The Cambridge Primary Review Trust

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Bumps, birth and beyond

‘Good news; bad news’ on the educational front this term. Good news: extra funding to ensure that more 3 and 4 year olds can access 30 hours of provision a week. Bad news: the pot of £50m will create only 9,000 places across a possible 200 settings, initially in just six areas of ‘social mobility’. Even worse news: in my humble opinion, it’s all too little and too late.  By which I do not mean that the government’s response is untimely: I mean that additional educational provision for children at the age of 4 or even 3 is rather too late for those most at risk from the impact of poverty.

It’s simple. For children to do well at school, to gain good qualifications and to succeed as socially and economically competent adults, we need to support them before they arrive at school. One of the most predictive factors in a child’s likelihood of educational success is the quality of their first 1001 days of life: from bump to birth to beyond. Skills development during the first three years of a child’s life happen at an accelerated rate – lots going on, lots to learn.

Children who routinely share books at home are far more likely to come to school with ‘age-related’ reading behaviours; children who don’t, quite obviously, won’t. Nor will they come with all the other skills supported by simple, book-sharing routines: a range of vocabulary; social and emotional skills developed by empathising with characters in a book; the ability to listen and respond, to consider and articulate their own opinions (‘How do you think Max felt when he saw his supper was still hot?’ ‘Which one of the wild things did you like the look of most?’). All of this undercover learning, from the rich brain-growing loam of a simple 15 minute story, gives our toddlers the best chance to succeed once they arrive at ‘big’ school. Imagine the even greater benefits if said child toddles off with their grown-up to the local library once a week and chooses some of these books for him/herself: independence of choice; articulation of selection; physical development in negotiating the different textures of pavement/path/library steps; chances to interact with other children. So much learning from a simple library visit with the benefits of a book to share too.

But it is not all about books: physical development is also key to life-long learning. Toddlers who are physically active have brains far better developed for learning than those who have been kept inert but safe, inside, coddled in a world of iPads and Kiddie-vision.  Brains that have enjoyed a visit to the park and had to work out how to climb the steps of the slide without falling off; how to use arms/legs as props/stabilisers to ensure that rolling down a grassy bank is a brilliant, rather than bruising, experience; how to jump safely across the gap in the little park wall, where the bin used to be, to demonstrate super-heroic powers worthy of Spiderman – all these brains will be ready to access more structured learning required when they arrive at school at 3 or 4. If their early experiences, both inside and outside, have not helped the synaptic development of their neural pathways then they will be playing catch-up to close the gaps from the minute they put on their first school jumper.

I am much exercised by this topic of pre-school-school this week, as we celebrate the first anniversary of the Children’s Centre at school, working with parents in our neighbourhood to support their children’s learning from bump to birth. We also welcomed our second cohort of two year olds into the nursery. There we read books together, we went to the library, and came back via the park – parents, toddlers, babies and all.  For more than half of the group this was the first time they had undertaken such an epic outing (the library is an eight-minute walk away; the park a scant five-minute stroll).  Our families are not neglectful, but they are cautious; they are not forgetful about reading, but need to know that sharing a book with a child who cannot yet read is not a ‘silly thing to do’; they are not anti-open air activities but they need to understand that rolling down a grassy slope is not necessarily dangerous and dirty but actually fodder for the brain.

The sort of ordinary activities that many children and families consider to be part of family life are, quite simply, extraordinary for others. These are the families with gaps to be closed from the outset and who require more than the option (where it exists) of extra hours of provision at the age of 3.   As a headteacher who is passionate about the underlying principles of CPRT, I believe it is our moral and educational duty to support these children before school, if we are to avoid handing out a multiplicity of labels stating ‘well below age-related’ when they arrive in nursery.  As a Leeds headteacher, I am fortunate to work for a local authority which actively promotes the importance of ‘babies, brains and bonding’ as part of a city-wide Best Start plan for our families. A core part of the training for practitioners from a range of sectors is research around infant brain development, with the stark reminder that we must create opportunities for our babies and toddlers to learn.

N.B. If somebody at the back just muttered ‘Surestart’ please could they come and wait outside my office at lunchtime? ‘Use it or lose it’ indeed…

Sarah Rutty is Head Teacher of Bankside Primary School in Leeds, part-time Adviser for Leeds City Council Children’s Services, a member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance, and Co-ordinator of CPRT’s Leeds/West Yorkshire network. Read her previous blogs here.

