Date: 07/01/2021
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

Where do I start? When I wrote the last Lighthouse article just before Christmas, the main challenge we were anticipating after the holidays was working out the logistics of mass testing for secondary school pupils and staff. After New Year, this then switched to dealing with the threat of industrial action in primary and special schools from unions, concerned with the safety of staff and pupils from the new strain of Covid-19.

On Monday, all of this was replaced by the news of the third national lockdown; the partial closure of schools and moving to remote learning, something few of us expected to happen so suddenly. People sometimes ask whether schools get advance warning of this type of decision, but I can confirm that we found out at the same time as everyone else when watching the Prime Minister’s announcement on TV.

As with the first lockdown, we had done some advanced planning just in case. In the same way that we plan for something like dealing with a fire or power cut; plans are put in place which we hope that we will never use. I wish the same could be said for the Department for Education (DfE) in their response to the decision to cancel exams. Since the summer, schools have been asking for a ‘plan B’ to be ready, just in case the 2021 exams were cancelled as they were in 2020. This happened in Scotland and Wales, so in both countries there was a clear plan so that everyone knew immediately how grades would be awarded. However in England, secondary pupils face uncertainty while a plan of how teacher assessment will work is quickly put together.

I was very glad to hear yesterday that the Year 6 SAT exams were also cancelled. Even in normal years, these are unnecessary; they don’t help the pupils, cause anxiety and can easily be replaced by teacher assessments. Cancelling them this year means that we can help our Year 6 pupils catch up with their learning and spend more time on transition activities for secondary school.

For the next few weeks, while most pupils will not physically be in school, we are determined to make sure that as far as possible they won’t fall behind with their learning. In March, remote learning was completely new to everyone but we now have systems in place and the experience to make this an effective form of learning. We didn’t need the Secretary of State to threaten schools with OFSTED to put high-quality remote learning strategies in place, we did it anyway because it is the right thing to do so that our pupils can continue to learn.

The first lockdown was a complete shock and none of us had experienced anything like it before. However, when going through a crisis you learn from the experience and develop resilience. We are much better prepared for this lockdown and are optimistic that vaccines promise us a return to a much more normal life later in the year.

The focus now will be on removing barriers to learning. We have more laptops than ever before and have been promised further deliveries by the DfE. We can offer some support with internet connections. We have staff allocated to provide help desks for anyone struggling with remote learning. We will continue to provide food for those pupils working at home and we hope that the promised national voucher system will be up and running soon.

We want all of our schools and campuses to be at the heart of their communities during the difficult weeks ahead and help to support our families. Even if we can’t provide the help directly ourselves, we work with other organisations who can instead. In the previous lockdown, we realised the importance of keeping contact between school and families. This will be regular during the current lockdown, but if there is an immediate problem then please don’t wait, just get in touch through the usual school and campus contact methods and we will do our best to support you.

You can also get in touch via email at communitysupport@ncea.org.uk if you or someone you know requires some confidential support with anything from financial to emotional issues.

Date: 17/12/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEA Trust.

We’ve reached the end of the first term back after the lockdown and partial closure for schools. Getting everyone back safely has been a massive challenge, but I believe that this has been a huge success for all of our schools. Children have been happy to return, staff have worked tirelessly to make everything as near normal as possible and parents/carers have shown great support. This year has certainly reinforced the need for everyone to work together to achieve common goals. Education is most successful when we can find ways of working together with parents and carers to support a child’s education.

For many of us, 2020 has been the most challenging year of our lifetimes. Although we have a long way to go and no doubt more to endure, we can all hope and pray that 2021 lives up to the promise we hold for a return to a much more normal life.

While for most, Christmas is a time of joy and celebration, for others it is the most difficult time of the year. I am very proud of the efforts of our pupils and staff in their fundraising and donations for charities which will help make Christmas a little better for some, such as Cash for Kids and the Wansbeck Valley Food Bank.

This Christmas, many of us are also faced with difficult decisions during the relaxation of the rules on social mixing, such as whether to see relatives we miss, but who are elderly or vulnerable. We can only hope that the brief relaxation of rules doesn’t bring another spike in Covid-19 cases in the New Year. The Department for Education have announced that mass testing will be available for secondary schools in January, which potentially could be a great help in not having pupils and staff self-isolating unnecessarily. However, we await guidance and support as to how we can safely manage a mass testing site within a school and to how this can be staffed without disrupting education.

