Teach Secondary Issue 14.3

“As ahead, I’veneverused numerical targets” better. Attendees can discuss their personal lives if they wish, or raise any serious concerns they might have in school – it’s up to them. Having that form of one-to-one contact is important for letting the staff know that I’m invested in them, and want them to thrive. Because if your staff aren’t with you, then you really haven’t got anybody. Another issue was that there had been relatively little performance management in place at the school. Once things had settled down after the initial restructuring, we began to implement a new performance management process – though as a head, I’ve never used numerical targets. Teachers are already held to account with respect to the DfE’s Teachers’ Standards, which, alongside attendance, is the only criteria I’ve ever used for performance management purposes. If you’re doing everything as you should be in accordance with Teachers’ Standards, and if your attendance is good, that’s all anybody can really ask of you as a teacher. Three faculties Our response to the ‘heads of department’ issue was to reorganise the school’s subject departments into three distinct faculties – ‘English’, ‘maths’ and ‘science’, under which all other subjects sit. Maths includes computing and business, for instance, while English is home to MFL and history. Broadly speaking, the more ‘practical’ subjects sit under ‘science’. With so many teachers overseeing subjects by themselves – as is the case for history, geography and art – this approachmakes more sense, while also making things more equitable for our three curriculum leaders, who between themnowmanage maths, English and science faculties that are roughly the same size. So while I was frequently listening to and meeting with many junior colleagues during those first two years, parts of what we were doing did have to be driven from the top down – “ I hear what you say, but this is howwe’re going to do it. This is how the behaviour system’s going to work, these are the consequences, here’s how we’re going to manage the curriculum,” and so forth. Consistency and happiness In the years since, things at the school have become far more collegiate, withmore of a community feel. It’s been a case of securing hearts and minds. During my first three weeks of headship here, I visited every primary and secondary school within a 25-mile radius, and met with as many community groups and parents as I could, in order to ask what was working well for them and what wasn’t. With respect to our staff, all I want is for them to be happy, well-supported and enjoy coming to work – because if you have happy staff, and by extension, happy kids, you get low levels of absence. For their part, the kids love the consistency of seeing all the usual faces each day. What they don’t like is supply, which is partly why we haven’t engaged any supply teachers for around five years. When I first arrived, our supply bill exceeded £160,000 a year. Nowwe don’t have one at all, because it’s not needed. I’ve instead sought to maintain a small degree of overstaffing, with everybody operating slightly below their maximum teaching load and having at least one additional hour per week that’s genuinely theirs – i.e. not reserved for PPA. The justification I gave to our governors was that if I could have just that sliver of extra time, our staff would feel more supported. Also, our staff don’t supervise arrivals, breaktimes, lunchtimes or home times – SLT do. I put that down to my military background – I was in the RAF for five years before having a child and entering teaching – where the attitude among officers is one of ‘ I’ll demonstrate what I want, and then show you what I need you to do ’. If the staff see me cleaning tables and doing bus duty, they’ll be clear as to what the expectations here are. To be clear, I’m the one performing those duties, not them– but in doing so, I’m showing that I’ll do the work and go the extra mile. It’s leading by example, rather than diktat. THE WENSLEYDALE WAY CLASSROOMDROP-INS We’ve got a culture here where teachers can enter anyone else’s classroom at any time and simply sit and watch, or talk to the kids if they wish. MARKING DUTIES SLTmark all students’ books with a stamp to indicate that we’ve looked at them and assessed their work. STRATEGYMEETINGS We used to have after-school ‘staff meetings’ that were closer to being information briefings. Our strategy meetings are now focused on dialogue and planning – and since we, as a team, tend to work more effectively in the mornings, that’s when we hold them. STAFFTRAINING We don’t send staff off to generic courses in London costing £400. Instead, we make as much use as we can of National Professional Qualification courses and deliver a lot of CPD in-house. The training that we do is very much tailored to whatever the school needs at any given point. 25 teachwire.net/secondary C L A S S R O OM L I F E