Simon Smith (Headteacher at East Whitby Academy): School Leadership and the Curriculum

In this episode, Claire talks to Simon Smith, headteacher of East Whitby Academy, at the Reading Rocks North Conference, where he was delivering a workshop about how teachers can encourage children to read. In Simon’s school, the staff stay. The culture is open and honest, and feedback is given in a constructive and supportive way. As with many of our podcast guests, Simon never wanted to go into teaching. He had numerous other career paths in mind, including becoming a vet, farmer and rockstar, but after completing a degree in psychology over 30 years ago, he had a couple of years where he didn’t know what he wanted to do; he is a self-confessed ‘if you don’t know what you want to do, teach’ person so he applied for a PGCE at Leicester University (linked with education psychology). During this time, he lost interest in psychology but gained interest in teaching. After qualifying with a PGCE, his wife got a job in Stockton, so Simon applied for a job in Middlesbrough. It was a baptism of fire – literally! – as his school was firebombed in the second week he was there as part of the Grove Hill riots. He worked there for 5 years before being seconded to a school in special measures, which he calls the ‘best decision’ he ever made. In the podcast, Simon discusses how his experiences have shaped how he is as a headteacher and have influenced what he does in school to ensure the best results for the children, while still promoting a positive LIFE/work balance. He talks about the work he has done with the curriculum and how he has tackled some of the challenges that are presented when working in a smaller school. It’s refreshing to hear him speak about the importance of experiences within the curriculum and how children can best be given them during their time at primary school. KEY TAKEAWAYS Teachers need systems in place to reach their full potential.If support systems are not in place, teachers aren’t being given the best opportunity to teach to the best of their ability. Being in a MAT can present opportunities to share good practice.There can also be more opportunities for progression, especially if you are part of a smaller school or teach in a smaller town. It’s important that MATs recognise that schools need to do what works for them in addition to instating what the MAT requires of them.What works for one school in a MAT isn’t necessarily going to work for all schools in the MAT, and this has a lot to do with cohorts, catchments, staff etc. It is important that the schools and MATs work together to find solutions which suit both. There’s a core set of things that all schools need to do right.Behaviour needs to be right before you can teach effectively. Establish systems in order to improve behaviour and keep it consistent, then improve teaching. It’s important to get the classroom cultures right. Schools will have different ways of dealing with behaviour.Some schools exclude, some schools don’t. There are different strategies and pressures between primary and secondary so it’s imperative for schools to do what works for them, and for the head to get involved with behaviour. Having open conversations can be beneficial for both teachers and leadership.If teachers feel trusted to be open and honest, then leadership can support them in the right way. Children need to have a broad knowledge base.It needs to be more than just knowledge of facts. There needs to be an experiential element to the curriculum. Use the National Curriculum but to have impact, make sure there is a quality end-product.It is key to use the curriculum to build fundamental knowledge and ‘procedural knowledge’, which are the skills needed for a quality end-product; these skills will also help them in later life. We need to teach children the skills to use tools and use materials.Lots of children aren’t having the same experiences that we did as children so it’s important to teach them the skills they need to know. Experiences and talk improve children’s vocabulary and understanding.Giving children experiences and talking about it develops their vocabulary, which enables them to discuss texts at a higher level. The new OFSTED framework seems to fit much more to a secondary model.The smaller the school, the more challenging it is for subject leaders in deep dives, especially for time, pressure, responsibility (especially for RQTs). Reading to a class has so many benefits.We need to be giving children a chance to get absorbed in a story. If teachers choose the reading material right, it can drive forward what you want to achieve as a school. BEST MOMENTS “So I went to this school in special measures and it was the best decision I could ever have made. It had a brilliant head, who built a brilliant team and it was the best group of people I’ve ever worked with. The staffroom was amazing: it was that real team, that real camaraderie – and quite a lot of swearing, often! – but really supporting each other and the school went from Special Measures to Outstanding in 8 years, which was amazing… we were the 5th most-improved school in the country.” “It was a really good eight years. At that point, when we got the outstanding, I thought, ‘Now’s the time to leave. I need to go to another school,’ and I got a job in another school and it was the worst decision I could possibly have made. I was there for 2 years, and at the end of the 2 years, I had to leave. It was soul-destroying.” “I did my training, my NPQH… and then went on, started applying for headships. I applied for 4 or 5 and got nowhere really, then I applied for a school in Whitby. It’s that moment when I walked in the school and it felt like the right place. It was the scruffiest school I’d ever walked into, but there was something that actually really appealed to me… about the job that was needed and the job that I could offer, and [there was] something brilliant about the kids in that school… I applied for that job and I got it, and I’ve been there ever since. I became a headteacher just about 6 years ago and the school at that point was 2x RI, was sat in RI, and we had HMI visits… to take a headship that’s in that position was quite daunting.” “Behaviour wasn’t great in school; teaching wasn’t great but actually the teachers were great. They were really good teachers but