A Principled view

Amongst the busy life I lead as a school principal, leader, counsellor, mentor and blogger, I also teach classes, currently some Year 8 History and Year 9 Spanish. It’s important to note I have always taught, secondary and sixth form it must be said, in order to validate some of the decisions I have had  to make over past years.  It’s one thing to know the theory, quite another to have the experience to understand how that might roll out in practice.  When the Chartered College of Teaching opened 12 months ago, I became a founding member, because I am utterly convinced that Teaching is a unique profession, not just an extension of business or commercial activity.

Rachel Jackson, from the Institute of Education at John Moores University in Liverpool writes under this headline in today’s Impact magazine from the College. Rachel’s quite right about the activity of teaching being that complex, and not the first from our profession. Here’s Lee Shulman,  an American educational psychologist, widely quoted on the difficulty of Teaching.

Here’s Rachel writing further: “It must be remembered that education was considered a discipline of philosophy at first but due to the desire to find ultimate answers to questions of pedagogy, it was thought best to view education scientifically. This ‘big R’ Research, as Goswami and Stillman put it, was seen as inadequate if teachers are not granted the space to think carefully about the implications. Over 30 years on, are we philosophers or technicians?

The dominance of the ‘science of learning’ reinforces the perception that teaching is merely a technical endeavour but, as Cochran-Smith and Lytle  maintain, it is so much more than this and ‘practitioners are legitimate knowers and knowledge generators, not just implementers of others’ knowledge’. Winch et al.  see teaching as consisting of tacit understandings and reflective thinking as well as technical information but surmised that until teachers are given the space and the capacity to think deeply about the evidence they are bombarded with, teachers cannot be philosophical. As Ball, Maguire and Braun put it, teachers remain ‘ciphers’ who merely ‘implement’.”

Over the last 5 days since our return from half-term, those I work with have noticed I have been a little vexed. Obviously, with the new Campus proposals and consultations underway, pressure groups and their arguments to consider, I have a whole new wall of work to consider. We’ve also had 2 Year 11 parents evenings to handle this week, discussing exam possibilities as well as future destinations with some 100 families and the young people concerned. We had over 160 children involved in our Scholarship examinations, so I have had all those cases to consider, as well as those applicants in contention for Sixth Form award as well. With some of my leadership ill or injured too, there have been additional parents consultations to attend and monitor, and of course the daily ‘Russian Roulette’ of school life brings its unexpected experiences too. Late on Wednesday evening, I needed to act as paramedic, accompanying one of our older pupils home in their mother’s car for example.

None of the above vexed me.

Prior to half-term, I had been asked to read a manuscript of a new book on Childhood and parenting, to provide feedback and perhaps a ‘quote’. Since the book has yet to be published, it’s title is confidential, but the 6 authors are coworkers in one of the psychology services we use. Mothers as well as clinical psychologists, these current practitioners have chosen to write in depth, giving pen-portraits of case histories, about the children under the age of 11 they have been working with in recent years. The book is over 300 pages long, and the contents are a page-turner. I’ve already replied in draft with my quote: “This is a remarkable book; it is packed with wisdom from expert practitioners whilst at the same time illustrated with case examples that highlight very specific strategies for successful therapeutic interventions that parents will recognise straight away.  The writing exudes empathy from the 6 authors, everyone a mother and still working on getting it right for their own children”.

What vexes me is that I never knew being a parent was so hard, and on reading through the very many case notes in the book, we obviously had it so very easy when bringing up our own children. Equally vexing is that I recognise the exemplars in so many of the cases I and my colleagues in leadership are dealing with each day. We are facing an epidemic of mental health issues in our schools in England and mine is certainly not immune from the crisis. National statistics suggest that 1 in 10 of our children are suffering from a diagnosable mental health disorder, that’s over 100 children at Claires Court, 2 in every class at any one time. Those individual mental health issues may be resolved, but of course those unseen at an early age in others will rise up to take their place.

I have tried my utmost to ensure that we have both the qualified staff and expertise/experience in place to manage the daily issues that confront teachers and parents in the daily care of their children, to ensure we are so much more than ciphers implementing from a cue-card. What’s so comforting about the writing of the 6 clinical psychologists (coming from healthcare) and of researchers such as Rachel Jackson (coming from educational research) is that both confirm the sheer complexity of what we in teaching have to do each day, and that there are sources of confirmed knowledge and proven therapeutic pathways that will keep teachers and parents able to manage well the daily challenges they face…which I repeat are “As challenging as in an emergency room during a natural disaster”.  

Let me finish on a hopeful note. Almost everything a parent naturally does to provide for their children is intuitive, and most get this right. A baby needs an adult nearby whenever they need them, to comfort, console, secure and care. Readily available parents, and as we are proxies to this, teachers too, are able to provide physical reassurance to help children feel safe, and by being consistent in such support allows children to learn how to calm themselves. What is less obvious to parents as their children get older is that that need for a place of safety does not get less, and this is not just about ‘space’ in a physical sense, but also of that in time. Being together, not making all of life the treadmill that some days feel, keeping blame away and keeping hope in conversation alive and eternal is the way forward.  As we all age, what next has to be done is not quite so intuitive and automatic.  Telling children not to worry is often the worst thing that can be said, as is expecting that learning is linear and there won’t be serious hurdles along the way.  It should be no surprise that in really effective schools, mental health matters are pre-eminent, because the children do feel safe and able to surface their worries and cares. That does not mean that every child needs clinical interventions, but it does mean that those of us with responsibility must (and do) consider these as serious options. And it means I need to get to know my pupils well, and that’s why I need to be in the classroom, so I keep that particular skill ‘honed’.

Back in April 2018, Charlie Booker wrote this headline piece in The Guardian newspaper:

Man the lifeboats. The idiots are winning. Last week I watched, open-mouthed, a Newsnight piece on the spread of “Brain Gym” in British schools. I’d read about Brain Gym before – a few years back, in Ben Goldacre’s excellent Bad Science column for this newspaper – but seeing it in action really twisted my rage dial.

