October 2003

This month's edition contains a piece by Ani Magill on Distributed Leadership in a large Secondary School, some transatlantic insights from Penny Clayton, an update on Alistair's work with the Football Association and some reasons why Buddhists have a smile on their face.

Learning the FA way

Alite director Alistair Smith is liasing with the English Football association to develop the quality of all coaching and training across the six divisions of the FA. Part of his role is to input on the FA Professional Licence Course. This course is by invitation only to professionals at the top level of the national game. Alistair's audience at the two week Warwick event included six Premiership managers, three international managers and three national coaches. He estimated there were over 200 international caps represented in the room. The following day he suffered depression at being dropped from the five a sides.

The other, and longer term aspect of the work, is to develop a unique learning philosophy for the FA. This philosophy will be expressed in core values and each of these will have a set of related learning and coach-educator behaviours. A programme of generic tutor training has been constructed around the philosophy, values and behaviours and is now being rolled out. After the summer over 100 national and regional coaches and football development officers have taken part in the training. The plan is to influence every aspect of the national game. Now, has anyone seen Wayne Rooney's homework?

Hackney EAZs double up in Park Lane

Unable at the last minute to use Westminster Town Hall because part of the roof was caving in, conference organiser Dawn Gill pulled a coup by negotiating a massive reduction at the prestigious Hilton on Park Lane. The downside to what was a great launch to the academic year was that lunch was to be very, very expensive! With a limited budget delegates were restricted to four sandwiches each! However, they were able to eat them in opulence and splendour. Those on Atkins diets exchanged their sausages for bread slices.

A large bowl of Chicken Soup for the Soul

Penny Clayton goes transatlantic and learns from mistakes

As a facilitator and trainer, I have often used a piece from "Chicken Soup for the Soul" by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen entitled "All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten", written by Robert Fulghum. It often brings a lump to the throat. "A bit American!", I hear you retort. True but in the kindergarten class I visited this summer, "a bit American" may be no bad thing.

This passage is actually a poster on the classroom wall and everywhere you look there are reminders of the "can do" culture which enables so many Americans to believe in themselves. On the day of my visit, the teacher of the class, together with her full time assistant, had spent five teacher work days preparing her classroom for the new year and eagerly awaited her new charges who were to have an open morning visit with their parents. The room looked bright and inviting just as any reception or year 1 class might look at this time of year and just as in England, those first few days were to be spent conducting a range of assessments.

Our trans-Atlantic conversations about education were wide reaching as we excitedly exchanged ideas. Her initial response to my question about marking was to look slightly puzzled as she carefully indicated to me that her primary aim was for all children to be successful and that her approach to all aspects of her work aligned with this aim. Recognition of achievement is therefore crucial and the children are often consulted on their preferred sticker or stamp for the day. All children use pencil and are issued with rubbers so they can change their work at will. The teacher prefers to go through work with the child present and when she finds a mistake puts a dot next to it. The child can then address the mistake and the dot is easily transformed into a tick or a smiley face. Crosses or lines through work are never used. This teacher accepts there are often two audiences for the completed work: the child and the parent. To this end, she may write a comment such as, "Jack needed some help with this" or "George found these concepts hard". As the child's reading skills progress then comments will be directed at the child always ensuring the spirit of the message is a positive encouragement to improve, to learn and to acknowledge success.

An experienced teacher whose results match her expectations may feel she has marking sorted but is always on the lookout for ways children can take even more responsibility for their learning. This year she intends to enable the children themselves to lead some of the consultation meetings with their parents. They will be given a set of guidelines, a chance to practise conducting the conference with a friend and will be expected to set goals with their parents at the end of the session. Children will be encouraged to describe what they think makes their chosen pieces of their best work good. Parents too are to be given guidelines for this formal meeting with their child. They will have an opportunity to talk to the teacher and have questions answered as well as being encouraged to complete a survey about the process. In this environment I was given a strong impression of a group of very young children becoming ever more confident and responsible for their learning and for their assessments. It caused me to reflect on a decision my husband and I had to take a few years ago when our sixteen year old son urged us not to discuss him behind his back. Although anxious to demonstrate our interest in our son's education to the school, we felt unable to attend parents' evenings as long as our son was denied access to the conversations - and he was!

