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CEO Blog

How can we help our pupils take exams full of hope and aspiration?

12th May 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 12/05/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

After the disruption of the past two years, the middle of May brings us once again into ‘exam season’; dreaded by pupils, staff and parents/carers alike, all for slightly different reasons. The high stakes, terminal exam system creates a high stress environment for pupils in Years 11 and 13, and also for Year 6 who have just finished their SAT papers today. The pressures have only increased thanks to recent reforms, making exams more of a memory test than the exams they replaced and the similarities to the exams I took as a student in the 1980s are clear.

This year I also have the additional worry of being a parent of a Year 11 pupil and I’ve been reminded of the added stress which that brings to family life. Only those who will never have to take another exam again would have designed such an oppressive and unhelpful way of assessing the progress and attainment of our children at the end of Key Stages 2, 4 and 5. Is completing over twenty separate terminal GCSE exams for up to ten subjects really the most effective method of assessment?

Given that we have no alternative under the current system, what can we do equip our pupils with the hope and aspiration they need to survive the examination period? If I had the answer to this, I would probably be able to retire by now on the proceeds of the (best-selling?) book I would have written! Joking aside, part of the rationale for writing this blog is a reminder that we all need to try and increase pupil confidence and reduce their stress levels so that they can achieve success in their examinations.

Reassuring pupils is really important; they can only do their best and they need to focus on their performance and not worry about how anyone else has done. Once each exam paper has been completed, there is no point talking about the answers to those questions, just move on and think about the next one.

I try to reinforce the message that pupils will perform best if they prepare themselves well, with frequent and focused revision in the run up to the exams. I emphasise how hard they’ve worked and remind them that staying calm and thinking through their answers before they commit to writing will help them succeed. Sharing these messages with parents and carers also helps and we try to create hope and aspiration by attempting to build a ‘team’ around pupils, reminding them that they are not alone.

Every pupil in the whole country taking their exams this year have missed school and learning time due to the pandemic. There are some sensible modifications to the exam papers to try and account for this, but it is still a difficult and stressful time for everyone involved and I hope that before I end my career that we’ve moved on to a better system for assessing learning at the end of each stage in school. In the meantime we need to remind our pupils that they will get through it and on the whole if you’ve put in the work then you will get the results that you hope for and aspire to.

CEO Blog

Hope at Easter

7th April 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 07/04/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

One of the key parts of our Trust Development Plan is the pledge that we will fulfil our vision and values by “working with hope and aspiration”. A key part of the Easter message is a reminder that hope should not be lost. I think that this is probably the point in my lifetime where perhaps hope seems very far away for many people.

After two years of the impacts of Covid-19, which hasn’t gone away, the terrible war in Ukraine and its innocent victims, price rises virtually every week and new taxes to pay, it feels like it is a huge challenge to stay hopeful about our future.

Yet amongst all of this, we can see the great impact of those who work with hope. We can see this in the incredible bravery of the Ukrainian people, in their belief that they can defeat an invading army many times the size of its own. We can see it through the magnificent work of our NHS and our scientists in coping with the overwhelming challenge of Covid, caring for those who have suffered most from it and developing vaccines and anti-viral medicines. We can see it in all of those who work so hard to support those who need help to cope with the continuing impact of austerity and rising prices, from the Wansbeck and Alnwick food banks to charities such as Children North East.

Most importantly for our parents and carers, we see the hope in the children in our schools. Our children aren’t immune from the problems I’ve described or from more individual ones either. However, our children come to school hopeful; about their learning, about extra-curricular activities and about being with their friends after so much disruption. Our pupils who have external exams next term are working incredibly hard so that they can do their best and all year groups are working hard to make up for lost time when their education was disrupted. They’ve also shown great hope with the efforts with fundraising this term, from the amazing collections for Ukraine to the other well established events such as Red Nose Day.