Brain Gym, y’see, is an “educational kinesiology” programme designed to improve kiddywink performance. It’s essentially a series of simple exercises lumbered with names that make you want to steer a barbed wire bus into its creator’s face. One manoeuvre, in which you massage the muscles round the jaw, is called the “energy yawn”. Another involves activating your “brain buttons” by forming a “C” shape with one hand and pressing it either side of the collarbone while simultaneously touching your stomach with the other hand.

Throughout the report I was grinding my teeth and shaking my head – a movement I call a “dismay churn”. Not because of the sickening cutesy-poo language, nor because I’m opposed to the nation’s kids being forced to exercise (make them box at gunpoint if you want) but because I care about the difference between fantasy and reality, both of which are great in isolation, but, like chalk and cheese or church and state, are best kept separate.
Honestly, the whole article is worth the read – https://goo.gl/EitPrw , and the comments that follow, though its audience is of the adult variety.

So what progress has been made over the last decade then? Firstly, Brain Gym, Learning styles, Multiple Intelligences, Left/right brain learners and other learning science neuro-myths have slowly and steadily been debunked, though probably not quickly enough to prevent too many schools wasting teachers and children’s time on them.  The basis of these neuromyths have been well intentioned; Howard Gardner in his work on multiple intelligences wasn’t trying to invent a new way of teaching, rather than debunk the post-war simplistic approach that advocated that brains could be trained to do anything.  Here’s Gardner writing back in 1993, 10 years after his seminal book Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences was published: In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings – initially a blank slate – could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early ‘naive’ theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)

It’s easy with the wisdom of hindsight to work out how some in the ‘education gig economy’ thought you could just parcel up mini-packages of the above and peddle how a specific intelligence might be more rapidly developed.

Likewise, once those dramatic colour images of the human brain in action started appearing alongside articles on cognitive science, it was amazing just how many myths re-emerged around whole brain/left brain/right brain learning.  That’s not to say that we don’t have different parts of our brain processing different things in different ways, but there are far too many interconnected neurons for us to imagine the bits don’t speak to each other at lightning speed. We’ve know from the very many head injuries endured by soldiers in wartime that damage in different areas causes irreversible damage to specific functions such as speech and sight, but we also know from the remarkable recoveries made by some that the very nature of the brain’s make up enables it to adjust and repair – this is called neuroplasticity, and actually we rely upon this in schools because the whole nature of a child’s growing development through education relies on the basis that neural connections can be made and remade. Here’s the dictionary definition of same:

The profession has been led by people such as Bennett, and research organisations such as the Education Endowment Foundation, who have clamoured for government to ensure that educational change is led by well-rehearsed scientifically endorsed programmes of study. It’s not just Brain-gym adoption that has let this country, the States and many other parts of the west down; whole swathes of the world have been force-fed linear learning and achievement levels up through which children should be marched and by which schools’ efficacy can be judged by government inspectors. The entire English National curriculum has needed to be torn down since 2008, because it was built on such well-intentioned thinking, with no research basis to back it up.

Here in England, we’ve seen the wholesale scrapping of the assessment mechanism using coursework, ‘controlled’ assessments and modular examinations for both GCSE and A levels, again because of the well-intentioned approach that children should be validated by what they achieve along the way as well as by that which can be passed in a terminal examination at the end of a 2 year period.  The first major problem that the above brought was the inevitable grade inflation that came with this approach, that being, if the subjects and courses become more accessible to children by way of the validation systems of assessment, then more children will achieve and succeed at the highest level. The second major problem that arose was that ‘higher achievement’ did not mean successful ‘skill acquisition and embedding’, such that a C grade pass in English and Maths did not mean the successful graduates were literate or numerate.

We are now in the new, brave tomorrow where all skills needed to be kept practiced and alive over a 2 year period , so that on assessment day the successful student can demonstrate that they have all the skills and knowledge at their disposal, and to be honest, so long as the terminal question papers are appropriately tailored, it’s likely good schools will be able to enable and empower just as many of its learners as hitherto to success.  The courses are deeper, richer and encourage time for thinking and personal research, because they are not being constantly interrupted by their own or other subject’s assessments.

So now the old myths have gone, what are the new ones emerging?

Firstly the most obvious one is that the general requirement for schools to have a much more academic and rigorous approach (in order that England can rise up the PISA tables, provide better students for the economy, now and the future). This is being translated by proxy into a narrowing of subject disciplines from the age of 5, and with children being identified as falling behind from the very start.  The use of assessment to determine whether children are making progress assumes that education is the ‘filling of a pail’.  Now I get that, so that so long as I can measure the depth of water in the pail, and ensure that a child’s learning keeps up, then those ‘falling behind’ can be spotted and chivvied along. The trouble is, whilst we can measure the depth of water, that’s not a proxy for the ‘depth of learning’. WB Yates reminded of this with his illusion that ‘Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire’, and it is so much harder to measure the latter.

One new parent to our school with a 7 year old spoke to me on Wednesday afternoon about the difference her son’s experience of education was since changing schools. “In his last school, all he did all  day was write”, and when I picked him up each day, he seemed exhausted by the experience, the day dragging interminably from  one writing experience to the next.  Here, the school day is 2 hours longer, and it seems to whistle by, because he has so many different things to do, such a wide variety of learning experiences to enjoy. ” Now that’s one way to measure the lighting of a fire, anecdotal of course and not easily put into a league table.

As austerity bites, so many of the broader programmes of study are being replaced by narrow, writing-only based disciplines in state schools. Many headteachers and schools are shouting the odds about this, and making a serious fuss, but others are gently pressing forward and seeking to become ‘Ofsted – outstandin’, by focussing on the progress grades achieved by those children in a narrow range of subjects and gently ‘losing’ the children that are not sufficiently compliant to this narrowing of approach.