I think the message I've taken from my visit to this school in North Carolina is to continue to seek out ways to trust the learners. Trust that they can rectify and learn from their mistakes, that they can be true partners in the assessment process and that if we trust them to take charge of reporting their learning to others then that learning can be so much greater. And all of this I learned in Kindergarten!

Coaching reaches down under

The delegate with the most airmiles on any Alite course in 2003 is Roderick Hutchinson. Roderick is an Advisor with the Department of Education in New South Wales, Australia. We hope he found the journey worthwhile and the course 'fair dinkum.' Roderick was on Will Thomas's Coaching For Performance.

Padiham School, Burnley

Headteacher Julie Bradley tells us, 'our use of physical activity in the first 10 minutes of every day has had stunning results.'

'We carry out a 10 minute aerobics session with every class in school before lessons begin. The results have been amazing! The children are more alert, results in mental arithmetic tests have risen sharply (data recorded), and behaviour and concentration have improved tremendously.' She goes on to say, 'Our work on balance and coordination using a variety of exercises (wobble boards, large balls, bean bags etc) over the last 18 months has brought its reward. We start a project in the Autumn term with a large primary school in Coventry on extending this work from dyslexic and dyspraxic children to a whole school approach.'

Beormund EBD School in Southwark

Alite trainer Cliff Hopwood has been working with Beormund School in Southwark. He describes it as 'an outstanding example of the use of AL techniques which the head has used to transform the place.' Cliff was very impressed by the staff and the all round feel of the school. Headteacher Sharon Gray is a TTT graduate and keen to liaise with others trialling AL methodology in EBD Schools.

Distributed Leadership

Ani Magill is Headteacher of St Saint John the Baptist Secondary School, Woking. She has been a teacher for twenty one years and a Headteacher for eight. Ani facilitates on the NCSL New Visions Programme for serving Headteachers.

Is it possible to raise test scores and sustain the deeper and more enduring aspects of teaching and learning at the same time? How do improvements that are made become embedded so that they are retained? How do you develop a school so that the Headteacher no longer has to be landlord, sheriff, accountant and all purpose hero? At SJB we do not have the answers, nor do we consider ourselves exceptional but a combination of luck, judgement and determination has seen us steadily improve as a team of professionals focussed on learning.

It is crucial for a Headteacher to do as you say and say as you do. There have to be no cracks between advocacy and delivery. The days of the hero head is no longer appropriate in today's society - the job is simply not do-able by one person. This is important to admit when talking about notions of sustainability and about locating authority at the most appropriate point. The Headteacher in a large secondary is not close enough, for long enough, to the action.

Who should decide on capital project spending in, for example, the Design Technology Department? The Headteacher? The school leadership team? An ad hoc committee? Or the staff in the department concerned? We decided to get rid of the 1960's management model and locate the responsibility as close to the user as possible. If we were not comfortable doing this it would tell us that we lacked confidence in the persons filling that role. If we were not confident in the abilities of the Head of Department and his or her team why did we appoint and why are we not acting on our lack of confidence?

Distributed leadership is putting leadership at the most appropriate place. When staff are new we make it clear from the outset that they will not be checked on. We tell them the job they have been appointed to do and trust them to do it: the culture is one of trust. On the basis of our experience we would say give the head of maths the autonomy to run the maths dept against clearly defined boundaries. The whole school agrees the boundaries. The agreed boundaries or 'guidelines' are really important. It is these which allow us to maintain a very positive culture characterised by respect and dignity. In this climate people will take risks. If they do not or are not able, and this has become rare, invariably they either get swept along or alienated and need to leave.

