Absolutely Education Supplement: Bryanston Education Summit: June 2018

BRYANSTON EDUCATION SUMMIT Wednesday 6 June 2018

Tom Bennett NO MORE FRANKENLESSONS

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Natasha Devon

WE NEED A WHOLE SCHOOL APPROACH TO MENTAL HEALTH

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Jane Lunnon PUPILS MUST FAIL TO SUCCEED

MARY MYATT

on inspiring great school leaders

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Welcome To the Bryanston Education Summit

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year ago Bryanston School held its first Education Summit. Its theme was ‘Delivering a world class education in turbulent times’. The following day the UK had a general election which seemed to only underline how prescient that theme was.

Things haven’t really settled down since then: Brexit has dominated, the Cold War seems to be returning, and everywhere you look it seems old certainties are changing.

We are living in interesting times. But in times of upheaval it is easy to forget that those things that keep society on track continue to run, day in day out. Trains run, A C Grayling speaking at last year’s summit

letters are delivered, meetings are held. In the case of schools it appears to be ‘business as usual’: since last year those of us who teach have seen the ongoing change in curriculum (at GCSE and A-Level), plus we have a new Secretary of State, which seems to be an annual tradition for education.

But all schools have in-built set of targets which define their progress: they have to get better, and they have to continuously push themselves to see better examination results, better Value-Added scores, better behaved pupils, better teaching. The norm, then, is change, and aspiration. All schools, be they comprehensives or academies, independent or maintained, are trying to move up to the next level.

Which is why the theme for this year's summit is, 'How can schools move up to the next level of attainment? I have helped organise educational events for ten years, and I soon learned that although teachers tend to work alone, and schools often exist in their own ‘silos’ (very often because of limited funds, rather than stated policy) if, given the chance to connect with others, they welcome it. Talking, exchanging ideas and resources, listening to key figures who are shaping policies, all such activities are the reasons why we hold this event.

This year’s summit will provoke debate.

Amanda Spielman, the Chief Inspector of Schools, will outline the way forward for Ofsted, and we will hear from leading voices such as Katharine Birbalsingh who is redefining teaching and learning at Michaela School; Daisy Christodoulou, one of the most influential figures in schools today, will talk about how teachers should change how they assess pupils’ work. And we’ll also hear from Andy Buck and Mary Myatt on the importance of leadership, whilst Ian Fordham, Director of Education

THE BEST TEACHERS, SHARE THAT COMMON QUALITY; THEY ARE CURIOUS ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND THEM at Microsoft (who are supporting the event), will tell the audience how technology will continue to shape learning in the future.

There will be many more contributors joining us for the day. And those who attend will all want to listen and learn. In my experience the best teachers, like the most ambitious students they teach, share that common quality: they are curious about the world around them. We hope that, by organising our annual summit, school leaders from a huge range of schools are able, in a small way, to make sense of complex issues. We also hope that the event brings in parents who are increasingly involved in their children’s education: we need their voices, their ideas, to contribute to the debate surrounding schools and universities, and they undoubtedly need to know as much as possible about the trends that are sweeping through classrooms now. In this knowledge economy our understanding of ideas is the new currency, and education, perhaps more than ever before, will shape the future of our society.

We hope you can join us, too.

D R DAV I D JA M E S Deputy Head Academic and Bryanston Education Summit organiser www.bryanston.co.uk/educationsummit @bryedusummit SUMMER 2018 | A B S O LU T E LY E D U C AT I O N | 67

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WEDNESDAY 6 JUNE 2018

Keynote

Speakers Amanda Spielman

manda Spielman has A been Ofsted Chief Inspector since January 2017. Between 2011 and 2016, she was chair of Ofqual, the qualifications regulator. She was a founding member of the leadership team at the academy chain Ark Schools, she is a council member at Brunel University London and has previously served on the boards of a number of organisations including the Institute of Education.

Ian Fordham

an Fordham is Director of Education for Microsoft in the UK. He is also a Mayor of London Technology Ambassador and Advisory Board member of Edtech UK. He has advised numerous global companies and government departments and planned and delivered Britain’s first Education Reform Summits in 2014-2016.