actually there were a number of systems that needed to be put in place so the teachers could teach.” “I’ve got staff still there, who have been working at the school 28, 29 years. I’m quite proud that my teachers there have been there a significant while. You talk about recruitment and retention… I have that problem with getting rid of people, because they just want to stay and that’s a real positive.” “We joined an academy trust as well, but did that on our own terms because we were a good school. We joined a trust called the Enquire Learning Trust which have been absolutely brilliant. They support and they challenge but equally they allow us to get the things right for our school.” “Our trust is great in that it doesn’t impose but it does question.” “I think behaviours are key. I think the other bit is about trust. I think, having being in a school where I was completely micro-managed and a headteacher that didn’t trust anything that you did, and then being in a school that trusts you, and would pull you on it if you got it wrong but actually gave you that chance, gave you that rope to have a go and to try stuff and to do stuff, I know which kind of school is best for teachers’ wellbeing and that’s one where teachers feel trusted and teachers are able to be reflective about their practice and talk openly about their practice without it feeling like they’re being judged.” “In the school, the headteacher had only ever come from internally… Nothing new came in and I was the first person to come from outside and there was a lot of scepticism… We’re in a position now where there’s trust, and we have really good conversations about learning and there’s an openness about developing practice, and that’s the kind of culture that I want to develop.” “We’ve spent the last 3-4 years looking at our curriculum… We’ve been having those conversations around curriculum and what we want curriculum to be for the last four years. We’ve never been a school that has ‘stripped back’ curriculum: it’s firmly our belief that curriculum needs to be broad, and the reason for that is [that] you just have to look at the SATs reading papers and actually children who do well in those are the children with a broad knowledge base.” “In the school, when I came, 30% of children hadn’t been to the beach, in Whitby… our school is less than a mile from the beach.” “In school, we believe reading’s the core of our curriculum but actually we need to place experience there and the other bit we needed to do was to create a quality around the work.” “We have something called ‘pledges’ which are a set of experiences which children will have throughout their time at school, so if they’re with us for six years, they will go down [to] the beach; they will go into a forest; they will build sandcastles; they will visit a city; they will perform on a stage – all those kind of things which are really important.” “Reading and understanding: it stems from that broad range of experiences.” “The thing that probably has the most impact for us is around creating a curriculum that’s about producing quality… if you want a quality end product, you’ve got to teach them the skills to make a quality end-product.” “There’s lots of work around talk in school… Talk’s a really important bedrock of children’s understanding.” “I walk in a classroom and children are desperate to show me their work; they’re desperate to show me what they’re doing, and that’s a big change from 3-4 years ago.” “Parents come in and are looking at the quality of what the children are doing now, and I think they’re shocked really.” “It’s not my school. It’s their school, and my job, while I’m there, is to make that school better… That’s how I see my job really: it’s not mine, it’s the community’s school.” “[The 2016 Reading SATs paper] was much more about knowledge, and language and vocabulary, than it was potentially about reading, therefore those with a broader curriculum and broader experiences did better.” “I do think the [new OFSTED] framework has been written around secondaries and the subject leader bit around the deep dive seems to fit much more to a secondary model than it does a primary model.” “We’ve created a curriculum team of 3… We free them up to go and monitor and we’ve got a rolling cycle around those 3 leading on curriculum. We’ve got an English lead, a maths lead and a curriculum team, and the others just get on with their jobs.” “Last year, I taught 74 days… for a range of reasons but partly because I’m still a teacher. I do love getting in the classroom and I’m passionate about that.” “One thing I’m massively passionate about is [that] I think all teachers should read to their class every day and there’s a couple of things around that. I think firstly it’s just brilliant. If I think back to my time at school, they’re memories and we’re creating – particularly in primary – a shared culture and a shared experience.” “Marking doesn’t really happen in our books… that in-class feedback is really key.” “We’ve used a range of intervention models, but the best way of doing intervention and support is that we’ve developed a pre- and post-teach kind of model for intervention… That’s had a significant impact around children being able to work within the lesson.” “Working walls have really impacted on workload for us, really reduced the workload around displays in classrooms.” “I think we’ve got to treat staff as human… If their kid’s in a show, they’ve got one chance to see it… We’ve got to have a school that values them and their families and their lives as well as the job, because at the end of the day, it’s a job.” “If staff go on a residential, we give them days in lieu.” “That’s the key to wellbeing in schools… you’ve got emotionally intelligent leaders that are supporting their staff at the right points because we can’t all be 100% on it all the time, for a whole host of reasons… If you don’t value them, then they won’t value you.” VALUABLE RESOURCES Simon Smith:Twitter: https://twitter.com/smithsmmEast Whitby Academy Twitter: https://twitter.com/EastWhitbyCPSEnquire Learning Trust: https://enquirelearningtrust.org/Ron Berger – An Ethic of Excellence: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/149026.An_Ethic_of_ExcellenceThe 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 HOSTClaire 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.