Reshuffle gives opportunity for rebuilding relationships

16th September 2021Leanne Tonks

As I’ve said before, I don’t think that anyone in a role like mine should publically take a party political view. School leaders have to work with whoever the public elects, both nationally and locally. We need to keep relations positive to avoid creating more barriers which could impact on our ability to provide the education our children deserve.

The appointment of Nadhim Zahawi as Secretary of State for Education is, I think, the 16th person in that role since I began my teaching career. I don’t think that anyone would envy the decisions that his predecessor, Gavin Williamson, had to make during the pandemic. However, it was widely felt by those working in schools that often we just weren’t listened to when major decisions were made. There was a huge sense of frustration that many of the mistakes made with educational decisions could have been avoided if the Secretary of State had listened to the voice of the profession. The fiasco over the grade algorithm in 2020 is a good example, as almost all school leaders pointed out how this would lead to unfair results for individual students.

I’ve always regarded the Secretary of State as one of the most crucial roles in Government, after all we are talking about a role where decisions have a critical impact on the future of our children and therefore the future success, happiness and prosperity of our nation. In my opinion it is a role that should always be given to someone with the necessary experience and skills to be successful in the role. Knowledge can always be gained and above all else it should go to someone who cares deeply about children and really wants the role. Consistency and a long term approach would be very welcome but unfortunately many of Mr Zahawi’s predecessors have lasted for only a year. This is in contrast to other nations like Germany, where the equivalent role has had 6 ministers in the same time period that Britain has had 16.

I welcome Mr Zahawi to the role and I wish him every success. He has a long ‘to do list’ passed on to him by Mr Williamson and this contains some huge challenges. The biggest challenge will be securing enough funding to resource schools properly so that they can overcome the impact of the Covd-19 disruption on education and help all of our children reach their potential.

The other huge challenge is to set a clear direction for the education sector and show some decisive leadership. For a number of years, there has been an absence of a strategic view, which has been replaced by short term thinking. Significant decisions often seem to be made only when a crisis point has been reached. A clearer rationale and strategy for education will be welcomed by many. If the Government is really serious about ‘levelling up’ then investment in education, particularly in areas of high deprivation, needs to be a key part of this.

Mr Zahawi has been widely praised for his work in helping roll out the Covid-19 vaccination programme in his previous role as Vaccines Minister. Let’s hope that at the end of his time as Secretary of State for Education that he will be worthy of similar praise for his positive impact on education and improving the life chances of our children.

New NCEAT schools to be at the heart of their local communities

9th September 2021Leanne Tonks

Starting a new school year is always eagerly anticipated by staff, pupils and their families. This year however, it was even more exciting than usual for Northumberland Church of England Academy Trust as we have officially opened four new primary schools!

At the end of August, we received the final permission needed from the Department of Education (DfE) to split the former Bishop’s Primary School into five separate primary schools. We did this to ensure that each school is firmly at the heart of its local community, while retaining all of the benefits of working together as part of our Trust.

The former Josephine Butler campus will keep the Bishop’s name and school number, but we now welcome Grace Darling C of E Primary, James Knott C of E Primary, Thomas Bewick C of E Primary and William Leech C of E Primary into the Trust as new schools in their own right.

Our staff have completed a huge amount of work to enable this to happen, including creating new websites and setting up new IT and administration systems. Each new school also received a pre-opening OFSTED inspection during the summer holiday. All have received very positive reports and we will share these with you when we are allowed to publish them.

As we made clear during the consultation period, there will be no changes to the school uniforms during the 2021-22 school year. Each of the new schools will consult parents and carers later in the school year about whether there should be any changes in the future.

This does not necessarily mean that there will be any changes to uniform and our Trust commitment is if there are any future changes, these will be phased in over a period of time and not imposed suddenly. We are also committed to making uniform as affordable as possible and restricting the requirement for branded items to the absolute minimum. The Department for Education are bringing out new guidelines for school uniform later in the autumn term and we will review this before starting uniform consultations.

There will be exciting opportunities for our pupils to design new school badges and we will shortly be announcing details of the competitions for this. We very much hope that this will be a chance for each school to further strengthen its identity within its own local community.

