Leader stories Transcript Interviewer: The headteacher of Limeside Primary School in Oldham is. She s a national leader of education and is currently supporting schools in Bolton and Tameside as part of the Greater Manchester Challenge. Limeside School is in an area of social regeneration and in the space of six years developed from special measures to being judged as outstanding in all areas. Helen says Enterprise is fully embedded in the curriculum as a means of developing enterprise skills to narrow the gap and improve the life chances of the children in the school and beyond, in order for them to positively contribute to society. This school was in special measures in 2000, and I came to support it. We got it out in two years: good Ofsted in 2004; outstanding in all areas 2007; and we ve always looked to the community. So we ve looked at the needs of the community. We ve tried to empower the community. We ve done a lot of work with the housing association, all the partners and stakeholders associated with this area; and we ve really looked at the need and addressed the need. So how did you do it? What s the building blocks? What s the mechanics of getting a school from zero to hero, as it were? It s first of all enabling the children to be the best that they can and making them believe in themselves, and equally the staff and the parents. Because this was very much a sink school in a sink area, and nobody wanted to live here. And bit by bit we started empowering the children to believe that they could be the best. Our results went up significantly. We organize their sports teams and the children were succeeding in sport. A fantastic choir, music. We enabled the children to go out, meet with other children from other schools across the region, across the country, and we made them believe that this was not a place that they should be embarrassed about, but something that they should be very proud about. So it s about confidence, not only in those within the school, but confidence in the part that the school plays in the local community? Yes, and I think as well having a shared vision. We actually produced a book with the local community called What If? And it s about community empowerment and people believing that they can be anything that they want to be, and us giving them the skills that they need. So the parents came into school; they did qualifications. Our children were the first children in Europe to achieve a Business Enterprise qualification, which is two-thirds of GCSE in English. So... but we feel they need those entrepreneurial skills to not leave this estate, but make this estate the best it can be. And for that... does that... Is that the sort of hallmark of the joy of leadership, then? When I first came here, the children were... it was... The ethos of the school was really, really bad behaviour. Then we moved the children to Page 1 of 5
being a little bit passive, unfortunately, because they were well-behaved, but didn t believe that they had any part to play in their own education, and the parents thought that too. And then bit by bit, by empowering them, having a Key Skills curriculum, making them enquiring learners, active participants, team learners, they began to realize that they have to be crew and not passengers. And we kept saying that to them all the time. And now they are leaders of learning. So it s not just the teachers and headteacher who are leaders, but they equally are leaders. And we have a little saying, leading from every chair, and within the community, everybody leads from every chair as well. And in terms of actually getting the staff to recognize how important it was, presumably that takes a lot of work on your part? So one would have thought getting that work/life balance right is something that is perhaps still a dilemma for you? Yes, lots of people ask me about that, and when they look at the curricula and the pedagogy vision of this school... Well, first of all, all the staff wrote the vision, and the children and parents were involved with that. And I found that all the work that we do, because it s deeply embedded in learning and metacognition and the day job if you like so what the teachers actually do on a daily basis the teachers really believe in that, and that s why they came into teaching. So it isn t necessarily what s been imposed on them; it s what they believe in. They fundamentally believe that they understand how children learn, and they want the very, very, very best. So there s clearly a very strong emotional bond that you have for this place. Could you ever see yourself moving on? Would that be difficult? This school is... it s values-driven and values-led, and there s a very, very strong ethos. No, I feel that we haven t even scratched the surface yet. So we get very good results, and we never did... Our such [?] results at the beginning of 2000, 2001 were 30%. The results are fantastic now; the children are achieving great things. The attainment on entry is very, very low, but by the end of foundation stage, we get international average. Equally Year 2, and Year 6, and I m very, very interested now in the next stage of education. Because for this area, in terms of localising what we do in this school, I feel it s about business enterprise, and really empowering the children to have deep values about how they can change society, and indeed the world. So taking all that, what makes a good leader then into a great leader? When the school was in special measures, it was all about results. So if you ve got the know-how to get the results up, then okay; that could be classed as a good leader. When you do that, you ve then got to really look underneath the surface and decide what it is... Why do we educate our young in the way that we do? What is the purpose of education? And it is the people who contribute to society and the world. So I would say then, looking at your values, your ethos, what you really, really want to do with a community and seeing the results, probably would make a great leader. And is it recruiting those in your own image? Page 2 of 5