I hope that all of our community across our Trust schools, our pupils, staff, parents, carers, governors and trustees have a happy and hopeful Easter.

‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’ [Romans 15:13]

CEO Blog

Longer school days – a great idea?

31st March 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 31/03/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT

This week the Government published its long awaited Education White Paper. White papers are policy documents produced by the Government setting out their plans for new laws and Acts of Parliament. However, in the case of education, many proposals in White Papers don’t need to become laws to make changes. For example, the Department for Education can publish an ‘aspiration’ for schools and ask OFSTED to report on it, or make changes to qualifications and ask OFQUAL to implement them. Often this is a much easier route than taking a Bill to parliament where MPs and the House of Lords can discuss the proposed changes, debate them and modify or eliminate them through voting.

Let’s take the proposal in the White Paper that all schools should open for 32.5 hours each week. It seems on the face of it to be a really appealing idea – children spend more time at school, so learn more and get better outcomes. Who could argue against this?

Unfortunately it turns out that this proposal is not quite what it seems. Firstly there is no additional funding to accompany the proposal. This means that the additional staff required to make this happen have to come from existing school staff and budgets. As in almost all schools, staff are already working to their maximum contracted hours, and delivering a lot of extra things on a voluntary basis, more staff will need to be employed with no extra cash for schools to do this.

Secondly, there is nothing in the guidance around the 32.5 hours per week to say that this means extra learning time for children. Many schools, including ours, are currently under the 32.5 hours per week or 6.5 hours per day. The main reason for this is that over time, lunch breaks have been reduced.

When I started teaching many years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for schools to have up to one hour fifteen minutes for a lunch break. In secondary schools, most of the pupils went home, or at least off site, so schools were often very quiet. As things have changed since then, such as safeguarding restrictions on pupils leaving school sites, lunchtimes got much busier and many pupils got bored easily. As it is the time when schools have fewest staff available as other than senior leaders, teachers can’t be directed to work during their lunch break and can only volunteer to help. The pressure on a small number of staff to supervise a school’s worth of pupils led to most schools cutting the lunchbreak right down. There are some schools, not NCEAT ones, who have only 20 minutes for a lunch break.

To accommodate this, most schools started to take the half hour or so they reduced the lunch by off the end of the school day, so that schools finish earlier than they did in the past. Pupils still spend the same amount of time in lessons that they always have, which is around five hours, plus time for tutor groups, assemblies etc.

So let’s be clear, the proposal for a longer school day or week isn’t about giving the pupils more educational opportunities as this won’t be achievable without a significant increase in funding. So what is the reason for this change?

Sadly, I think that it is about political point scoring and trying to please some of the core voters by saying ‘look we’ve extended the school day so children will learn more and catch up’. Unfortunately that’s not how it works if you don’t fund it to make that happen. Learning is about the quality of the experience much more than the quantity. If they funded schools so that we can run compulsory clubs, activities, tutoring, etc to lengthen the school day then I would be entirely in favour of it. My worry is that without the funding, then it will just mean more unstructured time, bored pupils and even more stretched staff.

Our challenge for our schools in NCEAT is to find a way of adding more productive time to the school day which will enhance our pupils’ experiences and make it more enjoyable, without having the additional funding to do so. We won’t back away from the challenge, but it is a huge ask for schools to meet it.

CEO Blog

Burst of Joy

17th March 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 17/03/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

On this day in 1973, a very famous photograph was taken by the photographer, Sal Veder, at an airforce base in California. The image shows a US Airforce Colonel being reunited with his family after spending more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The photograph was given the title ‘Burst of Joy’ and was awarded the famous Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

There are a number of reasons why I thought about this photograph. Perhaps the most obvious reason is that every newspaper this morning has on its front page a photo of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, who was basically held hostage by the Iranian government for six years and has finally been released. No doubt tomorrow’s editions will have a photo of Nazanin reunited with her husband and their daughter, who she hasn’t seen since she was baby.

