change. But you have to be confident and justify what you staff, with arrows pointing to particular elements. On a diary are doing and why, and those conversations are very beneficial. extract, for example, we are looking for accurate grammar, Before, it was sub-levels and the use of precise tracking devices.

Now, there’s more of a shift towards what are children doing. One punctuation, effective vocabulary and appropriate handwriting styles. There are 10 boxes with different KPIs and explanations of of my strongest teachers said she knows her children far better how the child has met the standard for a secure year five writer. now than she did before in terms of their skills and abilities – and that when it came to parents’ evening she really didn’t need to “We also saw what other schools did in reading and maths: it prepare anything because knows the children inside out.” was a very worthwhile process and one that we, as a group of schools, intend to continue. Our long-term plan would be to have www.naht.org.uk/assessmentmaterials a standard file in school for each year group which would help

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CHARITY PARTNER

The power of sport LEIGH WOLMARANS HAS A MESSAGE FOR R THOSE WHO THINK SPORT IN SCHOOL CAN HAVE E A NEGATIVE IMPACT – THE REVERSE IS TRUE. IT’S ABOUT UT GIVING PUPILS A GROWTH MINDSET TO FACE ANY Y CHALLENGE

I remember sitting at a conference with other head teachers who all seemed to be equally disengaged. It was some years ago and the message was being hammered home: improve results, improve schools, improve attendance, tackle under achievement – all like it wasn’t what we were doing on a daily basis.

I was there as head of a school that had just achieved ‘outstanding’ status; a school that had defied the odds and broken the mould by breaking every fallacy there is about education. Castle Primary School in Northampton had 75 per cent English as an additional language, 60 per cent of the children had a range of special needs, 45 per cent were on free school meals and it was based in one of Northamptonshire’s most socially deprived areas.

At the time, no one outside our gates really knew how we had done it or what the journey had entailed. Our staff knew, our parents knew and our children definitely knew.

The tool that started the transformation was sport and support from organisations such as the Youth Sport Trust was integral to the process.

Jump back to that dull conference and a speaker, who will remain nameless, stood up and said competitive sport and even sport as a whole was having a negative impact on some children’s lives in school. It was teaching them to fail at a

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young age and it was as putting certain children on pedestals. s.

Before I knew what at I was doing, I stood up and said: “I’m sorry but you are totally wrong!” ng!”

I explained that I was born and grew up in Zimbabwe and South h Africa where the importance of sport is recognised, nurtured red and maintained.

I explained that one of the reasons I ever attended school was s the fact that I had to if I was ever going g to make the rugby team. I continued to explain the impact sport had at Castle Primary School and how our recent ‘outstanding’ status was down to the ethos and vision that sport had given the school. I sat and waited for the applause.

I was shocked back to reality when I looked around the room and saw many faces looking at me in disbelief.

I suddenly became aware that professionally speaking, not everyone thought the same way as I did. In my naivety, I assumed everyone held my passion for the transformational power of sport. I left the conference deflated and a little insecure that perhaps I was wrong.

Fast forward to September 2011 and I had left Castle Primary to take on the final remaining special measures school in Northampton, Lings Primary School.

There was a history of low performance

and in July the school had made the list of the 200 worst performing schools nationally based on its key stage two results. results However, However I knew a few things about the school and this gave me confidence for the future. It had great staff who all wanted the school to improve and they were a positive group that had a belief in what the school could do. I also knew that there were some incredibly talented children in the school who just needed to be nurtured, developed, challenged and set free.

I remembered my discussion with the anti-sport speaker a few years before and decided to put theory in to practice.

We started by building an ethos and a vision for sport. These needed to focus on a solid base of behaviour and discipline. Our children needed to understand the importance of what it meant to be a Lings Primary pupil before we did anything else. They needed to

PHOTOGRAPH: YOUTH SPORT TRUST

04/11/2015 14:48

The Youth Sport Trust is proud to be the 2015 NAHT Charity of the Year and is working closely with the association to offer NAHT members resources and support, which help schools maximise the positive impact of physical education and school sport on young people’s wellbeing and achievement.

have a clear idea of what our purpose was and what we embodied.

I was lucky that a boy called Lennon gave me our motto on the first day. He said: “Mr Wolmarans, we are here to set a standard.” I took that statement and plastered it all over the school, including in a brilliant piece of art in reception.

We made sure everyone spoke in the language of a ‘growth mindset’ and that it was all about ‘setting the standard’ in everything we did. This meant I went back into class with a two and a half day teaching commitment, teaching sport across the school. This was the starting point as I could get to know every child and would get a chance to see if this ‘sport theory’ actually worked.

We created opportunities, with a great set of after-school clubs run by staff or external professionals. We started to tap in to the brilliant

structure of clubs and organisations we have in Northampton and gained access to a training, coaching and high standard of training development. We overcame hurdles such as transport by getting a minibus and training people to drive it. We ensured the children were constantly out and about and were involved in as many competitions, festivals and opportunities as possible.