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Mary Bousted Daisy Christodoulou

Katharine Birbalsingh

atharine Birbalsingh is founder and headmistress at Michaela Community School in Wembley, London. Michaela is well known for its tough-love behaviour systems. Last year Ofsted graded the school Outstanding in every category.

Birbalsingh read Philosophy and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford and has written two books and edited a third, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers, The Michaela Way.

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THIS YEAR’S SUMMIT WILL PROVOKE DEBATE AND DISCUSSION AS WE HEAR FROM SOME OF THE LEADING VOICES IN EDUCATION AND SOME OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FIGURES IN SCHOOLS TODAY

aisy Christodoulou is the Director of Education at No More Marking, a provider of online comparative judgement. She works closely with schools on developing new approaches to assessment.

She was Head of Assessment at Ark Schools, a network of 35 academy schools, and has taught English in two London comprehensives. Christodoulou is the author of Seven Myths about Education and Making Good Progress? The Future of Assessment for Learning, as well as the blog: thewingtoheaven. wordpress.com

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ary Bousted is joint M general secretary of the National Education Union. She represents the interests of members to the government and a wide variety of other stakeholders.

Bousted contributes regular articles for newspapers and education journals, and appears frequently on national media.

She sits on the executive committee of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), is chair of Unionlearn and was a member of the Acas board. Mary is also an accomplished public speaker and has debated at the Oxford Union.

Mary previously worked in higher education at York University, Edge Hill University and Kingston University where she was head of the School of Education.

Andy Buck

ndy Buck is a geography teacher by trade, who went on to become a headteacher for 13 years at two schools in east London. In his second headship, his school was judged outstanding. In 2009, he was appointed as a director at the National College for School Leadership and in 2012 was made Managing Director at one of the largest academy groups in the UK. Buck founded Leadership Matters and #honk. Both aim to improve the educational outcomes for pupils by supporting great leadership development for leaders at all levels in the system. He has written five books on educational leadership, including the best-selling Leadership Matters.

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No more

FRANKENLESSONS The founder of researchED says good education needs good evidence TOM BENNET T

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re you a visual learner? Or an auditory one? Or kinaesthetic?

The truth is, you are none of these.

That’s not to say you don’t have preferences, but there is literally no evidence to suggest that people’s minds learn in different ways from one another in the way that VAK modalities suggest. Broadly speaking we all share a similar mechanism for learning.

We’re rightly proud of the advances we’ve made in medicine and public health. Infant mortality, life expectancy, quality of life, dentistry… these have all been transformed by science. Whenever someone asks ‘What century would you like to live in?’ the answer has to be, 'any time after they invented painkillers and dentistry'; George Washington had wooden teeth for God’s sake. And when science started to unfold on a grand scale, did you know that many in the medical profession initially resisted it? Their reason was that ‘I know my patient better than any pill or drug trial.’ And people died of needless, preventable infections because surgeons refused to wash their hands after handling corpses and before surgery. They were gentlemen, you see, and their hands were always clean, it was thought. And you

hear exactly the same in schools throughout the world.

But here’s a thing: everyone agrees how important education is. Countries around the globe are pouring money into education, even in contracting economies. So why haven’t we fixed education yet?

Physics and chemistry and natural sciences have landed lasers on Mars.

Where is the equivalent marvel in education? Why do so many of our students leave school illiterate? Drop out? Or just plain fail to squeeze every drop of benefit from their education?

Because often, we’re doing the wrong things. We’re doing it because we have a hunch. Because that’s how the school up the road does it. Because they do it in Finland.

Or Singapore. Or it feels right. Or you read it in a horoscope. Or your trainer said ‘do it this way’.

And sometimes it’s right.

Sometimes craft is enough.

Sometimes, just knowing your student is enough. And sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes you’re prescribing leeches when they need antibiotics.

Folk medicine wasn’t enough, and folk education isn’t enough.

Educating children is a craft. It’s an art. But it's also something we can study scientifically in a structured way. And this helps us escape our hunches and prejudices and biases.

It allows us to share our craft collectively in a way that challenges and reinforces what we all do.