Schools minister Nick Gibb

Spot the narrowing visible in the now ‘required’ English Baccalaureate; English, English Literature, Maths, sciences (inc computer science), History/Geography, an MFL and one other. “A multimillion pound investment in music and arts education will help hundreds of thousands of young people from all backgrounds enjoy potentially life changing cultural activities, Schools Minister Nick Gibb announced today (18 November 2016).

Over the next 4 years the government will provide £300 million to a network of 121 music education hubs to work with schools, local authorities and community organisations to get more young people taking part in music and arts.  Music hubs help hundreds of thousands of 5- to 18-year-olds each year access activities like playing an instrument, singing in a choir or joining a band. Today’s announcement will allow them to reach even more pupils.”

Previously, this was funded in some 25,000 state schools, so you can see why the subject of Music is in such danger now, because schools can point to the new ‘hubs’ and suggest that this activity is no longer part of their core business.  Art, Drama, Design/Food Technology, Music and RS are now in danger of disappearing as school competitive sporting provision has done before, because the priority for an academic education sanctions their ‘departure’.

Secondly, there is a gentle permissioning of parents to give up on their children, because parenting has become ‘harder’. This needs both careful consideration and checking, because whilst for individual adults of any generation, parenting can be made harder because of partner separation, work challenges and the like, the data doesn’t actually show this over time. Simple measures such as infant mortality have crashed more then tenfold over the last 100 years. There are though many challenges now, cheap junk food, glamour accessories and easy access to technology contributing to an affordable adolescent lifestyle that’s difficult to combat when at the same time children are surrounded by advertisement that empowers them to expect freedom and access to the above.  School can be a very successful antidote to this.

What’s not a myth is that schools play a central part in a child’s life, and adults therein are likely to spend more time with the children than the parents are able to.  As other parts of our welfare state aae squeezed to look after the aging end of our society, so schools need to offer more opportunities not less for the child as they pass through education.  It’s easier for these centres of excellence in understanding and managing children to do so than suggest a wider society should try harder. In just the same way that more GPs in a community leads in the longer term for hospitals and care homes to become less busy, so research-led schools that cover more of the education space will led to a safer society and better educated community.

All we need now is for the numbers of uniformed police to be increased once more. Whilst I have to accept that there are many more crimes now to be committed on-line, so that space needs care, I also know just how important it is to have school liaison officers who work locally and get known in all the schools. As with school nurses,  it’s not good enough to spread them so thinly that they are invisible.  And that’s no myth here RBWM, where there are no longer any police officers assigned to the role. RIP

And in 2018, that’s idiotic, whatever the cause.

Image courtesy of Caremark

As ever within Claires Court School, it has been a busy week. And that for week beginning Monday 22 January is more than just an understatement!
3 things in the public arena plus 1 inspection visit from out of the blue have a nasty habit of blowing you off line…or could of course, if the good ship CC didn’t have the most amazing crew of adults and children.
Item 1 of 4
Let’s go with the Independent Schools Inspection to start with…
Claires Court was last inspected in March 2014, so since last March ’17 we have been expecting our next inspection, as is the legal requirement parliament has placed upon DfE and their agent inspector organisations.
Claires Court sits alongside our nearest neighbour schools of Eton, Herries, Highfield, Redroofs, St. Pirans, and Wycombe Abbey (depending upon age/stage) as a member of the Independent Schools Council, so the DfE inspection framework for our schools is managed by the Independent Schools Inspectorate*.
When I say ‘we were inspected out of the blue’, that’s not quite the case.  We have been awaiting a phone call every Monday; my HoD History and wife takes a much more pragmatic view about schedules and calendars. “Just don’t answer the phone on Monday morning, James” she says each weekend knowingly. “As ISI only ring on Monday, that’s your permanent get out of jail card”.
My very good friend and colleague in leadership, Justin Spanswick, works like me as an Inspector within ISI, in addition to leadership within Claires Court. His best guess for our next was actually last March to the day, mine was 1 week less than 4 years; so since that first ‘failed’ guess by JMS, the reality is, I have spent every Sunday for 46 weeks polishing up our data so that ‘if we were rung 9am Monday, we’d be good to go. And pretty much every Monday morning, circa 9.15 Justin has checked by email or text;”Have we been rung?”.
Monday 22 January will go down in the annals of CC’s move to internet telephony as the day the internet broke our phones. Sadly, ISI still got through despite that break, circa 9.15 to let me know we were to be inspected this week. So much for Mrs Wilding’s cunning plan.
Fast forward to Thursday evening, the ISI team have come and gone, and as ever we are sworn to confidentiality on the outcomes. The visit has gone brilliantly well, the pupils and parents have responded magnificently in over a thousand responses to the ISI questionnaire, the inspectors work is done, and we now await our inspection report to share with you. Confidentiality on outcomes is assured in the meantime.
Item 2 of 4
The Claires Court planning application is in, and we are beginning to gather momentum this week. Inevitably, we are watching the reactions of those within RBWM who are developing their own opinions, and why not? We are a free and democratic country, and planning law permits this process of public scrutiny and exploration of views. The Maidenhead Advertiser letters’ column and other social media seem to have commenced casting me as a ‘pantomime villain’ and I know, and am so strongly advised by others, that I will for the time remain being ‘ever thus’. ‘Enjoy the moment and move on’ they say, because the application we have made is so very much more detailed than a few soundbytes in confidential email heaven. At the time of writing, it seems important to emphasise that our application be read in detail, to comprehend its contents and genuinely understand the seriousness of our intent. In the meantime, I am sworn to confidentiality, and to say nothing more; the school has made its case in detailed written form, and it is for those who wish to take an interest to read our case and consider their conclusions.

Item 3 of 4.