I hope that our pupils, parents and carers will not notice any significant changes to how each school operates on a day to day basis. However, creating the new schools will make it easier to apply for places in a particular school and over time will give each school more funding to spend on providing the best possible education for our pupils.

For our staff, who are used to collaborating, sharing ideas, resources and training, this will continue as usual, as it is a huge part of the success of our schools. All that will change is that this will be done through the Trust rather than through a single school. Although each school now has its own Headteacher, Mrs Hinson will act as Executive Headteacher to support the new Headteachers and provide continuity of leadership.

These are exciting changes which we believe will help us provide an even better education for our pupils.

Making the most of our summer

16th July 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 16/07/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

I wonder how many of us as adults look back nostalgically at summer holidays that seemed to stretch endlessly. My memories are mainly of ‘playing out’ and often being dragged back home to eat dinner. No mobile phones meant we could push the boundaries of staying out until we were ‘hunted down’ by one of our parents.

Summer days for us meant playing football in the park, with games going on for hours with teams constantly changing as friends arrived or were called home. It meant riding on bikes to the beach or inland to climb what we thought were mountains to freewheel down. It meant us all chipping in what cash we had or making some from doing jobs for relatives and neighbours, so that we could share ice cream or chips.

Above all else, it meant spending time with friends, and learning. Not learning in the sense of the school curriculum, although we did learn things like the practical maths required to know how many bags of chips we could afford from our shared cash and how to divide this fairly amongst eight people! What we learned were things like what friendship really was, how to solve arguments amicably and how to grow more independent – doing things without our parents. By spending lots of time outdoors we also learned a lot about nature, even if sometimes this was about which plants to avoid if your football went into the bushes!

For me, those days were long ago and the world is very different now, but I believe that the summer holiday is the time to give our children some of the opportunities that I’ve mentioned above. At the risk of repeating what I’ve said a number of times before, I think that more than ever our children need opportunities to spend time with their friends and families outdoors, playing games, learning about the world in an informal way and reconnecting with nature. The best thing we can do as parents or carers this summer is give our children these opportunities but the challenge, particularly with current circumstances, is do this in the safest possible way.

It’s been another incredibly difficult year but the lights of our communities have shone through in the way that everyone has worked together to support our children. I hope that all our pupils, staff, parents, carers and families have a wonderful summer, where the sun shines and we have the chance to build some happy memories to last a lifetime. I’ll sign off with a final thought in the form of a short poem and I look forward to seeing everyone return safe and well in September.

Summer Holidays by Paul Warren:

The sky goes on forever
In azure blue as I remember
Riding on with a cool breeze
Long hot days doing what you please

White sands that shone
Running free all care gone
Crystal clear sparkling water cooling touch
Summer holidays as I remember much.

Why Britishvolt’s gigafactory is fantastic news for our pupils

8th July 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 08/07/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

On Tuesday, Northumberland County Council granted planning permission for Britishvolt to build a huge electric car battery ‘gigafactory’ at Cambois by 2023. When fully operational, this will produce 300,000 electric car batteries each year, employing around 3,000 people directly with an expected 5,000 further jobs with suppliers. The factory will be one of the 20 largest buildings in the UK and represents a £2.6 billion investment, which is the largest single investment in the North East since the opening of the Nissan factory in Sunderland.

Ok, so far this blog has sounded like a news report and you will probably be wondering why a school leader is writing about a new factory… The simple reason is that Britishvolt will create incredible opportunities for the pupils in our schools and will mean a more hopeful and prosperous future for Northumberland. I believe this to be true for two reasons.

Firstly, there will be well-paid, skilled jobs on offer at the plant, which hopefully will be here for the very long term. This offers some amazing career opportunities for our pupils to access, but only if they have the right qualifications and above all, the right attitude to fit into the culture of the employer. As a Trust, we are very fortunate to have strong links with many local employers, such as AkzoNobel, who have the world’s most advanced paint factory based right here in Ashington.

It’s very clear from our work with employers that being able to fit into their culture is absolutely vital to a successful career. Many organisations now make assessing cultural fit a key part of their recruitment process and probationary period when joining. One of NCEAT’s key objectives is to help our pupils to develop skills such as teamwork, problem solving and good communications, because we recognise that these are in high demand from employers and we want our pupils to have the best opportunities. Alongside this, we work to educate our pupils on the range of careers available and the qualifications needed for success.

