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Passionate school leadership can overcome some pretty stiff odds, as NCSL Chief Executive Steve Munby discovered on a visit to a Southampton school.
Redbridge is a secondary school set in one of the most deprived areas of Southampton. The statistics are stark. Sixty percent of pupils are entitled to free school meals and many arrive at the school with attainment levels well below the national average, while more than 60 per cent of the school’s 860 pupils have Special Educational Needs and many of the children are affected by the poverty and deprivation of the local area.
But headteacher Richard Schofield, deputy Lindy Barclay and the senior leadership team are undaunted. They told me how their approach to leadership of Redbridge derives from their mantra: ‘relationships and expectations.’ Walking around the school it was obvious to me that this ethos is practiced with consistency in all classrooms, and through all aspects of the school’s life.
The sense of calm and focus in the school belies the underlying challenges. Redbridge’s leaders have placed great emphasis on the standard of teaching and learning, through a commitment to staff wellbeing and professional development. It shows. The children are engaged in their work and, when I heard a child discuss a book, and another show me the result of their technology coursework, they did so attentively and with genuine interest in their work. In classroom after classroom I could see that this is a school that has created an ethos where effective learning is the norm – students want to learn and enjoy learning.
Another legacy of the leadership approach is the way in which achievement is held high, and aspiration encouraged, in every child – whatever their level. You only have to look on the corridor walls to see that pupil success, past and present, is rewarded with permanent recognition.
Results have improved dramatically, with the school moving from 27 per cent A* – C in 1999 to 64 per cent in 2007. A fantastic accomplishment, considering the fact that the school’s intake has remained the same throughout that period. The improvement in outcomes, along with the positive vibe within the school, is no accident. It has taken remarkable leadership by Richard and Lindy and their talented team.
The leadership team have attached great importance to staff wellbeing and development. Training and conference attendance is actively encouraged, and rigorous self assessment and performance management are considered important by all. Staff are also cared for, through genuine empathy from the leadership as well as the provision of a high standard, low cost health care scheme. The result is low staff turnover and high teaching standards. Redbridge is a school that invests in its people.
But to my mind the real secret of the Redbridge leadership team’s success is its ability to develop leadership responsibilities across the school. I had the privilege to meet a foreign languages teacher who had been given the responsibility to lead the development of teaching and learning practice across the school. His system of pairing teachers up, across departments, in order to mentor and advise one another, has had significant impact. Departments were sharing best practice, tackling variation and improving standards across the whole school. This success would have been impossible without harnessing the expertise of this individual teacher. Moreover, this helped the teacher develop his own leadership skills, highlighting his obvious potential as a future senior leader.
Another middle leader I met was a young teacher who was asked to develop a new house system soon after she joined the school. It was successful and she put this down to the ‘creative space’ she had been given which helped her gain the confidence she needed to take on other school initiatives, while identifying her own areas for leadership development. The school reaped the rewards, and importantly, the senior leadership team was able to maintain its focus on other areas of the school’s life.
But developing and distributing leadership does not end with the teaching staff. The school has a very strong business management and administrative department, affectionately referred to by the leadership team as the ‘Office Angels’. They create the time and space for the leadership team to provide crucial strategic leadership that schools such as Redbridge demand. Redbridge also attaches great emphasis to the leadership skills of its children and young people. They are given the opportunity to develop their leadership skills on hiking trips to places such as the Brecon Beacons.
Redbridge is a school where the leadership looks beyond the school’s circumstances and surroundings – beyond convention even – to give children and staff opportunities to realise their true potential. It is a school where leadership is apparent at all levels in the school, including the students. It is a thinking and a feeling school.
The school’s leadership has created common values and a common desire to succeed. They believe in their staff, they believe in their students and they believe in the school community.
‘Relationships and expectations’ is a powerful ethos. And from what I saw at Redbridge, it’s being applied throughout the school to startling effect. ldr |
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