Today sees the latest publication of the DfE’s aggregation of exam results for both GCSE and A level. Suffice it to say that the DfE analysis is shared with us for 24 hours, before they break cover with its outcomes on the BBC, other news and media channels. We are sworn to secrecy… “there must be no break in confidentiality”, yet as dear reader you will spot therein, that trio of secondary independent schools I mention are all NP in the GCSE tables, and as for A level this year, seem too to be cast adrift with nonsensical data.

‘Baffling for parents’ is how Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, describes the secondary school performance tables; they cannot be compared with previous years because the government had “once again moved the goalposts”. Honestly, the publication is baffling to schools too!

At GCSE level, Claires Court is so erroneously reported, it’s beyond a joke. For example, our GCSE scientists in the main pursue ‘triple award science’, the papers being identical to the separate qualifications of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, but which ‘title’ of award you receive depends on timing and choice of ‘tick in the box’ framework. Many schools like us do not want children to give up on the science they don’t like, which they could by ‘downing tools’ on the separate subject award, so by going ‘triple’, it forces the child to buckle down and study for all three GCSE disciplines (Biology, Chemistry, Physics). This year, DfE rewards the alternative – you get credit for acquiring a C or higher grade in Physics, Chemistry or Biology separately, but whilst your triple award pathway is opening up all routes to A level and University Science degree, it registers ZERO on the DfE scale.

It’s the same at A level – just go look at Buckinghamshire, and it becomes very obvious that the better your pupils have done at GCSE, the worse they will gain as value-added at A level. In short, we can keep the outcomes of the DfE analysis confidential for 24 hours, but now they are released, it’s obvious that there was little point in requiring confidentiality because the ‘data published’ is simply ‘junk.

Item 4 of 4

Schools work within the ‘Health and Care’ system, and inevitably, our experience of the emergency care offered by the NHS is amazing, whether that be for children or staff. We’ve had three unfortunate major RTAs within the school community within the last fortnight, with the cars written off. It’s not appropriate for me to go into any detail, though in short, other drivers unlicensed or insured have been involved in the mayhem.  Fortunately, those involved are alive and well, thank you.  Creating a ‘safer’ society on the road always include education, and our Sixth Form attend the ‘Safe Drive, Stay Alive’ show every year to be informed, shocked and we hope educated to drive safely and be insured. The attendees this time round were handed a sealable cloth bag to hide their phone in, which prevents signal reaching the phone and distracting the driver. That’s an important innovation we could all think about acquiring moving beyond education and emergency care, the other health and care services are beginning to struggle to such an extent, that even when required care pathways are identified, the timescale for the commencement of support are stretching way into the future. I can’t tell you any of the details here, but at every age and stage we manage on a weekly bases cases of considerable need. Perhaps one of the biggest changes our school has wrought since the last inspection has been the introduction of our fully qualified school nursing staff, together with nationally recognised first aid training ‘school’ they can run for us. This last fortnight has seen all of our contracting coach company drivers receive updated training in safeguarding from our school nurses, because the local authorities no longer necessarily offer this service in a timely manner.

At the end of one of the busiest weeks ever, I am proud of all my staff in equal measure, but I give particular praise to the school nurses for their imaginative and professional solution-finding in a time of such challenge, and to our Administration and HR department, for working so hard to find the right kind of staff and solutions that support the school’s key values and ensuring that we stay safe in all that we do.

“Proud of the Badge”

Over recent years, the attention given by governments and the media to the outcomes from the international PISA assessments has become pretty intense. These assessments take place every three years, and their focus on the skills of 15 year olds covers Maths, Science and Reading, the latter being the focus for 2018. You can read more here – https://fullfact.org/education/what-you-dont-find-out-about-englands-educational-performance-pisa-league-table/

The English national focus has been on the achievements of both 10/11 and 15/16 year olds (Years 6 and 11), looking at the examination outcomes for English and Maths, and for Year 11 also to include 6 other subjects, one of which could be Literature, the others focussed on 2 sciences, 1/2 humanities, an MFL and one other (known as the EBACC). For state schools completing at the end of Year 6, the SATS outcomes for pupils dominate how the schools themselves are viewed by their inspectorate, Ofsted.  For state secondary pupils, getting the mix of subjects right has also become part of the judgment measure, to ensure the highest score in these 8 subjects to measure progress against the EBACC measure, more of that here.

Over the past 3 years, it’s become very apparent that performance in this explicit DfE measures has become an obsession for most state schools, because they have no opt out and they are judged against their performance as a school by the outcomes in these subjects.  The national and educational media, coupled with Institutes of Education across the country are reporting a groundswell of dissatisfaction of the consequences of this relentless focus to drive up standards so our state school pupils perform  better in comparison with other countries. Some schools are disapplying their weakest pupils as quickly as possible to get them ‘off roll’, others are shutting down the teaching of all other subjects other than English and Maths in the final year of primary school, whilst at secondary school, subjects as diverse as Art, Drama, Music, RS, Technology and Sport are seeing numbers of pupils and teachers spiralling downwards as the subjects don’t carry the same value for the educational league table, if at all.

From pedagogical, philosophical and social mobility stand-points, this is an utter disaster for the children, because it is not permitting them to build domain expertise in sufficient areas that interest them at an appropriate age. Junior children are no longer able to draw accurately, and fear the process because it does not come naturally. Secondary children see creative and athletic disciplines as something they might do at the weekend, competing of course with all the other engagements that adolescents have to content with at the same time. Obviously, if the children are fortunate to go to a performing arts school or specialist sport or technology college, this is not the case, but the practical facts of the matter are that the focus has changed from specialisms to the core, and schools are choosing the same for all of their pupils, despite its obvious lack of merit for their broader educational development.