Recruitment is... You know, it s not an easy process. And what you find with a school like this, who ve achieved outstanding in all areas, people will move on because they get promotions. And that s great; that s what we want: we want to develop the future. I m not surprised really, if you re... you know, if you re spotting people who are doing such a good job in the first place. Yes. So the future leaders. So we believe that and it s in our book that we like to grow our own. So we grow our own children; we re growing our own community; and we grow future leaders as well. And it... it s a cycle, so you get new people in. And in this particular school, the pedagogy is nonnegotiable. So the way that the children learn; the approach to learning. The curriculum is up for negotiation. Because it s a skills-based curriculum, it s content-free, and people know that at the recruitment stage. So they come and they look and we ve got very good induction, so they buy into what we re doing. And how do you continue to sort of build on your own skills as a leader? What do you do on a monthly, yearly, basis, just to try and get yourself to that next stage? I m very interested in values and building my own capacity and that of my leadership team. And so... and I think sometimes people misunderstand what capacity-building is and they think it s about having more people. It s actually... For me, it s about building my personal capacity so that I can cope with the challenges of the job on a daily basis. And so what we do is we ve recently embarked on some nowhere training, about building personal mastery. We have very good links with the London Institute, and every halfterm we meet with a facilitator from there with a community of enquiry, and we talk about where we want to go and our belief systems, and even, you know, with the staff and the children, we talk about values and entrepreneurial skills and personal mastery and ego and... you know, and that type of thing. So because we re very values-driven, we look at human skills as well, and that s for everybody. We have a work/life balance governor, who s very, very interested in that particular piece of work that he s doing with the staff. And because our staff really believe in what we re doing, everything we do is about their day job; it s all about learning. We are very selective in terms of the things that we do from the exterior, so in terms of things that we don t necessarily have to do, but people think that we have to do them, and everything is about our vision and all the performance management is about that as well, and we are selective, so the staff feel that they can cope with their job very well. And some of them meditate together as well. So they ve learnt yoga and meditation, and they sit together and have ten minutes. So building up personal capacity. So if you were advising someone who wanted to move up to the next stage in terms of leadership in a school, where would you get them to direct their efforts? What we did with this particular school, we... Our CPD with the staff was... it wasn t fast-moving: it was about real pedagogy, and we took our time. And to develop the curriculum that we ve got now it s taken about six years, and it s been drip-feed; people trying things out; having support in their classrooms; support from their peers; support from the senior leadership Page 3 of 5
team; trying things out; seeing it s okay to fail; okay to make mistakes; bringing it back to the table; improving it. So it s almost... We do a lot of philosophical enquiry in this school, and the staff meetings are very much enquiry-based, where people feel very confident to bring things to the table. And does having the National College help endorse that? It all started with the National College, with the network learning communities. So we joined a network learning community in 2001, and it was ten schools in Oldham. And the agenda was to embed learning strategies, and ultimately to maximize potential and get good results. And it was probably one of the best things that we have ever done, because it was really about learning, and we learnt so much about the key skill, Learning to Learn. We went to the children and asked them what do they think learning is? What does their teacher do that helps them? What does teacher do that hinders them? And they came up with all the strategies that we then developed throughout the school. So in terms of they wanted more time to complete their work; they wanted to talk more with their teacher; they wanted to ask more questions; they didn t want a teacher to go on and on and on when they knew it, they just wanted to get on with it. So it s all the Learning to Learn, and we got it from the children. But it was the network learning community that built the capacity in this school to be able to explore those ideas, and the support from other schools as well. It was great. So that was in 2001? And it lasted for five years. Okay. And so is the National College still having an impact? Yes. As a national support school, yes, we access the training; all the literature is absolutely fantastic, and we really were very... we re a really 21st century organization, even though it s a very old building. And we know that the National College are equally 21st century. And Steve Munby came to visit school, and we went to the conference and he mentioned the school in his keynote speech. And it s that type of feedback. We know that we re going along the right lines. The leadership in a school is a very privileged position to be in, and I say to the staff every day that you are a real rare commodity. And I say that to my leadership team. And I say it to myself as well. So when things are getting quite difficult, we say, okay, we ve made a contribution today: we ve done our very, very best, and if the children s eyes are shining in their classrooms, and they are learning and they re happy and they talk to you about learning; then you feel that you re doing a good job. But leaders are always beating themselves up because they want to do better and better and better and I think the competitive edge from leadership is actually going, because schools are working more with other schools with more collaboration. And actually for the first time in a number of years, I actually feel very supported as a leader. Because of the work with the National College, I work with the London Institute. Politically, with the way I think things are probably going to go, I think we ve never been more supported. And I think heads and new heads needs to realize that: that there is support out there, you re not on your own, with safeguarding and all the difficult things that you ve got to deal Page 4 of 5
with, the partnership and the systems thinking that is now developing in this country in the education system is brilliant, and it s going to really help future leaders who in the past probably would have felt quite isolated in their offices, just getting on with the day-to-day running of the school. And the way that you can actually organize your staffing. I m fortunate that I work with other schools, so I learn an awful lot from other people. It s a systems thinking. And the outreach that I think is going to really, really help leaders and they should never think that they are on their own. Page 5 of 5