The result was truly remarkable. By March 2012 the school had thrown off the shackles of ‘special measures’ and had become ‘good’ in every category.

Our school became county sports school of the year in 2014 and has gained national recognition for the work we do through the Youth Sport Trust with Change4Life and Virgin Active. The School Sports Partnership has had an incredible impact on our standards and pupil leadership.

The icing on the cake came in July when we had nine teams competing at the Level 3 Sainsbury’s School Games across seven different sports.

We have put participation first and excellence second, ensuring every child gets the opportunities and no one feels left out. It is about challenging every child, no matter what their level, and making them realise that it is about developing an attitude to sport and physical development. It is also about seeing that they should love their bodies and what they can do with them and that they should use this ‘machine’ in creative ways. It is about making them comfortable in their skin and giving them a growth mindset to face any challenge.

It is about ethos, motivation, passion and belief and it is about setting the standard in everything we do.

I have now adapted my original theory: You need to start by developing a growth mindset that is built on a concrete base of morals, discipline and respect. You then need to use the power of sport, the arts and creativity to develop all learning equally so that our children become the individuals we need in our society.

Pick your weapon of change – ours was sport. What’s yours?

To find out more about how sport can help your school visit www.youthsporttrust.org or email membership@youthsporttrust.org

Leigh Wolmarans is head of Lings Primary School, Northampton

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WE T E L L U S A B O U T Y O U R S C H O O L We ’d l ove to share your stories with LF re a d e rs . Ema il Su s a n E educationhack@gmail.com

FINALLY… A

ccording to Walsall Primary head, Tracey Coles, “all you need is a bit of space in your grounds, then contact the Woodland Trust for a pack of 30, 105 or even 420 saplings and bingo, you’re off!” .

She’s talking about the ease – and benefit – of setting up a Forest School to enhance children’s learning in the great outdoors.

Opportunity struck for Tracey when a warden at the nearby Barr Beacon nature reserve needed to work with 15 children to gain their Forest School leader’s qualification. Ever-resourceful, the Blackwood School head agreed – but only if all 90 of her year four pupils got the opportunity.

As a mutually beneficial scheme – encouraging more family visits to Barr Beacon, with its spectacular views, and giving great experiences to Blackwood’s eight and nine year olds – Forest School is now a year four pupil entitlement, with a small forested area on site (which means a whole morning isn’t always required) as well as the Beacon, and an in-house leader at the school.

Tracey is evangelical about the benefits, which include fitness levels rising among pupils who had initially struggled with walking a mile each way.

“It inspires children: a lot are good old-fashioned hands-on learners who find the way the curriculum is presented increasingly difficult as they go through the school. We try to make some lessons as practical as possible, for instance in maths, but if you are a kinaesthetic child and have difficulty with your aural memory this is where self-esteem falls down.

“In Forest School, where it’s all ‘making’ and ‘doing’ – whittling, lighting a fire and keeping it going – some of those children come into their own and show an awful lot of skills and knowledge. They may not be able to get it down as easily on paper as their peers, but that learning is there and it gives you a vehicle to develop it, highlight it and feed their self-esteem.

It has an impact when they’re required to write things down because their selfesteem is higher. They know they are successful in some aspects of learning and if you give them that self-belief, you give them the world. That’s why we love Forest School.”

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SUSAN YOUNG

PLANTING A SEED Reception children sometimes use the on-site space too. “One little boy was almost an elective mute, but when he went in to look for bugs, suddenly language came toppling out of him. The sheer excitement unlocked his ability to talk to the staff, allowed his learning to flow and helped him settle,” says Tracey.

She adds that teachers can build vocabulary through it, use it as a vehicle for creative writing and factual reports, as well as developing maths and science.

She explains that children understand the implications of the risk assessment, and get to learn about tracking and signs. They are taught how to use a flint and steel to light a fire and cook marshmallows over it. They also use a saw to cut fallen branches into coasters, which they decorate, or make wooden bunting for the school’s own forest area.

The clay pizza oven, meanwhile, creates tremendous excitement and teaches basic cooking skills. “It doesn’t take much, just the right surroundings and a bit of imagination,” says Tracey. “Forest School sessions go ahead rain or shine. Frost is terrific, snow even better as they can track foxes and other animals.”

Tracey believes Forest School is crucial as so much of children’s leisure time is now spent online. “The only way to get outdoors can sometimes be through school and residentials. They love it: for some it’s the only time they can get wet and muddy.

These children are going to have to sort out all sorts of problems in the future and if they don’t engage with the environment now it won’t be as important to them.”

• The Woodland Trust has 3,250 tree packs available and advises schools to apply as soon as possible. Those eligible will receive their packs in March 2016. bit.ly/School_tree_pack

PHOTOGRAPH: ALAMY

04/11/2015 15:31

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