I have no problem if travellers wish to go to PISA, check out the leaning tower, look around the attached cathedral, get their photo taken holding it up or pushing it down, and sending that image as a postcard back home to prove they got there, bought the T-shirt, dropped the feather and ball from the top of the tower to explore gravity and then come back home. But that focussed journey is not the same as spending rather more time in ITALY, a country of great and diverse representations of culture from Ancient Rome to the present day. Their art, technology, music, drama food and philosophical thinking bursts upon the visitor and engages us in so many more ways, and this takes time, effort and commitment to get the full picture.  In the end, no doubt the tour operators will rub their hands with glee if they can reduce costs by increasing volume to the one city, grow the communication channels by increasing plane, hotel and bus size, with the expertise of the support team reduced to knowing the 10 pages from the guide book and testing same via extensive essay writing and number crunching around the limited palate of knowledge, skills and understanding required to visit PISA and return.

But if we want to develop the kind, caring, supportive, skillful and successful adults to lead the future of our country, they need to be permitted to be more than just tourists to PISA, pursuing a narrow course of study judged primarily by a tick box culture against core standards.  Reductionism of this kind reduces quality, not grows it; read this article published today on the future of Design Technology to see just how challenging the matter has become in a subject which really has to be at the heart of what every school offers its children from 11-14 – https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2018/01/13/saving-design-technology/

We don’t get it all right in the independent sector by any means.  For example in my school, I need to be able to extend the girls programme to bring resistant materials and robotics into the mix, and the boys to add food and textiles. But at least the design experience and skill applications are covered by all pupils in a sustained way for 3 years, and the potential designer/builder has been inspired by age 14. The whole educational country,  be that ITALY, ENGLAND or wherever, needs its landscape explored. Sure, there are fun things to find in PISA, but that’s not enough to nourish and inspire our children.  It’s disappointing that our sector is receiving even greater blame for supporting privilege and elitism, when in our own minds we are doing quite the reverse. Certainly, the development of the whole child and our focus on growing great young adults, with excellent temperaments and a willingness to strive, is of greater importance than exam results.  Conservative minister and minister of health in the House of Lords, James O’Shaughnessy, who spent 4 years at Claires Court as a child spoke with great passion about the development of character education in schools being of paramount importance when he visited us in September last year. I ask the question – what kind of character to you build in a PISA tourist as opposed to a traveller who spends the time and trouble across ITALY?

In short, let’s not encourage educational tourism only to a narrow core band where success is measured through the passing of an exam.  None of us make best friends with people because of their grades, but because they have a much broader knowledge and understanding of who they are and how they fit, and the skills to make their lives all come out well, wherever they find themselves placed as adults in this world. I leave you with the writings of Plato, who was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

It’s that time of year when the Season in which we are expected to be jolly has passed and the school bells are soon to ring in the New Year. Here’s yours truly on Christmas Jumper day on end-of-term Friday, standing by the tree at Senior Boys, showing some of the hampers soon to off into our local community via the Lions, Foodshare and the Salvation Army.  I had the photo taken because I had been invited to write a Fly-on-the-wall end of term item for Schools Week, one of the professional journals that report on Education matters, and they wanted a photo to go with the article. You can read that here: https://goo.gl/duUFz2.  It struck me that in line with the 9 lessons and carols, Tim Minchin’s 9 life lessons, it was time I added to the set of 9 with my own 9 lessons for learning, gathered over the 42 years I have been a teacher. Where possible, a bit like the advent calendar, I have tried to illustrate a little more with a link to something more luscious.

1. If you can do but one thing to help others learn, be kind, both to them and yourself.
2. If you are planning to teach, know your stuff.
3. If you are planning to learn, sleep well, and in between try to ‘know’ stuff by learning it.
4. Whether you are planning to teach or planning to learn, do so with a passion.
5. As teachers and learners, keep your eyes on the ‘near horizon’ so you know where you are going, but keep them open for other possibilities along the way.
6. Understand your intelligence arise from 3 parts – a. your cognitive efficiency (brain-power, mainly down to short-term memory) b. crystallised intelligence (stuff you know) and c. fluid intelligence (how you see patterns, make links across areas and use logic), and in knowing what you use best, work with that whilst seeking to improve the other bits.
7. Lead a rich and diverse life at whatever your age; interleaving and spacing what you do, and see and listen to with lots of other activities, which helps ‘grow’ your fluid intelligence.
8. Get lucky by practicing lots, by learning stuff by rote and putting that learning under pressure by testing yourself.
9. Keep striving. Achievements open doors; sometimes those achievements are paper-based, such as GCSE and A level grades and get you a place on a training programme or at University,  others are practical, such as passing your driving test or an ‘open mike’ night audition, which give you new opportunities. Never give up, because actually none of us ever do…

So, please do have a great Learning Year in 2018, bearing in mind that that we are forever forgetting. Though that is another post.

“The fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.”

Yeats wrote this poem in the early part of the last century, at a time when his fame as a poet was world wide, but his ambition was to become renowned as a playwright; his joy of writing for the stage was clearly tempered by the experience of working with those that ran theatres and bankrolled their productions. In short, he hoped to break through the crippling need for perfectionism in the creation of his poetry, whilst maintaining both its complexity and ambiguity. As the final sentence suggests, Yeats ‘ere longed to release his creative self to write unburdened of the rules of the game.

2018 is set to be a milestone year for my work, one in which we seek to win permission to build a new campus for our school.  The purchase of the adjacent field by our Junior Boys school at Ridgeway 4 years ago reunited much of the package of land originally put together by a Mr Louis Gilau, a South African as it turns out, his own trade being that of a ‘Diamond merchant’.  During my father’s time as headteacher at Ridgeway, he would regularly suggest to new pupils and parents that they should keep their eyes peeled for any ‘lost’ jewels left behind by Mr Gillow; sadly none have turned up, so the investment we need for the new buildings will have to come from a mix of capital obtained from the sale of our other 2 sites, if possible from the building of houses on part of the estate, and from a commercial loan.