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The times they are a-changin’

Several years ago, in a life before teaching, a colleague of mine, who had drunk thirstily at the wellspring of self-improvement books, declared herself to be ‘made positively kryptonite’ by the language of paradigm shifts, synergisation and pro-activity. I have thought subsequently what an asset she might have been to the world of education. Being forged of the stuff that would bring Superman to his knees would be a very handy teacher attribute to possess; especially at this time of settling into a new school year.

Over the last five weeks, I have come to the conclusion that the grown-ups who work in education probably do require a dash of the superhero in their DNA, to be able to deal with the vicissitudes that all throng together at the starting gate of an Autumn Term. It is self-evident that the core business of education is transacted in the territory of change and challenge (the two things that human beings find the most difficult to deal with), the beginning of a new school year makes this even clearer. Every day brings some element of change to a school and the people within it: new teachers; new children; new uniforms; new classrooms; the first-time-ever drama of the lost lunch box or the missing PE kit; the first wet play; the first windy play; anxious mummies and daddies: ‘someone’s “stolen” his jumper and I can’t find it in lost property – they all look the same’ (the first lesson in the power of labelling); more anxious mummies and daddies pleading that their little ones should not have to suffer the life-threatening risk of playing with paint/water/sand/bikes as they will most likely come home a bit messy and liable to catch any number of a range of unspecified (but potentially pretty fatal) diseases carried by paint/water/sand/bikes. These episodes of tiny turbulence ripple through the daily current of school life, until things have settled down, a bit, by half term; children have survived the onslaught of learning through play in early years; routines have been carefully established; teachers and children have lost the, sometimes distracting, patina of novelty.

So here we are, at this stage in the term, looking forward to the calmer waters ahead of us; confident of bringing our children to the safe haven of the National Curriculum’s statutory end of year expectations. A place where all children over the age of six know that exclamations must begin with the word ‘what’ or ‘how’; where children over the age of ten ought, should, must and could use modal verbs to illuminate their writing and where pretty much everyone writes with a neat cursive hand – and so our course is set fair at Bankside. Teachers are now fully in command of change and challenge, having moved beyond its mere management at the start of the year. For learning is indeed about the process of creating transformational change in our children’s understanding, responses or knowledge. And the most powerful way to do this is through challenging their current ideas and moving them onwards and upwards in the process of their self-actualisation.

Except those unforeseen pesky changes just keep coming back to haunt us, on a local level: Dad’s left; Uncle’s come back; the police came round last night; Mummy’s had a baby; Nana died at the weekend; my new stepbrother has been unkind to me; we didn’t have any dinner last night (or the night before); you’ve inadvertently put the book back in the library box that I have loved reading for the last week and now it isn’t here and I am going to let you and everyone else that I am not happy about this. Massive changes; tiny changes, our children’s lives are constructed and framed entirely by these: it is the very nature of being a child and ‘growing up’. And teachers are employed not only to deal with the daily ramifications of all this but also to add to it, through the careful preparation and delivery of life-changing and challenging learning. Life in school is often defined by the ever-present ‘fine line’ between coping with turbulent change and promoting transformational change. And making this the engine of our professional moral purpose.

And more change at a national level presents further challenge to these adults tasked with creating happy, resilient, adaptive and successful schools.  Imagine my surprise when, preparing for the predictable unpredictability of a new school year, I learnt that we can now look forward to all secondary schools being able to become selective grammar schools – and all in the name of social mobility.  I applaud, of course, the aim of any educational policy that intends to address the growing social divide between rich and poor. I am slightly surprised that no headteacher I know seems to have been consulted about this lofty decision; perhaps there was a kindly assumption that we would not want to be troubled by such high-minded stuff – best left to the experts no doubt.