Both photographs can give us joy and hope, two things which have been in very short supply recently. They also remind us that war and conflicts will eventually end and there will be a better future. The photo of the Colonel reminds me too that when powerful countries start wars which can’t be justified then they will eventually lose. This is particularly true when they invade a country where people are as brave as the Ukrainians.

The other event which offered hope this week was the bravery of Marina Ovsyannikova, the Russian journalist who interrupted a live Russian TV news broadcast to protest against the invasion of Ukraine. She held up a poster which was half in Russian and half in English to tell the Russian people what is really happening in Ukraine, but also to show people outside of Russia that many ordinary Russians are against the war. Her actions have led to a number of other Russian journalists and presenters to resign as they are not prepared to follow President Putin’s propaganda and lie to Russian people about the invasion of Ukraine.

When people act like Marina, and we see the incredible bravery of ordinary Ukrainians to defend their country from invasion then it keeps hope alive. Let us pray for peace so then we can experience the joy at the end of a needless war as families are reunited.

CEO Blog

Good will always defeat evil

10th March 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 10/03/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

Watching the news at the moment is very difficult. The content is all tremendously bad news and some of it is very frightening. It is natural for us to feel very pessimistic about events in Ukraine and also about the pressures that we face at home with huge price rises for electricity, gas and fuel, rising prices in shops and the tax increases in April.

In spite of that, this week has reminded me of the power of good over evil. The response from our school communities to support humanitarian aid to Ukraine has been nothing short of magnificent and we have been overwhelmed by the generosity of the donations received. In fact we are so overwhelmed, as are many of the aid agencies, that we are now pausing the collection of donated items and focusing on getting them transported to the people who really need them.

Your generosity is even more amazing because the price increases I mentioned earlier mean that everyone has less to spend, so it is a huge ask to request donations at this time.

While there have been no shortage of wars and conflicts since the end of World War 2, the invasion of Ukraine seems to have captured attention to a much greater extent than any other recent conflict. I think that this is partly because armed conflict in Europe has not been seen on this scale since 1945, but it also because technology such as social media gives us access to so much more information on what is really happening. I think that many people are also shocked by Putin’s aggression with the type of invasion not seen since World War 2, solely about gaining territory and power at the expense of innocent victims.

When faced with the evils of this war on a daily basis, it is easy to be very pessimistic about the future. However, the response of our communities to the crisis has been stunning and reminded me that there is far more good in the world than evil. This is also reinforced by the way that ordinary people in the neighbouring countries, particularly Poland but not least Moldova which is probably Europe’s poorest country, have welcomed Ukrainian refugees with open arms.

Since the invasion, I’ve seen how much our children care about people they’ve never met and how much they want to do what they can to help. When we see this generosity of spirit and the support of our communities for the appeal, it acts as a reminder that hope will prevail and good will always overcome evil in the end.

CEO Blog

Will ‘levelling up’ create better opportunities for our children?

3rd February 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 03/02/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

In a break from the focus on possibly illegal parties which may or may not have happened in or around Downing Street, the government launched its long awaited “Levelling Up” whitepaper this week. Although the idea of ‘levelling up’ can seem a bit vague at times, it’s very clear that what used to be called the ‘north-south divide’ is as huge as ever. So we should be welcoming a Government whitepaper which sets out “to end geographical inequality”. As ‘levelling up’ has been such a key part of the government’s pledge to areas like Northumberland, I thought that I should look in detail at what this means for education.

I was surprised to see that the first reference to education was about the “new schools funding formula in England ending the previous postcode lottery” and reference to the additional funding over the next three years. Firstly, the move to a National Funding Formula (NFF) is hardly new, as it was planned in 2016, launched in 2018 and has still not been fully implemented. There is no doubt that a gradual move to the NFF has reduced the uneven nature of funding. When I was a Headteacher, I found it difficult to believe that our nearest neighbouring secondary school received £3,000 more per pupil basic funding than the pupils in the school I led. This has now changed but the way that this has been achieved is through basing more of the funding solely on the number of pupils.