There is no doubt that that our school needs to be released from the constraints it currently faces, spread across Maidenhead and increasingly cramped by the issues of space and unequal distribution of facilities across the 3 sites.  I remember my first contact with RBWM planning officers in 1982, when they first expressed the opinion that the senior boys school site was overdeveloped for its purpose. Over subsequent 35 years, our school has grown as the town has grown, we’ve gained new accommodation and added girls into the mix. With both sets of residents in the Ray Mill and College areas keen to keep the roads uncluttered with parking, parking restrictions grow like topsy, yet we can’t bring all of our traffic onto site without reducing still further the space in which education can happen.

There remains a pressing need to increase the efficiency of our school by bringing our separate site operations together; maintaining the separation of genders for the middle part of their educational development will remain a key construct, but increasing the opportunities for social development across the genders is a growing imperative, one not just for this school but for the wider community.  It’s fascinating to see the success our partnership sports organisations enjoy doing just the same, be that in Athletics, Cricket, Hockey, Rowing, Rugby, Sailing or Tennis.  There is an intensity of engagement required to maximise performance, but at the same time, a need to ensure rest and recuperation within the wider community.  I’ve noticed this most recently with our elite performing Tennis players, who work jointly with us and Delgado and Lee’s Pro Tennis Academy, Living Tennis, at Bisham Abbey.

https://www.livingtennis.co.uk/proacademy

Developing Tennis players need upwards of 20 hours a week of ‘Court’ time (20 hours on court as well as at school), but clearly other skills and talents need to be developed alongside, and not just those within a narrow academic programme. Rubbing along in a much bigger school assists those players to accept failure is a normal part of learning, permits them socialise with others,  above all helping build a sense of mutual respect despite differences.

It has often been said that Education is the most complex of all human activities, given that all the moving parts are living organisms, capable of their own independent thoughts and with their own idiosyncratic ambitions.  It’s clear that such a description can be given to the methodology that underpins making planning application as well, because all those component parts consist of human entities, with their own hopes and ambitions as well. I have every hope that this author will not feel like the ‘colt’ in Yeats’ poem, forced to ‘shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt’ as if pulling the broken stone required for road-making.  Perhaps in 12 months time, I will be able to report on the outcomes from the process I outline above.

In the meantime, I bid you (perhaps as W.B Yeats would) “Sláinte mhaith” for 2018, and in the light of the other many serious negotiations going on in England over the next 12 months, mix the metaphor with this very Royal message!

Imagine my surprise when the girls of Year 5 presented via Santa the postman the Christmas card you see me holding here in the picture. “To Mr Wilding” it said. I have never, ever (forgive a failing mind, by the way) ever been presented with a card like this. As I opened it up, the hairs on the back of my neck bristled, as every child in the class had written a personal message wishing Mr Wilding a Happy Christmas or similar. Mrs Helen Phipps, our amazing school secretary at College followed up helpfully: “I did ask the girls for which Mr Wilding was the card intended, but they could not answer me”. Ouch.  So whilst I am holding the said card in the picture, may I express on behalf of both Mr Wildings how grateful we are for these very kind thoughts, and my brother Hugh, in whose care the card now resides, also sends his thanks.

Throughout the term, the headteachers and the head of nursery lead their respective weekly bulletins with their words of the week.  As a general observation, the higher up the school, the less written; all aim to give a particular insight into the age and stage of the pupils for whom they care, and so it can be no surprise that they tailor for their specific audience. Whether their message hits their expected audience is as much of a guess as mine was above. We hope so, but in the end whin knows?

At the same time, many of you are kind enough to click on the Academic Principal’s blog button, and catch up on my wider musings, or switch over to Facebook to view our offerings there, or perhaps jump to @clairescourt and our other Twitter channels to read what the news looks like in short form, or perhaps bounce back to the school’s main website to see the regular and rapidly moving newsfeed on your children’s achievements. Often we appear to have ‘too much’ happening, so you need to be selective in what and where you browse.

That’s where the Court Report comes in, our annual statement of achievements now in its third year.  Every family should receive a hard copy of the Court Report with their eldest son or daughter when they come home from school this Friday, together with other end of term glories, such as grade cards, reports and other notices. The Court Report captures almost all of our measurables in easy to read format; you may need to take it gently because there is a lot to digest and I do want you to avoid ‘data indigestion’.

That’s true of us on the other two sides, be we teachers or parents. Everyone of my staff faces information overload, and our pupils need to be very careful that they don’t swap from the real world into the ‘virtual’ world; both can readily lose sight of the important things that need to be done come Monday.  Indeed parents, pupils and staff went away at half-term, with a promise to turn off their devices and every intention to digitally detox. I  have no doubt that Christmas will be made all the more enjoyable, on the one hand by being able to catch up with all your family and friends wherever they are in the world via Skype, and on the other by switching off the media stream and chilling out with all those near and dear to you at home in person.  As a by-line, it’s interesting to note that France is to ban all mobile phones from schools in their entirety from September 2018.

With this in mind, I draw to your attention the important information of a police focus here in the UK on social media and child exploitation.  We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that Thames Valley Police continue to investigate explicit videos that are distributed via social media, eg Snapchat, Instagram.  If any such video is received by our children or indeed adults, the police must be informed and it must be deleted; if it is shown or passed on it is a criminal offence. Further advice for both children and parents about how to stay safe online is available on the National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) command website: https://www.ceop.police.uk/safety-centre/
If your child or a child you know has been affected by such a video they are encouraged to speak to parents / teachers / trusted adult /contact ChildLine on 0800 1111 for further support.

One of our amazing school leaders, Andy Giles who runs the Sixth Form, is choosing to lighten his load more than somewhat, by stepping down into retirement at the end of August.  His deputy Stephanie Rogers is rising to take charge in his place next September, and further appointments to support this change will be announced in the New Year. We have already announced other leadership developments, with Justin Spanswick joining me to work more corporately and Dean Richards joining us from Hampton Prep School in his stead.  Such activity is multiplied manyfold by the wide and diverse nature of the staff professional development undertaken here. With 400 staff, it’s a tall order for us to find the time and place for it all, so almost inevitably we now have substantial amounts of CPD delivered on-line and remotely.