The ambition to close the gaps in educational – and social – outcomes for all our children is a key driver for Bankside and the reason that we are a proud member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance. We want our children to be the best learners that they can be; we use the themes and principles of CPRT as guiding lights to achieve this.  I do wonder how the changes involved in the grammar school proposition (which seems based on a belief that, because of uniform selection at eleven, all children may be better equipped to throw off the shackles of poverty) sit with the carefully researched and pedagogically considered findings of the Cambridge Primary Review’s final report. This is a document designed to support transformational educational practice, to ensure equality for all. The introduction of an 11+ exam, with a pass/fail matrix may transform the lives of those who pass, but, for those who do not, the more predictable outcome of the turbulence associated with failure is a very real prospect,  for all children – even the middle class ones – who underperform on the day of the test.

I would look to a truly transformational educational system, such as that in Finland, to be a model to create more socially equal learners.  A country where there is no selection until 16 and where children run the gamut of the dangers of paint/water/sand/bike play-based learning until the age of seven. Perhaps we might ask the headteachers there, rather than the politicians, how this has been achieved amidst the quotidian hurly burly of the change and challenge of the ‘day job’ – with all the pesky predictable unpredictabilities, and not a grammar school in sight.

Sarah Rutty is Head Teacher of Bankside Primary School in Leeds, part-time Adviser for Leeds City Council Children’s Services, a member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance, and Co-ordinator of CPRT’s Leeds/West Yorkshire network. Read her previous blogs here.

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Load and bless with fruit the vines

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here in pleasantly autumnal Leeds. We are enjoying the familiar tropes of seasonal change: the trips to the local park, avoiding the litter and dog-mess please Year 4, to collect the ‘lovely, lively, golden leaves laughing like a sun’ (thank you Blue 1 for this flourish of figurative language); the celebration of the bounty of our local shops for harvest festival (nothing perishable, as the vermin infestation in church has finally outwitted the best laid plans of the men – and women – of the clergy team, so, this year, the homeless can eat only canned food), and the first explosive outbursts of randomly thrown fireworks, a daily herald of the onslaught of Bonfire Night itself.

And, alongside the expected events that shape the ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ here in the inner city, there are some more singular ones to enjoy: the glory of our Year 6 school residential trip; a meeting of headteacher colleagues to discuss how research-based school practice might give our families and children a voice in developing the landscape of learning and opportunity across our highly diverse city; the publication of the latest Cambridge Primary Review Trust research report by Kate Pickett and Laura Vanderbloemen, Mind the Gap – Tackling Social and Educational Inequality. All these have provided occasion to reflect on the importance of creating rich learning experiences, so that all our children achieve their best potential and thrive in their school settings. To indulge in one more Keatsian metaphor (and this the end of them, I promise): to ensure that we ‘load and bless with fruit the vines’ – in this case the rich harvest of our primary-aged children.

It is, as they say, a no-brainer, that we would want the best for all our children and that we would aim for 100 per cent of them to be a blooming top crop. Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, in her speech to the Conservative Party conference earlier this month, clearly shares these principles:

The commitment to meritocracy means nothing if we don’t give every child the chance to succeed … For us social justice and One Nation are not just buzzwords. They explain all we’ve done and all we’re going to do to extend opportunity to every single child.

Hear, hear, I say: a noble ambition and clearly stated; bravo Ms Morgan. But, as I read further through the speech, I begin to feel a little nagging unease, that somehow Nicky and I are not quite on the same page about how we might achieve this. Ms Morgan believes that

(the) belief in equality of opportunity has been our guiding principle for five years …Look at what we have achieved. We’ve raised the bar on standards in schools with a rigour revolution:… a tough new national curriculum that fosters a love for literature, a grasp of arithmetic and an appreciation of our history. 120,000 more six year olds on track to become confident readers thanks to our focus on phonics and record numbers of 11 year olds mastering the 3Rs.

There’s talk of ‘grit and spark’ and ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations’ and there is a clarion cry for a new breed of teachers to shape the destiny of the next generation. Ms Morgan even name checks her own encouraging teacher ‘without whom I wouldn’t be standing here today – thank you Mrs Thynne’.