In my previous job as a Headteacher, we ended the last day of term with a whole school Christmas assembly. For the school I led, that meant almost 1400 pupils and staff in the Sports Hall, something which would be unimaginable in 2020. When I closed the assembly, I always gave out the same message. I did this for two reasons, to remind everyone of the true message of Christmas but also because I was always acutely aware that there would be very different experiences on Christmas Day for some pupils compared to others.

My message was that giving at Christmas should be about more than presents and that simple acts of kindness mean so much more than you think. Whether this was offering to do the washing up after Christmas lunch, agreeing a ‘Christmas truce’ with the brother or sister you always argue with, or making a phone call to a lonely relative or neighbour.

It is lovely for all of us to give and receive gifts on Christmas Day, but for me the light that shines through the darkest time of the year comes from kindness and compassion towards each other. I hope that everyone in our school communities has a wonderful Christmas and that 2021 brings a much more hopeful and happier New Year.

Date: 10/12/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

When the theme of this week’s edition of Lighthouse was proposed as “joy”, I will admit that I was not in the most joyful mood! We’d just received notice via Twitter (because apparently this is how important Government decisions are now announced) that there was a change to the arrangements for the end of term.

After weeks of schools being told not to change their end of term arrangements, schools were offered the chance to close to pupils and instead, make the last day of term a training day delivered through remote learning. This forced us to make an unexpected and difficult decision about whether or not to change our plans.

This wasn’t an easy decision – for us or for schools across England. Firstly, schools agreeing to the suggested change puts them in the horrible position of telling parents about a major change at very short notice. This is never a good thing and we would always try and give as much notice as possible about changes like this, but in this case the timescale was imposed on us by the Department for Education (DfE).

Secondly, it means that schools need to put together an effective training day at very short notice and plan so that it can be delivered remotely, with all of the extra work this requires. Schools will also be expected to develop plans to show how pupils will catch up their lost learning hours as a consequence of missing a school day.

However, these problems have to be balanced with the fact that it does offer an opportunity to reduce the risk of self-isolation spoiling Christmas for some families.

As the DfE expects schools to continue to track and trace the contacts of any positive coronavirus (Covid-19) school cases for a period of six days following the final day in school, school leaders have asked many times for the government to give schools the flexibility to switch to remote learning for the final few days of term to reduce the risk of pupils and staff having to self-isolate over Christmas.

Unfortunately the DfE announcement only focused on “giving staff a break from contact tracing” and made it look like this is what school leaders had been asking for, when in fact, the impact on pupils had been given equal concern. Although staff involvement in “contact tracing” at weekends and holidays is a problem, for most schools it was not the priority. This is especially not in the case of a Church of England-led Trust, where the joy of celebrating Christmas is central to our beliefs.

In the end we concluded, after much discussion within and between schools, that it was the best option to take the training day option and close our Trust schools to pupils. While for some other schools, closing a day early may have been a decision to prioritise staff, in the case of NCEAT, the decision was based on our whole community, as it benefits pupils, staff and families.

I know that some parents will be unhappy with this decision, but it was not taken lightly and was also made after some informal sounding out of parental opinions. We know that parents would be devastated to get a phone call from school on Christmas Eve, telling them that their child needs to self-isolate. We can’t eliminate the risk of this happening before Christmas Eve, but by closing a day earlier than planned we can ensure that this won’t happen after 23rd December. We make this decision to increase the chances of our children and their families having a joyful Christmas.

Date: 03/12/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT

Last Sunday saw the beginning of Advent and the countdown to Christmas Day. When I was at school, this meant that we knew the Blue Peter presenters would show us how to make an advent crown out of wire coat hangers, tinsel and candles. I’ve no doubt that today our firefighters would strongly advise against this, but as a child, it was an exciting beginning to the preparations for Christmas. It also reminded us that Christmas was about much more than just Christmas Day itself.  

The first advent candle is the Candle of Hope. This week we have been given real hope of a return to a much more normal life with the approval of the first Covid-19 vaccine. This is an amazing breakthrough for Science and is thanks to the sort of effort and collaboration we normally only see during wartime.  