We are a Catholic School but a large number of our staff have no declared religion. The mission of the school has evolved from an original statement which was written and agreed by a cross section of the school: caretakers, support staff, admin staff, teachers, governors and pupils. The mission which has become more of a mantra. Because we use our staff meetings for development we have been able to develop and subsequently embed the mantra. Caretakers, support and admin staff are all involved in staff meetings. As Kevin Costner would say, 'if we build it they will come' - meaning if you make it important enough you accrue more involvement. Charter Mark and IIP status helped with this focus but again, we thought long and hard about how these two 'badges' would benefit the students before we committed to doing them.

We also create a mantra for our staff well-being of high challenge but low stress. If your staff are unhappy your students suffer. My job is to ensure that this is more than words. I am the 'stress buster in chief'. We have 25 minutes weekly on cover as a maximum. There have been no supply teachers for the last six years. There is a 25% annual staff turnover mostly for promotion: last year 3 of our staff left at the end of the year to become Deputy Headteachers and 2 to Assistant Headteachers. This year 5 are on NPQH. Of the staff who left us last year 16 went to promoted posts. Throughout this we have had 99% staff attendance.

We feel we have worked hard at a virtuous cycle. It is a positive ethos which gives authority to people to make decisions which affect them. Teachers do less and less meaningless admin and mundane tasks and this makes them feel valued and professionally engaged. Professional engagement leads to less sickness, less cover, fewer tantrums and a positive ethos.

Throughout all of this the Headteacher's role is to develop others, to be clear about what you stand for and to articulate this at every level. We never use the term emotionally intelligent but I think that's what we aspire to.

In order to be able to locate 'authority at its most appropriate point' we had to agree a framework of values that everyone was aware of and was talked about constantly. We needed to be clear about what we stand for. For us it was about students. What's best for students is the basis for every single decision made from toilet paper to the curriculum. The consequence of asking - does it benefit the students? - is that when we get a negative answer we give ourselves authority for change. As a consequence of asking this question, and in no particular order. we

Put a stop to student study leave - it is not as useful to them as learning with us
Students learn on all school days - there is no winding down
Meaningless homeworks and homeworks as ritual are banned
We have researched and agreed our 10 features of an effective learning experience -.the SJB 10 these appear in the staff handbook and just about everywhere you look around the school. They form the basis for our internal observation
Agreed that Head of Department meetings will no longer be about admin but about their leadership development
Any role that doesn't have to be performed by a teacher isn't
Established our own internal inspection system
Use support staff as form tutors and numerous other roles traditionally done by teachers
Run a peer observation system based on our criteria for effective learning with observation of student response and not teacher input
Changed the focus of all meetings towards learning

As part of our commitment to locating leadership where it is needed we use an internal inspection system which is overseen by Line Managers. We classify departments against five points on a scale.

1. Outstanding
2. Light touch
3. special circumstances
4. some cause for concern
5. special measures

In category One - outstanding - we monitor only at the request of the Head of Department. Light touch is self explanatory. Special circumstances might include a newly arrived Head of Department or an entirely new team. Some cause for concern means that some agreed targets have not been met. In which case we suggest all teachers use the Hay McBer Transforming Learning software [programme to get some feedback on the learning in their classrooms. The department would be monitored closely within their area of concern. We have no failing departments so there are no cases of Special measures

We aspire to the school becoming paperless so maximum time is spent developing outstanding lessons. I spend a lot of time putting things in the bin. In our staff room there is a large envelope. The school rule is that if you get a piece of paper and it doesn't improve the quality of children's learning it is dumped in the envelope. We do not evaluate inset by 100 pieces of paper flying around from pigeon hole to pigeon hole on a Monday morning? Instead we have a flip chart in the staff room on the following morning. When staff go on external courses we sometimes send in pairs so they are developing together on the way there and back. There is no requirement for agendas or minutes. Any minutes are recorded during and not to be written up afterwards. We use e-mail for lots of internal communication and all reports are done on line, checked collected and collated by support staff and never by form tutors.