It is heart-warming stuff indeed and I feel even more churlish about my growing sense of misgiving. I want to agree, but I can’t. And not out of some misplaced political ideology, but because of the reality of another inner-city autumn; the return of the year 6 residential trip; the content of the headteacher meeting about creating an equal landscape for children’s voice and choice in Leeds, and the most recent CPRT report. Essentially, I can’t agree, because, as a teacher, I know that good learning and education are not merely about being relentless and focussed; they are about trying to create adaptive and creative outcomes so that each child can flourish in their learning, in spite of some of the daily challenges with which they have to contend beyond the school gate. Sadly, unlike Ms Morgan, I do not believe that what characterises the best schools ‘is that when you walk through the door the first thing that they talk about is where their students are going, not where they have come from’. Experience – and research – tell me that seeing children in their social context is critical if we are to attempt to close the gaps which will otherwise prejudice their future success. We need to realise the enormity of this task if we want our children to achieve their best potential in the warmth and love of a community of learning, in spite of the messiness of their own home backgrounds.

The CPRT report mentioned above – Mind the Gap  – makes this point clearly. Among its conclusions it finds that:

  • The most important influence on educational attainment, on how well a child develops in the early years, performs in school, in later education and in adulthood, is family background.
  • Average levels of educational attainment and children’s engagement in education are better in more equal societies. [The report shows that the UK is among the most unequal of the OECD countries – p 7, fig 3]
  • Targeted spending such as the Pupil Premium can certainly make a difference … yet targeted spending is not sufficient on its own to close the attainment gap and reduce educational inequalities.
  • Reducing educational inequality will ultimately depend on reducing social and economic inequality.

As a headteacher, I can – and relentlessly do – set the aspirational tone for a ‘Bankside Best’ attitude to all that we do and learn at school. We expect the ‘best for and the best from’ every member of our learning community, thank you very much – ask anyone in the school, or indeed who has ever spent more than 10 minutes in conversation with me (one puzzled visitor, after my nth reference to ‘Bankside Best’ enquired if it was a brand of bitter I was about to offer him). As a leadership team, we can insist, as Ms Morgan urges, that we root out poor education ‘wherever it lurks’ and we do. We are proud of our learning community where children make exceptional progress because of this, from very low starting points to attainment in line with – and in many cases above – national average at KS2. A school where we actively create conditions for meta-cognitive understanding so that, once again, from the very beginning of school children understand the importance of being resilient learners (we are ‘have a go hippos’ even in nursery) and value how they learn, as well as what they learn. Holy Moly, we are wonderful here in LS8.

However, what we cannot do, even with the support of our excellent governing body, local authority and other multi-agency partners, is change the demographic we serve. We can spend Pupil Premium on taking our Year 6 children on school residentials (and indeed all our children on trips and outings as a matter of school routine) to enrich their learning experiences and widen their sense of self and ambition. We cannot, however, prevent the personal distress and upset that one of those children experienced on their return, to discover that her older brother’s remand arrangements had changed and that he might be returning to the area imminently. The turmoil and upset this created for this child and her family far outweighed the benefits of a trip away. And, with all deference to Ms Morgan’s faith in the social importance of 11 year olds mastering the 3Rs, appreciating history and grasping arithmetic to ensure a country that is ‘fair… wise… and great’, the older boy in question had flourished at school fuelled by our belief (shared with Ms Morgan) that ‘children only get one shot at education and we owe to them to give them the best one’. From well below age-related starting points he left Bankside with very good KS2 results, appreciating and grasping concepts and knowledge like a good ‘un. This may have been why he was able to shine so brightly within the local crime scene.

My point is this: high academic results alone, in contradiction to current educational ideology, cannot possibly close all the necessary gaps that will ensure the ‘security of our country’, as Ms Morgan’s comments suggested, whilst social inequality is so prevalent.

I will finish with a few thoughts about our headteachers’ meeting, looking at some of the very issues that underpin this blog. ‘Gaps’ to be closed in educational and social outcomes do not begin at the age of 3 or 4, when a child first arrives in school; they begin from the very start of life itself. The first 1001 days of a child’s life, from conception to the age of 2, are the most powerful determiners of a child’s long term success, both socially and in terms of educational outcomes. Our group was reading Building Great Britons, the report, published earlier this year, of the cross-party First 1001 Days All Parliamentary Group, where the first (of nine) recommendations is that

Achieving the very best experience for children in their first 1001 days should be a mainstream undertaking by all political parties … Recognising its influence on the nature of our future society, the priority given to the first 1001 days should be elevated to the same level as Defence of the Realm.

