Mungo Sheppard (Headteacher): What Budget cuts really means for teachers and their pupils

In this episode, Claire meets with Mungo Sheppard, Headteacher at Ash Green Primary School in Halifax and a National Leader of Education. Mungo talks about how his career has developed from volunteering at a local primary school to qualifying as a teacher and then getting a job at Ash Green where he has remained ever since.   As well as overseeing the growth of Ash Green Primary School, which now involves leading two split-sites, Mungo has also been a National Leader of Education and is a firm believer in sharing good practice and collaborative working helping other schools and leaders.   Over the course of his career in teaching, Mungo has seen significant changes both locally in and around his school, but also in the wider educational landscape. He discusses how these changes have had both negative impacts, but also some positive benefits, and how his school, and his outlook on education, has likewise changed over time.     KEY TAKEAWAYS The current funding difficulties faced by schools are compounded by a lack of funding in many other areas.Although the lack of funding to schools is causing significant issues with staffing and resources, it is being exacerbated by a lack of funding to councils and social care organisations. The costs of these services, which in many cases were at one time free, are either non-existent, very difficult to come by, or are no longer free. The additional or rising costs of services still have to be met by schools who are already struggling. Poorly funded social care services are also having a knock-on effect where schools are finding it almost impossible to support families due to a lack of services. Funding problems are making teacher recruitment and retention much more challenging where some teachers realise that the job is ‘not what they signed up for’.Keeping new teachers in the job has, historically, always been difficult with a certain percentage leaving within three years. However, at the moment, it is much harder with more teachers than ever finding that the core job – teaching a class of children – is made much more challenging and exhausting because of all of the additional tasks and increased workload that comes with the role. Change can be good.Education is an ever-changing field to work in, and almost all of the people who work in schools expect this. Things will change all the time, even for those teachers and leaders who don’t change jobs or schools. However, these changes can be really positive if they are framed and viewed as development opportunities – which they can regularly be - and should be seized as a way to grow as a teacher or leader. Leaders being ‘around and about’ in their schools is essential.Leaders regularly being in classrooms and around their schools is really useful, not just for the leaders who get to see what’s going on day-to-day and keep themselves in sync with their schools, but also for the teachers and children who get to see that the leaders are not detached from the daily life of the organisation. Pupils’ behaviour can be improved, and teachers will see leaders’ presence as a positive rather than an observation or monitoring activity to be worried about.Where leaders are able to take on a teaching commitment can also be hugely beneficial because they can keep abreast of developments in education and be more aware of what is going on around them. Developing good middle and senior leaders is key for Headteachers.Schools cannot just rely on a handful of key members of staff. At any point, people can move on, so getting well-run systems in place, and maintaining them, is vital for a school to succeed. Good middle and senior leaders are also important for keeping the Headteacher up-to-date and keeping an overview of what is happening in the school. Schools are more outward looking and more willing to share good practice than ever before.Sharing good practice is essential. Linking with and working collaboratively with other good and outstanding schools is valuable and helps schools to learn from each other in lots of ways. As long as the children are benefiting, there is no right or wrong approach to teachers moving or staying in year-groups.Where leaders look carefully at the skillsets of their staff, the team dynamics, and, ultimately, consider these alongside the needs of the children, teachers can regularly move year-groups or ‘stay put’ for as long as necessary. If it works, why not do it? Delegation can be hard to do – particularly for new leaders.Teachers and new leaders find delegation difficult, particularly as teaching is a profession where people feel driven to do as much as they can. Delegation is vital for maintaining a leadership life/work balance as well as for growing and developing new leaders. Despite efforts to address it, there is still an unhelpful target-driven culture.Organisations such as OfSTED are starting to move in the right direction, and there has been a change in the ethos in this regard, but saying to schools ‘improve your life/work balance’ alongside ‘your results must be at x percentage’, and with both demands alongside dwindling budgets and loss of staff, it just isn’t going to happen.  BEST MOMENTS “The Department of Education will give you the figures that shows that school funding has gone up a little bit. And it has. But quite simply not enough. So if we knock off the billions, which is 43 billion this year and 42 billion last year, and I was to say, well I gave you 42 pounds last year to do the shopping and this year I will give you 43, why aren't you pleased? That's because the shopping is now costing 50 pounds.”   “You will see an awful lot of teachers who don't stay in the profession that long because it's not quite what they signed up for. But you will also have teachers who have been in the profession for longer who are now thinking this is getting more and more difficult. This is not the job I had before.”   “People are having to work harder and harder than ever before. Now somebody might say… 'well, people should work as hard as they could ever work.' But they're perhaps not realising that teachers are going well beyond that and they're going beyond breaking point. And it's not reasonable to expect that people work for 70 or 80 hours a week.”   “For me, a lot of Headship is not about what I'm doing. It's about making sure that I've got the right people who can inform me what's going on as well. So to have outstanding leaders, as we have here, and outstanding wider leaders means I've got an absolute hotline to what's going on.”   “I think what… I do try to do, is look at ways to support senior leaders or look at ways for them to support teachers so that they have a better life/work balance.”   “You know, it's not rocket science. If schools have not got enough resources, and they haven't got the staff that they need, then life/work balance is never going to take place.”   “I think that everybody who comes into this job has got to come in into it thinking, 'well look, it's not going to be a bed of roses. We get reasonably paid but not well paid enough. You're going to work really long hours.' If you know all that, but you're still going to be really passionate about working with children, then come in because it's going to be one of the greatest jobs in the world.”   “Let me say, categorically, I'm a huge fan of collaborative working and, where the best Multi-Academy Trusts are working, it must be a dream because you've got schools who are intrinsically linked to one another who could support each other through strengths, through weaknesses, etc.”   “I think the biggest inspiration for me are the children of Mixenden, and there's no doubt about it because otherwise I still wouldn't be here.”   VALUABLE RESOURCES Ash Green Primary School: http://ashgreen.info/ The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/    ABOUT THE HOST Claire Riley  Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.   Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.   Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.   The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.