The outcome of this is that schools which serve more affluent communities have seen their budgets rise at a greater rate than schools which serve more disadvantaged communities, as proportionally less of the funding is now based on deprivation indicators such as free school meals. This is good news for schools in more affluent areas, which were no doubt underfunded in the past, but has not helped schools in disadvantaged areas to the same extent, as budgets have grown slowly by comparison.

Secondly, although any increase in school funding is always welcome, independent studies have shown that the increase in funding for next school year will only return per pupil funding to the levels from 2009-10 after more than a decade of real terms cuts. Unfortunately due to the cost pressures that all of us are feeling with increases in fuel bills, inflation, national insurance, etc. the impact of the additional funding will be limited.

The next reference in the whitepaper to education is that by 2030, 90% of primary children will reach the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. The government’s own statistics show that in 2019, the last year in which children in Year 6 had SAT exams, the equivalent figure was 65% of all pupils. To get from 65% to 90% by 2030 is a huge challenge for the nation’s primary schools. While on one hand I welcome the very high aspiration, on the other I question how this will be achieved without a huge level of additional investment in schools, of which there was no mention in the whitepaper. Schools are already working flat out to get the best outcomes for their pupils and further improvements will be largely achieved only with greater investment.

The other educational area from the whitepaper which received a lot of headlines is the suggestion that there will be some new ‘elite’ Sixth Forms set up and run by sponsors such as Eton College, the famous boarding school. Eton has an unparalleled record in producing British Prime Ministers and I’m sure that it offers an amazing education. However it charges fees of almost £15,000 per term, so close to £45,000 per year on top of a £3,000 fee for pupils just to join the school and ‘extras’ of up to £2,000 per year. If we take out the part of the costs related to boarding (£10,000) that’s still around £35,000 per year to spend on education.

This year the minimum per pupils funding levels in Northumberland are £5,415 for secondary and £4,180 for primary. If we contrast that with per pupil funding at Eton then maybe providing schools with the funds to close that gap would really help us to ‘level up’?

CEO Blog,Front Page News

The Immortal Memory

27th January 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 27/01/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

We are a few weeks into the New Year and I wonder how many of you heard or maybe even sang “Auld Lang Syne” as 2022 began? If you’ve heard the song, I wonder how many of you know that it was written by Robert Burns, the Scottish poet. Tuesday, 25th January, was Burns’ Night in Scotland (and beyond), when people have ‘Burns Suppers’ where haggis is always on the menu and people celebrate his poems and songs.

I was always very aware of the work of Robert Burns. I was born in Ayr, the same town as him, and lived where there are a lot of places connected to Burns’ which attract many tourists from all over the world. At school we were taught some of his most famous poems and learned to recite them off by heart. Even in the O level English exam (old version of GCSE), we had a whole section on Burns’ poems.

I never thought about it at the time, but now I wonder why the work of Robert Burns is still celebrated as being important and relevant 263 years after he was born? After all, he came from a very humble background, both he and his father were tenant farmers, where they rented small farms from rich landowners and struggled to make a living. Burns didn’t make any real money from his poems became much more famous after he died, at the age of just 37, than when alive.

I think that his fame is because he wrote about things that mattered to ordinary people in their everyday lives, but also he wasn’t afraid to challenge what he saw as injustice, speaking up for people who were poor and had nothing. Although we might find his work very challenging to read now because of the language it was written in, to the ordinary working people of the time he was speaking their language and standing up for them.

More than that, the fact that someone from a poor, working class background could succeed and produce some amazing work can be seen as an inspiration for us. Think of him as somewhere between Sam Fender and Stormzy for a modern comparison!