After the year we’ve experienced, the vaccine is a genuine light of hope for a better and safer future. I don’t think anyone will underestimate the scale and difficulty of planning to vaccinate an entire population, but at least we can now hope that this could be completed by the summer. 

As well as giving schools the hope that we can have a normal school year from September, this morning’s Government announcement has given us some much needed clarity on what will happen with exams this year. It has taken a long time to get to this point, but we at last have some clear plans. There is a lot to take in, so I’ve attempted to briefly summarise everything in order of age group:

• Year 2: No Key stage 1 tests this year. Teacher assessments will still take place.
• Year 6: SATs will take place, but a week later than planned. There will not be a SAT test for grammar, punctuation and spelling this year.
• Year 11 and Year 13: A combination of measures are being put in place for GCSE, A level and vocational exams. These include more generous grading, advance notice of some topics, the use of exam aids (like formula sheets), meaning less needs to be memorised and extra exams are also being made available if the main exams are missed because of illness. 

Earlier in the term, I wrote about how concerned I am for the pupils in our schools taking exams in the summer. Although the Government’s plans aren’t what I would have suggested to tackle the problems of assessing children this year, I do recognise that there was never going to be a perfect solution to a very difficult situation. I welcome the fact that they have removed some of the barriers to pupils catching up all of the work required for their exams. At least pupils and teachers have a greater degree of certainty that they will not expect to prepare for a ‘normal’ set of exams after such an extraordinary year. 

Many of us who lead schools in the north of England will fight on and try to get the Government to recognise that the impact of Covid-19 on pupils since September has been very uneven; further support is needed to make things fairer for our pupils. Although Northumberland has been quite badly affected, there are other areas much worse off, where secondary schools have been forced to close year group bubbles three times over, meaning pupils have missed 6 weeks of teaching since September. In other parts of England by comparison, there has been virtually no disruption. At the very least, there needs to be an appeals process for exam results to take this into consideration. 

However, I am writing in hope, and I can say that today’s announcement does give me more hope that our children will get the exam results that their efforts deserve.

Date: 26/11/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEA Trust.

When was the last time you read a book for pleasure?

When I was a Headteacher, it’s a question that I often used to ask pupils who came (or were sent) to see me. I never asked this question to catch anyone out, instead I found it could often start a conversation when a pupil was anxious or angry. They would go on to tell me about what they had read recently, their favourite books, authors, characters, etc. Importantly, I could also tell them my answers to the same questions and share that I also read books for pleasure. It was amazing how a conversation about reading could often get pupils into a better frame of mind to then talk about why they were actually there to see me.

The power of reading is immense. For a start, there is plenty of evidence that reading for pleasure is a much bigger factor in determining whether a child does well at school (and in later life) than their social or economic background is. That’s because reading develops vocabulary though exposing the reader to a wide range of words and challenges the reader to work out the meaning of new words through their context in a sentence.

For younger children, hearing books read aloud is absolutely vital to the development of their language and understanding how stories work. They learn to try new sounds and words, building up their vocabulary through copying the adult who is reading to them. Picture books are also great, as children can ask questions and use their imagination to interpret what they mean.

As children get older, reading builds up the skills and vocabulary to enable them to read more challenging books, which extends their reading age. This is vital for success in their GCSE exams in all subjects, as exam questions are written to be understood by someone with a reading age of 15 years and 6 months. This means that by Year 11 any pupil whose reading age isn’t as high as their actual age is at a big disadvantage before they even start to answer the question. The solution to this problem probably won’t be found in extra reading in Year 11, but instead is about developing reading over many years prior to this.

I do appreciate the difficulties and challenges there are for families to encourage their children to read for pleasure. I am acutely aware that our area, unlike cities, is not exactly full of bookshops or even places where books are sold. Our schools and campuses can help here; we have well stocked libraries with plenty of books to borrow to read at home.

I also appreciate that each child is different and some are much more difficult to engage in reading than others. I have two children and my eldest has been an avid reader since starting school, reading a new novel in a couple of hours. However, my youngest would much rather watch TikTok videos than read; we are now trying audio books instead to encourage reading! Sometimes it is about finding which type of books motivate a child to read, and when reading for pleasure, there is no check list of the ‘right’ type of books. Although some books are more effective in developing vocabulary than others, any reading for pleasure is positive and should be praised and encouraged.