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EDUCATING CHILDREN IS AN ART BUT IT’S ALSO SOMETHING WE CAN STUDY SCIENTIFICALLY FRANKENSCIENCE AND FOLK TEACHING Here are just some of the subjects of educational discourse that were once common, or still are: • Brain gym • Learning styles • Group work • Project-based learning • Play-based learning • Learning through smell • Thinking hats • Multiple intelligences • iPad revolutions • NLP All of these have been all the rage at some point. Some of them are just junk – learning styles, for example.

Others are horribly misinterpreted – group work, project based learning etc. Others have been oversold.

Understanding which ones are garbage and which ones work, and in what contexts, is key to being a professional educator.

In the science lab at Bryanston

What can we do? We should start by remembering to ask ‘Where is the evidence for this decision?’ It’s a revolutionary act. If the answer is ‘none’, then fine: we know where we stand and we know what to say when things go wrong. We should also say, ‘How will we know this plan is working?’ more often so we can be clear when it doesn’t.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with doing something because you believe it is valuable by itself – like having art or dance in the curriculum. But we need to acknowledge when something is done as an expression of managerial or ideological preference rather than clear-eyed outcome-focused strategy.

One thing we’ve seen in the UK is the rise of the Research Lead.

Most members of staff are too busy to really delve into research, and besides, it’s such a complex field you can barely do anything more than scrape the surface. We can get around this in schools by nominating,

or electing a research lead, someone whose role is to act as a gatekeeper for research, either as a coach, a reference, a devil’s advocate, or whatever.

THE EVIDENCEINFORMED SCHOOL Schools that are evidence informed allow their staff to ask these difficult questions. They encourage new staff to be trained in ways that have evidence bases rather than just, ‘Oh Professor X is free, he can do it.’ And they can seek to train their staff continuously throughout their careers in ways that are evidence informed, not folk informed.

Anyone concerned about cost should see it as an investment. We can’t afford not to do it. We can’t afford to keep doing what we’ve always done and ask after a decade, ‘Why hasn’t this worked yet?’ Children need us to be better than that.

RECLAIMING THE PROFESSION FROM THE GROUND UP And that has been my key takeaway from all of this. Education is one of the most transformational things we can be part of. It is, in my opinion, the best machine we ever invented.

There is no sector like it and it has saved me. Surely, then, it's clear that children are our most precious cargo in life? It is our duty to make sure that whatever their rank or social circumstance, they all receive the very best of what we can teach them, taught in a way that is the very best way we know. We are on the edge of a revolution in education; a polite one perhaps, but a revolution nonetheless. And the best part is we can do it ourselves. We just need the courage to commit to challenging what we think we know with what others know, and collaborating with one another for the mutual benefit of all. No more cargo cults. No more Frankenlessons.

TO M B E N N E T T The founder of researchED, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to raising research literacy in the education ecosystem across the globe. To find out more please visit www.researchED.org.uk

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Hope Springs An education advisor, writer and speaker on the importance of hopeful leadership M A R Y M YA T T

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good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.’(Arnold Glasow.) Amidst the fast-paced work of leaders in schools, there is one defining characteristic which seems to run through the work of the most effective; they have the capacity to find the glimmer of possibility of moving things forward, of improvement in any situation.

This is easy when things are going well, but it is a real test of character to keep this going when things are tough. What seems to happen is that these leaders are capable of stepping back, even if only for a few moments, to look for the potential for making things better.

Critical to hope is that it doesn't seek to cast blame. Instead it

looks squarely at what has gone wrong and works to address it. The hopeful leader does not trade on the mistakes of the past, but rather sees the potential of the future. This is important, because hopeful leaders are big spirited, they do not seek to enlarge their own reputations by comparing their work with what has gone before.

This is easier said than done, of course. But hopefulness engenders cheerfulness, and in being cheerful, the work is still hard but it is accompanied by an ease and grace that would not otherwise be there.

Hope holds things together. And it does so in tangible ways. A school’s mission statement which is built on hope - on character, on opportunity and on human development, intellectual, physical and cultural mean that these are not just words on the website. They are translated into the way that behaviour is managed, the way that lessons are planned and the way that additional opportunities are thought about.