January 2018 heralds other developments for Claires Court, as our new first aid training centre, led by Jane Webster, School Nurse at Junior Boys, builds capacity to cover all of our many First Aid, Sports Aid, even Mental First Aid needs. Our teacher training escalates apace, and familiar faces will be seen in new roles as knowledge, skills and understanding are built further. We will also be in touch for your support behind our longer term plans for our new campus, due for submission shortly and for determination in the first half of 2018.

I close my end of term report with the words written by former pupil, Dr Paul Zeun who joined Claires Court when aged 11 and left Year 13 in 2005 bound for medical school. He wrote to me on Monday, the day it was announced that “the defect that causes the neurodegenerative disease Huntington’s has been corrected in patients for the first time” by a research team at UCL.  Paul joined the team in April this year, after 7 years of work culminating as a neurology registrar in Southampton.  “Today is a hugely exciting day in our department as for the first time, this drug has been able to reduce the amount of the faulty protein (mutant huntingtin protein) that is known to be the cause of the disease and it has been shown to have been safe so far. This paves way for a larger study that based on the above, has significant promise for being the first drug to effectively treat Huntington’s disease and slow/stop progression.  It is an absolute delight and privilege to be a small part in such a brilliant research group at an incredibly exciting time for HD research”.

Paul concluded “I wanted to email you because it reminds me of how fortunate I am that I was afforded such a fantastic start in life at Claires Court and how grateful I am that you and all my teachers gave me the skills and opportunities I needed to have such a rewarding and fulfilling career to date.”

Such messages of thanks from former pupils are among the many things that keep me and so many of my colleagues here keen and motivated to come to work each day. Even more inspirational is the extraordinary support today’s parents and pupils have given us during this last term.  As the end of 2017 beckons, let’s remember our good fortune to have been able to share so much – we are indeed fortunate and my brother and I thank our lucky stars each day that we lead this school at a time of such opportunity.

In case my dear readers though that besuited Principals are the only images to be seen, other pictures of my good self at Christmas time are available.

Best wishes one and all.

Every user of social media will have come across the many and varied video streams that set out to educate and inspire each day. Here’s one from Goalcast, covering musician/comedian Tim Minchin’s acceptance speech of an Honorary doctorate from the University of Western Australia, where he had previously studied for his Arts degree.

If you have time, do watch the 18 minutes or so that Dr Tim gives the WA audience, because he hits multiple nails on the head really well. If there is a specific section that strikes me best, it sits 3:16 in when he has this to say about how to achieve well:

“I advocate passionate, dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work with pride on whatever is in front of you. You never know where you might end up. Just be aware the next worthy pursuit will probably appear in your periphery, which is why you should be careful of long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you you won’t see the shiny thing out the corner of your eye. “

All the world’s leading advocates of ‘what works best’ are clear about the need to become really expert in the things you are passionate about.  If you don’t have a passion, still get your head down and learn stuff, because it is in the acquisition of knowledge, skills and understanding (KSU) about a person or a subject that a passion can be discovered, be that of course love for the person or the field of enquiry.

The header for this week’s blog comes from the Walltowall people who run the Child Genius TV series for Channel 4 and they are looking for gifted children aged 8-12 (and their families) to take part. Casting Assistant Producer Anna Greenaway wrote to me today to inform me of the above, and added in her email: “Currently I am seeking applications for the 2018 series and would love to hear from the parents of gifted and talented children who may be interested. Additionally one of the last weekends in January we will be holding a Mensa backed Open Day and are keen to speak to parents who might be interested in registering their child/children for this whole day event. This is an opportunity for 8-12 year olds to get involved in Mensa Challenges, quick fire quizzes, Strategic puzzles being just a few examples, but also to meet with other families”.

Let’s be fair, dear reader, we are not the only institution with amazing children herein. No doubt Anna’s written to every school in the country to widen her trawl, but these are busy times and most of the info will end up in the digital dustbin. So those of you out there, please do think about having a go – if you don’t, you’ll never know whether you could have made the grade.  I remember when the cox, Gary Herbert (Gold medal with the Searle brothers at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992) spoke at our school speech day shortly after that event.  He made it clear “If not you, who?  If not now, when!”  That’s one great life lesson I learned from a man who learned it the most difficult way possible, training for 4 years to become an Olympian. Anna concludes her email as follows: “Please be assured that there is no obligation to take part in the programme but for anyone potentially interested in hearing more about it can call me direct on 0203 301 8480. With thanks and kindest regards, Anna.”

Tim Minchin also sets out in this video to give some life lessons, 9 of course to echo of course the nine lessons of carols of the traditional Christmas service, of which we are holding at least 3 school versions next Friday morning. My teaser for next week’s blog is it’s title “Mr Wilding’s 9 lessons for learning”, based on the clearest evidence we now have on how learning happens best.  In the meantime, let me leave you with Minchin’s closing sentiments from his address, which though now at least 4 year’s old feel as fresh now as they must have sounded then:

“And in my opinion, until I change it, life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can. Taking pride in whatever you’re doing. Having compassion, sharing ideas, running, being enthusiastic and then there’s love and travel and wine and sex and art and kids and giving and mountain climbing, but you know all that stuff already. It’s an incredibly exciting thing this one meaningless life of yours. Good luck and thank you for indulging me.”