There is no doubt that Britishvolt will bring many high quality career opportunities, but many of these will also require particular qualifications as well as skills, so we need to ensure that our pupils and parents are aware of the importance of post-16 qualifications in Maths and Science in particular.

The second reason to welcome Britishvolt’s investment is because it represents a low carbon, sustainable future for our region.

We can all be proud of our heritage, and coal mining was a key part of that. Over a hundred years ago, the North East was a world leader in developing the technology to mine and use coal in a range of industries. Today, between Britishvolt, the new electric car investments at Nissan and the development of renewable energy industries along our coastline, we have the chance to become the world’s powerhouse for green, low carbon technologies to help combat global warming.

While coal mining brought employment and prosperity, it also helped to contribute to the problem of global warming. It is ironic then that Britishvolt, with a product which will help tackle climate change, will be constructing their factory on the site of a former coal fired power station.

Britishvolt is a really good news story for Northumberland. We had already started to develop links with them prior to planning permission being granted, and it is fantastic that their plans will now become a reality. The challenge for our Trust schools is ensuring that our pupils are able to take advantage of the opportunities that Britishvolt will offer, but I’m confident that we will rise to this challenge.

Bishop’s changes get green light from Department for Education

24th June 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 24/06/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

We have received notification from the Department for Education that we have been granted permission to split Bishop’s into 5 separate schools. We are awaiting full details but the intention is to make this change from September. 

Each school will now have a Headteacher rather than Head of Campus but I am delighted that Mrs Hinson will act as Executive Headteacher, so that each school is supported as they establish themselves as new schools.

The change was granted on the back of the support received during the consultation period and we are incredibly grateful to staff, parents, carers and the wider community for their support. 

We proposed to make the change to the way that Bishop’s is run to bring each school closer to the heart of its local community, simplify the admissions system and to secure additional funding for the benefit of the pupils. We believe that this will allow us to build on the success achieved by Bishop’s as a single school, while retaining all of the positives we enjoy from working together across the Trust. 

In many respects, more things will stay the same than will change. All staff will still be employed by the Trust and we will continue to collaborate across each of the schools in areas such as school improvement, specialist teachers and training. We also made it clear in our consultation that there will be no changes to the current uniform during 2021-22 and that any future changes would be phased in only after full consultation with parents and carers, including a review of affordability. 

We will be writing to all parents and carers with full details as we have them but we wanted to share the good news as soon as possible. 

Should we extend the school day?

18th June 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 18/06/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

In last week’s blog, I wrote about the government’s decision to invest only 10% of the funding needed to implement the recommendations of Sir Kevan Collins, the Education Recovery Commissioner, on how schools can ‘catch up’ over the next few years.  A key question is how lost time for learning can be made up. One suggestion has been to extend the school day, perhaps making it 8am to 6pm for secondary schools. This is popular with many politicians but as recent surveys suggest, it is not so popular with parents with over 50% strongly against. 

It’s easy to see why having a longer school day seems attractive. Despite the best efforts of schools and families, all pupils have experienced over a year of disrupted education. It seems logical to add more time to the school year by extending the school day, so that pupils can catch up on some of the work they’ve missed. 

If we were to extend the school day, firstly there would be massive additional costs involved to employ all of the extra staff required to make this happen. This alone would take up the majority of the £15 billion cost of recovery identified in Sir Kevan’s report, but this isn’t even the main problem. 

The key issue would be that if longer school days mean more teachers, where would they come from? 

Although this year’s recruitment figures are more encouraging, there has been a national shortage of applicants for teacher training for many years, meaning recruiting teachers for secondary subjects such as Chemistry, Physics and Maths has been very difficult. Even those who have graduated with degrees in those subjects take a year or more to train and qualify, but if we really want to improve the supply of teachers in shortage subjects, we need to persuade more pupils to take the right A levels and complete the right degree course, meaning a minimum of four years before this can have a real impact. 

I would also be concerned about the impact of these extended hours in the classroom on the many clubs and organisations which do great extra curricular work with children after school. Even if these are held later in the day, I’m sure that a longer school day would impact on attendance at these clubs, reducing their capacity to support children in sports, arts, music, etc. 