To help support pupils and families with the development of reading, in 2021 we will be launching the NCEAT Reading Strategy. This will support the development of reading and vocabulary both in and out of school and will include resources to help children develop a love of reading, which we very much hope will help and support families with their children’s reading. I look forward to sharing more details of this with everyone in January.

Date: 19/11/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEA Trust.

Last weekend, I amazed my children by putting up our outside Christmas lights. Normally I’m seen by my family as a bit of a Grinch, refusing to put up any decorations until well into December. However, I decided that this year will be different, because along with many others, I think that we all need a bit more light in our lives at the moment.

The winter months can be difficult for many people. Going to and from work in the dark, not getting outside as much and grim weather can all get us down. 2020 has been the darkest of years, with the impact of Covid-19 now being felt far more in our area today than during the first lockdown period.

All around the world, major religions have their own festivals where light is celebrated, such as Diwali or Hanukkah. There is something about lights shining in the dark that is very uplifting. For many people, seeing all of the lights and decorations for Christmas is something that often helps improve how we feel on dark and cold winter evenings.

We are determined that all of the pupils in our Trust schools will enjoy as many of the Christmas traditions as possible, to bring some more light into their lives. They might look a bit different or happen in a slightly different way, but we are determined that they will still happen. Nativities will still take place, carols will be sung and Christmas lunches will be served. As the Church of England said this week: “the message of light shining in the darkness is needed now more than ever”. So in the run up to Christmas, we will make sure that we let our lights shine both literally and metaphorically.

Date: 13/11/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEA Trust.

I hope that you like our new look version of LIGHThouse. As I mentioned last week, we are working hard to be as effective as possible in the way we communicate with our wider community, so any feedback using the Marketing email address is very welcome.

As you will see in this edition, there is a focus on Remembrance events. Some of the worst aspects of the coronavirus restrictions in schools is not having the usual opportunities to come together to mark important occasions. One of my most memorable experiences last year was seeing pupils at the Josephine Butler Campus coming together in the Atrium for Remembrance. Well over 1200 people in one small area, observing two minutes of absolute silence to commemorate those who gave their lives to keep us free.

This year, all of our Remembrance activities had to be scaled back to meet the restrictions in numbers in the ‘bubble’ system. However, they still took place and the pupils were reminded of the sacrifices of those from their local communities. As time moves on further and further from the horrific events of the two world wars, I believe that it is more important than ever that schools play their part in educating pupils about the losses to our communities in these wars, and all the conflicts since. For people of my generation, this was more straightforward; both my grandfathers, who had fought in World War Two, were still alive when I was at school and I heard directly some of what they had experienced. Some of my family are from Jersey and I actually heard first hand about wartime life in the Channel Islands, the only part of the British Isles which was invaded and occupied by the Germans in World War Two.

With only a few of those who served in World War Two alive today, children won’t have the same opportunities to find out first hand from those who served our country so well and at such a cost. Making our Remembrance events a key part of school life and educating pupils about the two world wars in their lessons are vital, ensuring that each new generation recognises and honours the sacrifices of previous ones. We can all be proud of how well our pupils have commemorated Remembrance at each school and campus despite the current restrictions.

Date: 06/11/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEA Trust.

Do we always get it right at NCEAT? Of course we don’t; we are human beings and none of us are perfect. Do we always try our best to get it right; absolutely we do. When things go wrong, we try our very best to put it right. We welcome constructive criticism. We properly investigate concerns, admit when we’ve made mistakes and look to improve so that we don’t make the same mistakes again.

When something goes wrong, or you want to find out about something that seems unclear, we would always recommend that you do so via the school or campuses official lines of communication.

We appreciate that it can sometimes be difficult to get hold of the person you would like to speak to, particularly at busy times when they may be teaching, on duty, in a meeting, etc, but by bringing concerns to our attention directly, we are much more likely to find a solution to the problem.

To support you with this, we are currently working to upgrade our communication systems. This will mean a new website, but we are also looking at systems such as voicemail, which generates an automatic email to the member of staff you are trying to contact. We will provide you with more details on specific improvements as we implement them.