One his most famous lines is “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.” This is best translated as no matter how much you plan or prepare in life, things can still go wrong, which I think is sound advice for all of us! This is from Burns’ famous “To a Mouse” poem and also inspired the title of John Steinbeck’s famous book “Of Mice and Men”.

Maybe we should think about the role model, despite his many personal flaws, that Burns provides. He was certainly honest enough to recognise his own failings: “God knows, I’m not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be”. Perhaps this time of year is a good time for us to be inspired by Burns and consider what we each need to do to make ourselves the person we should be.

CEO Blog

Difficult times but better days ahead

13th January 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 13/01/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

At last there is some hope from scientists that we can see some better days ahead, but the next few weeks will see continued challenges for our schools. The impact of absence is felt across all schools, but the issues are more severe in some than others. I’m very proud of how hard our staff have worked to keep all of our schools open so far but we are at the edge of our capacity in some schools where there are 25% of staff absent, overwhelmingly linked to Covid-19.

While I hope that we can continue to keep all schools fully open, we have very coherent contingency plans if we have to partially close. In context, recent rates of Covid-19 in Northumberland have reached over 2200 per 100,000. By comparison, the national figure at the start of the last lockdown in January 2021 was around 400 cases per 100,000. As a result, during the last 3 months we have experienced more Covid-19 staff absence than at any point in the pandemic, probably more than the previous 18 months combined.

You may have read about the difficulties in getting supply staff to cover staff absences. This a national problem and Northumberland is in the same position as the rest of the country, with high demand and limited supply. The Government’s call for retired teachers to return to the profession has had a minimal impact so far. As is often the case, those in government failed to appreciate the practical difficulties in making an idea reality, not least the long delays in obtaining Disclosure and Barring Service clearance for staff to be able to return to the classroom. Ironically this is another government department that is slowing down the Department for Education’s scheme.

Today’s announcement that from Monday, Covid-19 self-isolation will be cut to five days with two negative lateral flow tests should help reduce the impact of staff absence. However even under this week’s change to seven days with two negative tests, we have staff who are still testing positive on day 10 who then can’t cut their isolation period.

Thankfully pupil attendance hasn’t been significantly impacted so far, which is really important as the last thing pupils need is to miss more time in school. This isn’t just to catch up academically but also for the impact it has on their wellbeing.

I began by talking about better days ahead and I believe that although we seem to be at the peak of the wave of the Omicron variant, there is genuine hope that it may mean that we move from Covid-19 as a pandemic to where it becomes endemic. In simple terms, this means that it will become more like flu; it will still pose a significant health problem periodically but we will learn to live with, probably through annual vaccinations as with flu.

This offers the hope that we will have a return to a ‘normal’ education provision by the summer term, which would be of massive benefit to our pupils. I put normal in inverted commas as there is no doubt that some of the changes we’ve made to deal with Covid-19 have changed the way we will work in the long term and hopefully have improved our provision for the better, such as the increase in capacity to use laptops to support learning.

Let’s hope that the scientists are correct and we are about to finally turn a corner, as that really would make 2022 a much better year than the previous two.

CEO Blog

Educating for Wisdom

6th January 2022Leanne Tonks

Date: 06/01/22
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

I always feel like January is the longest month of the year. The days are still very short and it’s generally colder than December. After celebrating Christmas and New Year, it’s easy to feel a bit deflated. This is especially true when the cold and dark is combined with a resolution to give up something we enjoy but we know isn’t the most healthy option (like chocolate!) or we are tired from increasing the amount of exercise we are doing! The first week in January is therefore often described as one of the most depressing weeks of the year. Taking down the decorations before the Twelfth Night (5th January in England) also signals that celebrations are over for another year.

However, in many countries, Spain for example, January 6th (El Dia de los Reyes) is a day of huge celebration, just as important as Christmas Day. As you will see in Sally’s column, it celebrates Epiphany and the visit of the three Wise Men or Kings to see Jesus and present him with gifts. The idea of Wise Men and the concept of wisdom may seem a little old fashioned and the word wisdom is not as widely used today as it was in the past. Given the challenges over the past couple of years, maybe we should be looking at wisdom as one of the key qualities we demand from our leaders.