Extending the school day will only work if it is planned strategically and properly funded. It has to be done working with schools and families and not just imposed upon them. Done properly, there could be a great opportunity to involve the types of clubs and organisations I’ve mentioned above in delivering part of the extended school day, giving more of our pupils the opportunity to take part in a range of activities. This is a vital part of the recovery from Covid-19 – giving pupils the chance to take part in activities to learn new skills, improve their fitness and be part of a team, opportunities they were denied during lockdown. Of course there may be extra tuition sessions to help pupils who are struggling academically but I would argue that enrichment activities are at least as important for most pupils to support their mental health and general sense of wellbeing. It would also mean that far fewer teachers are needed to extend the school day, saving billions of pounds.

Some very careful thought needs to be given to the impact on families where pupils have some caring responsibilities. If the secondary day is longer than the primary day, this could cause problems where secondary pupils may help look after a younger brother or sister. It is also easy for those making decisions to forget that there are also a proportion of pupils who are in the role of a young carer for an older family member. All of this needs to be considered when looking at making any extension compulsory. Conversely there will be other families where extending the school day could help significantly in providing wrap-around childcare. 

If planned carefully, properly funded and ‘done with’ rather than ‘done to’ schools and families through proper consultation, extending the school day could potentially be a positive development. However, if it means a rigid model imposed directly from Westminster then I worry that it just won’t work for pupils, schools and families.

Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing

11th June 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 11/06/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

Last week, Sir Kevan Collins, the highly respected Education Recovery Commissioner, resigned following the failure of the government to implement most of his recommendations on how schools can ‘catch up’ over the next few years. Sir Kevan’s very public resignation raises many questions and the key question is how much do the government value our children?

Sir Kevan’s report recommended spending around £15 billion to support catch up, while the government has actually committed £1.5 billion. Both figures are huge sums, but to put an individual perspective on this, £1.5 billion works out at £50 per pupil, meaning that what Sir Kevan asked for was £500 per pupil.

The school system in the USA gets a lot of criticism for a lack of investment, but President Biden has committed an extra £1,500 per pupil for Covid-19 catch-up, while the Dutch government has allocated £2,000 per pupil. All of this makes our Government’s investment seem poor by comparison, especially where it has managed to spend £37 billion over the last two years on the Test and Trace system, which a recent House of Commons Public Accounts Committee Report described as having an “absurd cost and failures”.

As I’ve said previously, I don’t take a party political view and I have some sympathy for those in Government making difficult decisions. However, I will speak out against injustice and when it comes to investment in education, it does seem that those controlling the funding, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has reported that the educational impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in Britain could lead to our pupils losing 30-40% of future lifetime earnings. Nationally this adds up to lost earnings of £350 billion and this would mean over £100 billion less tax revenue to spend on public services and pay off national debt. Others have predicted that the total impact of pupils failing to catch up could be the loss of over £1 trillion to the UK economy in future decades. As usual, the greatest impacts will be on children and areas with the highest level of disadvantage.

When faced with figures like these, it makes far more sense to me to see the £15 billion as an investment in our children’s futures rather than see it as a cost. The actions the government takes to support pupils catching up on their education will be judged by future generations as how much the government values our children, particularly those who are disadvantaged.

A question of Trust

27th May 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 27/05/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

There have been a number of times in recent years where it looked as if all schools were going to be pushed to become academies. Without a parliamentary majority, previous governments haven’t had the ability or support to make this happen, however, it looks as though this might be about to change…

It has become clear in recent speeches, interviews and publications that the Department for Education has a strong aspiration that all schools will join a strong MAT over the next few years. So what is a Multi Academy Trust and what are some of the advantages of joining?

Academies are state-funded independent schools and unlike most other types of schools, they are controlled by a Trust Board rather than the local authority. A Multi Academy Trust (like NCEAT) is a where a group of academies work in partnership with each other under a single Trust Board.

There are many advantages to working as a group of schools within a MAT, such as sharing costs for support services, staff working across schools, sharing facilities, joint curriculum planning and training. The core purpose is to advance education across the group of schools within the MAT by allowing school leaders to focus on the quality of education.

The Government has made it very clear that they see MATs as the best structure for schools going forward and they also want Trusts to grow so that they can get the greatest advantages from their size both in education and finance.

