Recently, we hosted Labour party shadow education minister, Bridget Phillipson at Oldbury Park Primary School in Worcester to discuss the work we have been doing to tackle the attainment gap within our communities.
The meeting was a really positive opportunity to share our work. As a trust dedicated to our core purpose of driving social mobility, we believe that, no matter what the make-up of the political landscape of the day happens to be, education policy should be resolute in raising aspiration and ensuring strong outcomes for all students. At the heart of any party’s educational policy should be a commitment to ensuring one’s background and personal circumstances never acts as a barrier for a young person to reach their full potential.
In that spirit, there are a number of key takeaways we hope Labour’s education team gained from their visit, not least that on-the-ground insights should help to shape future policy decisions.
Support for disadvantaged students
One of the leading ways to achieve social mobility is to provide exceptional education and tailored support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds by ensuring support and funding is directed where it is needed most.
A central component of our own disadvantaged strategy is the provision of targeted academic support. This includes introducing a specific focus on reading across our trust –identifying pupils who are falling behind their peers in literacy skills early and helping them to catch up.
In introducing any type of support programmes, schools, trusts, and policy makers need to understand that every child is different and that a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. This is why strong and flexible plans for supporting disadvantaged students need to be introduced at every level.
The subsequent impact of going above and beyond for these pupils in unquantifiable, and we hope a true commitment to ensuring this level of support is replicated in the formulation of education policy moving forward.
Investing in the school workforce
What should underpin all education policy is a commitment to investing in the recruitment, training and retention of high-quality teachers and support staff. To make the most difference for every student, the best teachers and staff need to be in every classroom and every school.
Within our trust, this is manifest through our focus on creating individualised continuing professional development (CPD) opportunities that enable our staff to continue to boost and refine their own skillsets.
This comes through nurturing effective teacher talent through investment in widespread CPD opportunities and outspoken support for the importance of the profession in its influence on raising the aspirations of local communities by shaping future minds.
Non-academic barriers
Outside of the classroom, there also needs to be a clear commitment to dismantling non-academic barriers. This includes a focus on attendance, behaviour and social and emotional learning support. These barriers tend to disproportionally affect disadvantaged students and so present more of a challenge for some schools than others.
Ignoring or deprioritising these factors will impact outcomes. All students need to be in class on time and in the right frame of mind to learn well. Really focusing on detailed pupil premium plans tailored to each pupil’s individual context is crucial, as is ensuring these plans can adequately respond to how these factors impact each student’s ability to engage in their lessons.
Of course, plans are meaningless without effective implementation and measurable impact. However, when making decisions about the future of education and about how to assess the success of schools in supporting students, there should be a strong consideration of their efforts to tackle these outside factors.
As schools and trusts across the country continue to face historic challenges such as the recruitment and retention crisis and the cost-of-living crisis, we encourage decision makers from all parties to ensure the success of young people stays at the forefront of education policy so that no child is able to fall through gaps.
Indeed, it would be better if there were fewer gaps for them to fall through. And the more policy makers visit schools, the fewer gaps there will be in their understanding of what that will take.
I read this with interest and remain hopeful that schools within this trust are taking this seriously, and not just paying lip service to it. Your comments on investing in the school workforce got me thinking about the positive impact of a stable and consistent staff structure. A structure that embodies the unlocking of talent and fulfilling of potential – role models perhaps.
As leaders we should ensure our actions represent the best of what social mobility hopes to achieve. I write this seeing some shocking retention statistics, welfare concerns amongst staff, and lack of transparency regarding promotion opportunities within the trust.
To quote from recent conversations with senior leaders in one such school – “We are seriously undermining our ability to change our pupils lives by neglecting our staff, the very people we rely on to effect such change.”
If the data shows school leadership is negatively effecting staff it takes a robust leader to challenge this, and in doing so perhaps then the disadvantaged pupils will not be burdened with the further instability that arises from poor staff retention.
I agree wholeheartedly with consistency in managing non-academic barriers – stability and equality of opportunity are incredibly important factors. Fundamental to any such people-driven policies and processes are the stability of staffing within our schools. We really should “be the change that we wish to see in the world”.