However unhappy you are, the least successful way of resolving a situation is simply posting a ‘rant’ on social media.

Often publicly posting about a situation makes it much more difficult for us to investigate impartially and resolve a situation. We’ve yet to experience a case like this when the information posted has been fully accurate. Anyone can be a “keyboard warrior” but this will not lead to an improvement in the situation which is why we would urge that any concerns or complaints are raised through the proper communication channels, then schools have the opportunity to keep a record of these and the outcomes.

Posting like this also tends to attract comments from others who have no involvement in the situation and who may post comments which are untrue, unkind and potentially libellous. If this is the case, we will not hesitate to contact the social media site to have the posts removed, contact Northumbria Police or even take legal action where the need arises to protect one of our
pupils or a member of staff.

We appreciate the anxiety caused to parents and carers when you are worried about your child. Please be assured that we take all reports very seriously and if something happens that concerns you, if you contact us by email or phone using the details below, we will investigate and someone will respond as quickly as they can.

Telephone: 01670 816111
Email: communitysupport@ncea.org.uk

Date: 05/11/2020

By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEA Trust.

After the Prime Minister’s announcement of the second national lockdown on Saturday evening, I immediately checked for the updated guidance for schools on the Department for Education (DfE) website. After all, they’ve been issuing messages to schools at weekends, early hours of the morning and during bank holidays since the first lockdown.

Many of you may not be surprised that there was no update on the expectations for schools available on Saturday, nor Sunday. Surely this would be available on Monday, so that schools could plan properly and let everyone know what was happening? Again, it is unlikely to surprise you that it was yesterday afternoon before any guidance was published. In practice, for most school leaders, this meant that we found out well after the school day had ended. As the guidance is several pages long, and has links to many other lengthy documents, this meant that it was only this morning, when lockdown had already started, that we could begin to discuss how this would impact on our schools and what we need to do in response.

I am well aware that schools aren’t unique in this respect, and many other organisations will be facing similar problems with lack of timely information on rapid changes in Government policy. However, it is yet another issue that school leaders are facing in keeping our schools open to all pupils. We are only able to do this because of the amazing commitment of our staff.

Some of the newspaper headlines at the weekend made me very angry, as they created a narrative that we want schools to close, when precisely the opposite is true.

If you would like an indication of how hard our staff are working to keep things going, here are a few examples. This week we have not closed any of our schools or campuses, despite the fact that we have been down to almost half of the total staff on some campuses. In recent weeks, a number of our staff have also volunteered to stay back after school to clean classrooms to help us deal with staff absence in our cleaning teams.

Like many other schools and organisations, although we’ve had thankfully relatively few actual Covid-19 cases amongst our community, the impact of the numbers of staff who are having to self-isolate or who have emergency childcare issues because of this is enormous.

Today (05/11/20), we had to make a decision at 10.30am whether or not to close down all of the schools on the Josephine Butler site, as we were unable to operate the kitchen due to staff absence for self-isolation. Closing would have been the much easier option, but we are always mindful of how much learning our pupils have missed and the massive inconvenience that a sudden, unexpected closure would have caused to parents and carers.

Less than two hours later, we started to serve meals to our pupils thanks to the amazing Glenton’s Bakery and staff volunteers, who in many cases gave up their own lunch break to unload, set up and serve the food. We provided sandwiches or hot bakery products, all prepared off site, to all of our pupils who use our catering facilities and including food for special dietary requirements where requested.

Catering has been incredibly difficult for all schools since full reopening. The restrictions of the ‘bubble’ system mean that the time required to serve pupils has been massively increased and as a consequence, we’ve had to reduce the usual range of choices. This is far from ideal, but given the restrictions placed on us by government guidelines and staff shortages, it is the best we can do under the circumstances. We’ve also had a significant increase in workload for catering staff in preparing food packages for pupils on free school meals who are self-isolating.

I am not telling you this for the purpose of sympathy or looking for extra praise for our staff, as I know that the same spirit of everyone rolling up their sleeves to help in a crisis is true in many organisations. However, I do think it is important for you to know that your children in all of our schools are cared for by a magnificent team of staff, who care deeply for your children and do everything they can to make each school the best it can possibly be. I am so grateful for the commitment of our staff in going the extra mile, and often much further.