So what does this mean for NCEAT?

As a MAT, we’ve already seen growth having welcomed Warkworth C of E Primary School into the Trust last September. This has been a positive experience for both Warkworth and the Trust and has demonstrated how by working with schools who share our ethos and want all of their pupils, staff and communities to “let their lights shine”, we can continue to grow while maintaining our values and improving the education of all of our children, which is exactly what those of us working in education should be aspiring to do.

Bishop’s Primary School Consultation Update

13th May 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 13/05/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

In March we launched a consultation on our proposal to split Bishop’s Primary into five separate schools, one on each of the existing campuses. The consultation closed at the end of April and we analysed the responses to determine whether there was support for the proposal. Thank you to everyone who responded.

Although there were a relatively small number of parental responses, the responses we received were overwhelmingly in support of the plan. We also received formal letters of support from the Diocese of Newcastle and Northumberland County Council and a neighbouring school. Importantly, there were also no objections to the plan.

This meant that we could move on to the next stage, which involved writing and submitting a formal business plan for the change to the Department for Education. This was submitted on 6th May and we hope to receive the decision by the end of June. We will of course update you as soon as we have any further news.

Although there no objections to the plan, there were a number of valid questions raised about potential uniform changes. I would like to reassure parents and carers that even if permission is given to open five separate schools in September 2021, we will not be making any changes to the current Bishop’s uniform during the 2021-22 school year.

We’ve made it clear in the consultation that the main reason for making the change is so that each school can have even stronger links with its local community. Uniform is an important issue for any school and its key roles in creating a sense of community and reducing pressure on families to buy expensive fashion clothes must be balanced against making uniform as affordable as possible.

So if we are allowed to create separate schools then we will take our time to make the best possible decisions about uniform. This will involve extensive consultation with pupils, parents and carers so that everyone has the chance to express their views and so we make decisions which will be well supported by each school’s community. There will be no sudden changes and any changes will be phased in.

At the moment, we are fully compliant with Government guidelines on making school uniform affordable for parents, but as some of you may be aware, a new law on school uniform was passed last month. This will require schools to follow the new statutory guidelines which the Department for Education will be introducing in the autumn. Any future reviews of school uniform policies will have to follow these new guidelines and we will ensure that this is included in future consultations. We think that is a positive step and we remain committed to keep uniform costs as affordable as possible so that it should not be a barrier to children attending our schools.

Why literacy is so important for all of us

6th May 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 06/05/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

The link between literacy and success in qualifications is pretty clear. One of the sharpest examples of this is the reading age which is required to access GCSE exam papers. The exam papers are designed with a reading age of 15 years and 6 months, to match the age of the youngest pupils in Year 11 taking the exams that year. For any pupil whose reading age is less than their actual age, there is an instant problem as they may not fully understand questions and instructions in the exam paper. Inevitably, this significantly reduces their chances of getting good GCSE grades, which impacts on their options for further education and career aspirations.

This week, we’ve started work on developing a Trust Literacy Strategy for all of our schools. This is aimed to bring together lots of existing good work in areas such as reading and writing, as well as create new opportunities for our pupils to develop their skills in other areas. We are defining literacy as developing reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar and oracy (the ability to speak clearly, confidently and express yourself well). We believe that developing each of these areas across all age groups will massively improve our pupils’ life chances.

We aren’t starting from scratch here, and there is a lot of great support already in place across our schools. What we are looking to do is make it clearer for pupils and parents/carers what we will be doing at each stage from Early Years to GCSE in order to support our pupils. It’s also about making it clearer exactly what families can also do to support their child(ren) with this. One of the positives to come out of the pandemic is the much greater level of interaction and communication between schools and parents and we aim to build upon this.

Developing literacy isn’t just about improving educational opportunities; the positive impacts run much deeper than that. Children who enjoy reading are three times more likely to have good mental wellbeing than those who don’t enjoy reading. Having good oracy skills improves self-confidence and self-esteem, while reducing anxiety and helping to manage disagreements with others more effectively (helping parents and school staff alike!).

I hope that you think that our plans for a more strategic approach to further improve literacy will be a positive development for our schools and I would love to hear your views on this. If you would like to provide feedback on this proposed strategy, please email marketing@ncea.org.uk.