Stirring stuff – and all of it resonates more powerfully with me, as a leader of learning in a very deprived area of the country, than the call to create a ‘supercharged approach’ by Nicky Morgan – which appears to be another means to create a world of stand-alone academies and free schools, rather than address the key social causes of poor academic achievement.

We are very proud of the work that we do so passionately to close the gaps in learning at our school; we recognise that we need to do this as soon as possible. Over the last two years we have developed an extended early years team – to start working with our potential students from the very beginning of their life – in our mission to create learners from ‘Birth to Bankside’ (B2B – we love a good brand here). To this end we work, as the 1001 report recommends, in strong partnership with our local authority partners: public health, NHS, and colleagues in early years and children services. The need for a strong and committed public sector has never been more critical to achieve this (read the 1001 report and see for yourself). It worries me that if we focus solely on raising standards in stand-alone schools we will not be ‘the spark to light a fire’ to paraphrase Ms Morgan’s final thoughts at conference. Rather, without looking at the bigger, more complex and divisive social picture, we could be the fuse that ignites further inequality.

Since I have started typing this blog over 20 fireworks have screamed and blasted their way through the quietness of a post-school evening. I know for certain that these are thrown not by teenagers who have all been failed by education (many of them attended this school and ‘did well’) but by young people who do not have the advantages of coming from a home where, according to the CPRT report, they have a greater chance of life-long success. Homes where ‘parents have higher incomes and higher levels of education and … they have a place to study, where there are reference books and newspapers.’ Are we going to let the future of these children go up in ideological smoke, at the expense of really closing the gap, as we focus on outcomes and not on root causes? I sincerely hope not.

Sarah Rutty is Head Teacher of Bankside Primary School in Leeds, part-time Adviser for Leeds City Council Children’s Services, a member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance, and Co-ordinator of CPRT’s Leeds/West Yorkshire network. Read her previous blog here. 

If you work in or near Leeds and wish to become involved in its CPRT network, contact administrator@cprtrust.org.uk.

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Voice and Choice

I am writing this blog in election week, hunched over my headteacher’s desk, surrounded by the ephemera of a busy school day: a pile of maths marking; a sheaf of phone message slips; certificates to be given out tomorrow for ‘Bankside Best’ effort, excellence and perseverance; a SEF that needs updating in the light of our last round of monitoring and evaluation/performance management (all indicators continue to be both upwards and onwards – thank you for asking); 22 class sets of top, middle and bottom sample end-of-year reports to be checked and proof-read by the end of the week; the school finance director’s papers stacked more neatly in preparation for the resources sub-committee; the glue-y remnants of some lunchtime card making with year 4 girls (glitter and sequins everywhere – apologies to our lovely cleaners –  a sparkling testimony to the triumph of bling over restrained good taste). And at least 15 incoming email alerts have pinged into my intray since I resolved to sit down and find a moment, in a busy week, to reflect on the principles of being a member of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust Schools Alliance.

And this has been a busier week than usual – for all of us. After I have written this blog, and before you have read it, three very important things will have happened on Thursday, May 7th. Events that have given me opportunity to consider what my key values are as a headteacher and, as a relative newcomer to CPRT, how these define us as an Alliance school, particularly in relation to the Trust’s priorities of equity, voice and community.

The first May 7th event was of course one of national importance: the General Election. The second: the inaugural meeting of our north east area partnership CPRT reading group, based on Carol Robinson’s recent CPRT report on ‘Children’s Voice’.  This will be an exciting opportunity  to spread the good news about CPRT and to embark on a project, potentially across 43 Leeds primary schools, developing ‘rights respecting schools’ to support social, emotional and mental health inclusion based on the research reviewed in her report. Watch this space to see how this will create more choices and involve new voices in developing our landscape of school leadership in Leeds over the next year. The third, more local still: the return of our school council trip to the Houses of Parliament.

From national to parochial, the consequences of these events will reverberate in school over the coming weeks and months; a time to be mindful of the importance of creating effective conditions for learning at all levels, whatever the national climate for education may be, and continue to work hard to invest all our resources to create strong social capital and inclusive school practice, which is what being part of CPRT means to me.