I am one of those people who enjoy setting themselves new challenges and acquire a different understanding of the world in which we live. In recent years, I have taken on an allotment, met fellow market gardeners, enjoyed the chatter around a thermos of coffee and definitely learned to lean on my shovel. Digging is one of the most physical activities I have ever done, and I was delighted to read this morning that such aerobic activity has every chance of making me more intelligent. Actually, the research relates not to people of my age, but to children, and that’s even more exciting. I quote from the press release (21 November 2017) from the Universidad de Granada:

“Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) have proven, for the first time in history, that physical fitness in children may affect their brain structure, which in turn may have an influence on their academic performance.

More specifically, the researchers have confirmed that physical fitness in children (especially aerobic capacity and motor ability) is associated with a greater volume of grey matter in several cortical and subcortical brain regions.

In particular, aerobic capacity has been associated with greater grey matter volume in frontal regions (premotor cortex and supplementary motor cortex), subcortical regions (hippocampus and caudate nucleus), temporal regions (inferior temporal gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus) and the calcarine cortex. All of those regions are important for the executive function as well as for learning, motor and visual processes.”

According to the main author of the paper, Irene Esteban-Cornejo, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Granada, grey matter volume in the cortical and subcortical regions influenced by physical fitness improves in turn the children’s academic performance. She writes “Physical fitness is a factor that can be modified through physical exercise, and combining exercises that improve the aerobic capacity and the motor ability would be an effective approach to stimulate brain development and academic performance in overweight/obese children”.

“This scientific paper means an important contribution to human knowledge which should be taken into account by educational and public health institutions”.

“We appeal both to politicians, who make educational laws that are increasingly more focused on instrumental subjects, and to teachers, who are the final link in the chain and teach Physical Education day after day. School is the only entity that gathers every children in a mandatory way for a period of at least 10 years, and as such, it’s the ideal context for applying such recommendations”, conclude the researchers.

Across on my Facebook page, there has been lively debate as to whether UK Independent Schools persist in maintaining privilege per se, and a parallel discussion on the important purpose our existence as centres of excellence  to provide opportunities for children that otherwise would not be open to them. It’s in the opportunities for and provision of physical education that our specific independent school has always had as a key focus, because the positive link between physical performance and intellectual development has always been evident for most children. There is a particular focus in the research that’s easy to miss, and that’s the even stronger correlation between raising aerobic activity and reducing obesity.

How does this tie into setting a healthier mind-set then? The key features of progressing positive mental well-being is to know what things you can’t change, what things you can, and setting out to do the latter.  Here’s Susanna Halonen, the Happyologist on the matter – Susanna’s full article can be read following the link here:

“Let’s start by looking at what research has said about worrying in general:

• About 85% of the things we worry about never happen.
• If what we worry about does happen, 80% of us said we handled the outcome better than we thought we would.
• People who let go of worries instead of stressing over them are much healthier than those who don’t.

So how do you let go of this worrying that sometimes drives you crazy – especially when you’re worrying about things you have no control over? Try the six strategies below to stop worrying once and for all – there’ll be a time and a place for each of them.

1. Accept uncertainty & learn to thrive in it.

2. Call a friend to talk about you worry.

3. Practice mindfulness.

4. Distract yourself with another activity.

5. Exercise!

6. Have a designated worry time and worry notebook.”

What’s interesting about the above is that the act of being physically active, whether that is running, rowing, riding a bike or digging an allotment takes time, and at least 20 minutes or so. In that time, you certainly commence 4 of the 6 activities above, and worries diminish – and often you carry out that exercise with a friend and do make mental notes in your to do list. I’ve written before that any activity worth doing needs to be undertaken for at least 20 minutes of focussed time, most specifically around reading because it’s only once you are deep into a book that the language being taken deep down into your consciousness starts reshaping and make new connections with other learned concepts and understandings.

To conclude, here’s a circular graphic of how the best early years education looks, and see how the science above clearly maps well onto the activities shown in a young child’s life.

During the fortnight of half term, my brother Hugh and I have reached agreement with Berkeley Homes over the terms by which Berkeley will partner the School in realising our vision for a new, single campus alongside our Junior Boys site at Ridgeway. Our aspiration for this was first announced some time ago but planning details have taken time to resolve. Our intention now is to move with all speed towards an early submission of plans to the local authority and we will share the timeline for this with you shortly. The new campus will remove many of the shortcomings inherent from our split sites as well as providing a purpose-built environment in which we can deliver the high quality education that you expect. 

We published our info about our project 2 years ago and it’s great to be able to announce we are now pressing on. See http://www.clairescourt.com/new-campus-design for more information. The timeline for the project shows the process as follows:

To facilitate this exciting stage in the School’s development, my brother and I wish to announce the appointment of Justin Spanswick, present Head of Junior Boys, as Executive Headteacher from September 2018. Supporting me in my role, Justin will be working across all sites alongside the current headteachers. His role will encompass strategic and compliance matters, including pupil recruitment and scholarships, new campus implications and parental engagement, overview of operational management and designated safeguarding lead.  The organisational chart of what these changes is shown below. 

In turn we are now actively seeking to appoint a new Head to take on the day to day responsibility of the leadership and management of Junior Boys, with effect from September 2018. As part of his role, Justin’s initial focus will be to support the new Head, facilitating a smooth transition into post and ensuring our School values, ethos and learning philosophy continue to be at the forefront of his successor’s vision for the pupils, parents and staff of Junior Boys. Valuable support will also come from our other collegiate Headteachers, Maggie Heywood, John Rayer and Leanne Barlow, and of course the faculty as a whole.

These appointments will release valuable extra time specifically in my working week as I now join my brother to support our ambitious building proposals through to their successful completion, as well as lead the equally careful planning process needed to bring 800 pupils,  their teachers and support staff across Maidenhead to the new campus. Bearing in mind my title, Academic Principal, all the headteachers, wherever they are based, will continue to report on their educational matters to me; likewise for Administrative matters they will continue to report to Hugh.

At this important time in the life of our School, my brother and I would like to thank you for your valued support as we strive to provide your family with the best learning environment and education possible. We look forward to making further announcements later this term.