We want to give students an authentic voice. They are involved in all recruitment and give feedback on observation lessons. At the recent Head of English interviews there were two panels with a student from the student council on each. We regularly get feedback from students about the quality of teaching they receive. By posing the question we encourage them to be more reflective and thus better learners. We make learning a focus of learning. Our Student council has its own budget of 1k and we try to give responsibilities which have an authenticity.

We use support staff as form tutors. Support staff can apply for any position which is non-teaching. We appointed an Assistant head of middle school from our support staff after both teachers and support staff interviewed. For the Charter Mark work and IIP both sub committees comprised half teachers and half support staff

Our peer observation has become an important lever for learning improvements. We have shifted our focus in this last year from observing teachers to observing learners. The question posed is what is the learner experience? Peer observation is done within and across departments with names going into a hat. We have used our own agreed 10 features of an effective learning experience checklist and this year the observer faces the students and observes them and not teacher performance. We interview students as part of the observation process.

Can it go too far? We have now slumped to new depths in our recruitment approach: kidnapping! One of our staff drove to and fetched a student teacher who was on teaching practice at another school but who didn't have a vacancy to show them around and later offer them a job. Our most productive route with such a young staff is to recruit from their own contacts, alumni and friends. Our group leaders on INSET are typically drawn from our NQTs.

We are actively seeking opportunities to give everyone leadership, but it can be unnerving. Whilst I was out of school for a day our Deputy Headteacher appointed 2 teachers for one vacancy because they were both excellent and we want excellent teachers. I found this out on the way home!

In conclusion we approach everyday asking ourselves how can we improve?. Each morning I am greeted with the large sign in my office "If this is going to be the best school in England what are you going to do about it today"-nothing better to sharpen the mind and help set the agenda for the day!!

5 R's

Several schools have asked about using the 5 R's planner in the ALPS Resource Book. We are delighted that you have found it useful. Just a reminder - resilience, resourcefulness, responsibility, reasoning, reflectivity - and its worth pointing out that the Campaign for Learning have their own variation of the 5 R's and are liasing with Alite on a project to develop learning strategies around them. Nicky Anastasiou is leading this work for Alite.

Portadown and Craigavon

There are four primary schools in Portadown, Northern Ireland. They are spread on either side of the Garvachy Road, an area which has become the focus of attention for sectarian disputes. Portadown is, we hope, on its way to becoming known for other things. It offers a model of what is possible when schools from across a previously divided community come together to focus on the future learning of their pupils. On one of September's hottest days over 200 teachers, mentors and support assistants gathered in Craigavon Town Hall to spend a day working with Alite on pupil motivation, engagement and learning.

Help Your Child Succeed Toolkit

The toolkit - written by Bill Lucas and Alistair Smith - has been completed. It is designed for schools and other groups who work with parents and includes a range of activities related to each of the nine sections of HYCS. HYCS has now gone through the 40,000 sales mark and has sold 1500 in Nigeria as well as being translated into Portuguese and Arabic.

Wipe that smile off your face

Scientists say they have evidence to show that Buddhists really are happier and calmer than other people. Tests carried out in the United States reveal that areas of their brain associated with good mood and positive feelings are more active. The findings come as another study suggests that Buddhist meditation can help to calm people.

Researchers at University of California San Francisco Medical Centre have found the practice can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory. They found that experienced Buddhists, who meditate regularly, were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry compared to other people.

Paul Ekman, who carried out the study, said: "The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek."

In a separate study, scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison used new scanning techniques to examine brain activity in a group of Buddhists. Their tests revealed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners. This area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament. Their tests showed this area of the Buddhists' brains are constantly lit up and not just when they are meditating. This, the scientists said, suggests they are more likely to experience positive emotions and be in good mood.

"We can now hypothesise with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala, India, really are happy," said Professor Owen Flanagan, of Duke University in North Carolina. Dharamsala is the home base of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.