And of course I believe that the most important resource to be invested in the future of our nation, whatever political shape this may be taking as you read this, is our children. At Bankside Primary we aim to ‘put down strong roots for success’;  to be a learning community where pupils are ‘loud and proud’ and where we passionately want ‘every child to have a voice’ shaping their future and those of others. Indeed it was one of our school councillors, in the school mock-elections leading up to the trip to the Houses of Parliament, who came up with the hustings slogan ‘voices for choices’ that inspired me to write this blog. Sadly, I cannot predict at this moment if her crowd-pleasing catchphrase will have led to victory, but I can reflect that none of her more adult political brethren seemed as focussed on embracing the voices and choices of children in the national hurly-burly of soap-boxing and manifesto-mongering around education. Policies appear to focus more on school processes than on pedagogy, with little or no mention of the role of children in helping to shape their own educational futures. But, in spite of their absence in the electioneering this year, the centrality of children’s voices in the creation of first class education will never diminish, as I believe our school community exemplifies.

In our last Ofsted we achieved an ‘outstanding’ judgement for our early years provision, in spite of 90% of our children arriving at school at well below age-related expectations (and this in a primary school of over 700 children). This reflects the impact of our work at foundation level embedding the principles of Reggio Emilia – an Italian educational philosophy based on the ‘image of the child, and of human beings, as possessing strong potentials for development and as a subject of rights learning and growing in relationships with others’. We are a school which aims to create opportunities for constructional, rather than instructional, learning through a constant range of ‘provocations’ – or talk triggers – which promote conversations and learning ideas, to be included in our more general curriculum planning. Look at our website, where children have a voice to share their learning and express their views. In particular, the video created by the school council for a Leeds Film Festival, called ‘Children’s Rights’, is a testimony to their ambition for other children and a showcase for their voices. If you do nothing else in this week of change find 3’20” minutes to remind yourself of the power of the voice and views of children by watching it.

Creating voices and choices to forge strong communities of learning and love attracted us to joining CPRT six months ago. Robin Alexander, with an ironic nod in the direction of George Osborne, talked of creating a ‘northern powerhouse’ of CPRT schools in this part of England. We have, as befits our enterprising spirit, a proud history of being educational innovators: William E Forster, MP for Bradford, was the driving hand behind the 1870 Education Act, which defined the future of national state education in England. Perhaps it was his particular brand of non-conformity, shared with many other of the great figures of the northern powerhouse of the nineteenth century, that made this the case. I am proud of that heritage and aspire to create a world where social coherence and personal accountability are the drivers for our school, rather than being servants to uniform conformity. I want the children at Bankside to be amazing, to be wonderful, to grow up in a morally purposeful world where they can use their voices to articulate their views and influence others, not to be sheep to be herded through a one-size-fits-all educational process. Politicians take note.

I started off with a snapshot of what it feels like to be a school leader in election week May 2015, as a reminder of how easy it is to for headteachers to be distracted from the bigger issues that should, and must, inform our choices as educationalists. I truly have the best job in the world, as a leader of children’s learning, working with a school team of over 90 adults – all themselves talented creators of learning who believe and understand that, in order to give our children an empowering and respectful education we must design our lessons with care and creativity to facilitate rich opportunities to promote choice and voice. And one further bonus; we do so with glitter and sparkle. As an NQT, I was inadvertently responsible for a blanket ban on all things shiny and sticky; in the eyes of the SMT, it made too much of a mess. Now I am a headteacher, I have a team of staff, including our lovely cleaners, who understand that ‘mess can create success’ and look for opportunities to embrace it. Amidst the flotsam of school life that has washed up on my headteacher’s desk today I welcome this chance to pause and celebrate our partnership with the Cambridge Primary Review Trust in order to give our children good choices and strong voices for educational success: at Bankside, in Leeds and in the whole of the UK a this time of potential and exciting – if possibly messy – change for us all.

Sarah Rutty is Head Teacher of Bankside Primary School in Leeds, part-time Adviser for Leeds City Council Children’s Services, a member of CPRT’s Schools Alliance, and Co-ordinator of CPRT’s newly-established Leeds/West Yorkshire network. 

If you work in or near Leeds and wish to become involved in its CPRT network, contact administrator@cprtrust.org.uk.

Contact

Cambridge Primary Review Trust - Email: administrator@cprtrust.org.uk