In our school Trust, as with other Church of England Schools, wisdom is a very highly regarded quality and one which we try to develop in our pupils. Educating for wisdom is a key part of how we fulfil our Trust vision. For us this means not just learning the knowledge in the content of the curriculum, but also about encouraging children to be curious, ask thoughtful questions about what they are learning and to transfer something learned in one lesson and apply it in another. It’s also about developing reasoning, understanding ethics and being able to see things from the perspectives of others. It’s about learning to make wise decisions.

Traditionally wisdom was seen as something that develops with age and experience, and to some extent this is true. However it is also something all of us can develop through our resilience, determination, empathy for others and in our personal skills. Again, as a Trust we are committed to giving our pupils chances to experience a range of opportunities that they may not otherwise be able to enjoy, from forest and beach schools, to learning a musical instrument, to Mandarin and Chinese culture lessons. Much of this learning won’t be recognised in exam grades but it does give pupils the chance to develop wisdom through a variety of experiences.

One of the struggles for all countries in dealing with the pandemic has been, at times, a lack of wisdom in how to cope with this type of challenge. Experience of this type of rapid spread of infection around the globe is very limited and much of the planning was based on a flu pandemic, which is different in nature to coronavirus. When dealing with a huge amount of data and a variety of views and advice from scientists, the wisdom to interpret information and make the right decisions is a rare and very valuable attribute for a world leader.

Maybe next time we hear the story of the three Wise Men we need to remind ourselves of the importance of wisdom in all that we do and put wisdom near the top of our list of qualities we require of our leaders.

CEO Blog

CEO’s Christmas Message 2021

16th December 2021Leanne Tonks

Date: 16/12/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

I am very proud of the efforts that our pupils and staff, supported by parents and carers, have made over what has been a very long term. Attendance can always be improved (until it is 100%!) however, it has been really pleasing that every one of our eight schools has had attendance rates above the national average for the autumn term. This sums up the commitment of our community to get our children back into school to learn and make up for the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Both pupils and staff alike have shown great resilience and a determination to get back to as near normal as we can under the circumstances.

Resilience is something we really value in our schools and something that we support our pupils in developing. Resilience is the ability to adapt to stressful life changes and bounce back from difficulties. Resilience is a response to a crisis that allows us to move on despite the impact. We learn from it and we grow because we learn from it. For all of us, our own personal resilience has been sorely tested over the last 20 months, and I fear that it will face further tests in 2022 due to the threat of the Omicron variant.

It may seem a bit strange to be writing about resilience in a Christmas message, when the usual theme would be around hope and joy. However, if you think about the Christmas story, particularly as our Chaplain, Sally, has written about it further on in this newsletter, a great deal of resilience was required by Mary and Joseph.

We have Mary, a young, unmarried mother to be, who could have been rejected by Joseph and his family. We then have Mary and Joseph, forced by the Roman Empire to travel 90 miles through desert and over hills to Bethlehem because the Romans wanted to carry out a census. Then on arrival, finding no rooms available for them, having to bed down in a stable with the animals. Finally, after the birth of Jesus they were forced to flee from King Herod’s soldiers and become refugees in Egypt. If that doesn’t sum up a resilient couple, I’m not sure what would!

All of us will face another unusual Christmas, although hopefully not quite as restricted as last year. Over Christmas and in the New Year ahead, we will all face situations where our own personal resilience will be put to the test. Whatever challenges 2022 will throw at us; it is our collective resilience that will help us get through it and will make us stronger for it.

I hope that everyone in our community, pupils, staff, parents, carers, governors and trustees has the Christmas that they hope for, and that we all return safe and well for the start of the new term in January.

CEO Blog,Front Page News

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