Where hopefulness is missing, people become depressed, the work is burden, and it can seem rather pointless. However, it only takes one person to shift into a hopeful mode and it eventually spreads.

Strong leaders know that their colleagues are humans first, professionals second. They care about others, notice the good work they are doing, comment on it and celebrate it. They build a bank balance of good will. They adhere to the principles of ‘radical candour’ where they care personally and challenge directly. They do this by critiquing the work, not the person.

And in this way, they hold themselves

and others to account for doing their best work.

And finally, leaders have an ‘ethic of everybody’. This is exemplified

by Dame Alison Peacock, formerly headteacher at the Wroxham School and now CEO of the Chartered College of Teaching. She recounts how a child with complex additional needs, who had been fostered, came to her school. His needs were such that he had been turned away from other settings with the words ‘we don’t think we can meet your child’s needs’ which is fair enough. However, at the Wroxham School, a primary school like any other, this was not the response. They said, ‘We will do what we can.’ After a few years

THE HOPEFUL LEADER DOES NOT TRADE ON THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST BUT SEES THE POTENTIAL OF THE FUTURE the child went on to a special school as it was agreed that this provision would best meet his needs. In her TEDx talk Dame Alison describes how a few years later he returned to Wroxham and at the end of Year 6 achieved level 5s in his SATS. This from a child who could not talk or interact with other pupils when he arrived at the school. Alison Peacock is not starry eyed, she knows what it takes to do the tough stuff, but she is a prime example of a hopeful leader.

One who looks the tough stuff in the eye and says, ‘Yes, together we can make a difference.’

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Time’s Up An influential writer and campaigner calls for a ‘whole school approach’ to mental health provision in education N ATA S H A D E V O N

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nyone who works in education knows the following scenario only too well: You’re watching a news segment in which a pundit, charity representative or reality TV star is discussing a damaging social epidemic such as spiralling obesity, online trolling or hate crime.

When asked for their solution to the problem, they conclude by saying ‘this should be taught in schools’.

If you’re anything like me, the very prospect makes you come out in a cold sweat. My work takes me into an average or three schools every week throughout the UK and I see first hand the strain teaching professionals are already under as they try to balance academic and pastoral requirements. Whilst on one hand Gove’s legacy means mountains of paperwork for staff and more rigorous testing for students, on the other there’s an expectation that schools can provide magic bullet solutions to all of society’s perceived ills.

Never is this more true than when it comes to mental health.

Greater awareness coupled with an empirically measurable spike in anxiety and self-harm have seen what feels like a sudden and unrealistic expectation placed on schools who often have limited time and resources. There are several organisations who provide (often excellent) workshops and presentations on topics related to mental health but set against the context of brutal cuts to Children & Adolescent Mental Health Services since 2010, as well as the momentous and indelible impact digital advances have had on the way young people think and behave, they can seem like a drop in the ocean.

Writing my book A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental led me to reflect on my own journey with mental illness and the role my teachers played. I first started having panic attacks at primary school, when I lost my cousin to cancer and gained a severely premature baby brother in quick succession. I was misdiagnosed with asthma and, owing to the fact that mental illness just wasn’t on people’s radar, when my inhaler didn’t work no further action was taken. In my teens I began to develop issues around food, yet I coped: I functioned well

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ARBITRARY PHSE LESSONS SLAPPED ON TO AN AGGRESSIVELY COMPETITIVE AND INCREASINGLY ARCHAIC EDUCATION SYSTEM AREN’T AN EFFECTIVE SOLUTION

academically. I took part in school plays. I was deputy head girl. I laughed and had fun. In retrospect I can see I had traits of mental illness throughout these years, but it was nothing like the anguish which would follow.

For me, it was going to university which marked the point at which I truly lost my mind. Away from the familiarities and routines of home, I succumbed to severe bulimia nervosa and spent increasing amounts of my life with my head in a toilet. This is a well trodden path; according to charity Student Minds one third of university students have some form of mental health issue, with catalysts identified as poor nutrition and sleep, inconsistency in services as they oscillate between family home and campus, homesickness, money and academic anxieties.

However, it’s not so simple as to say that, for me, it was just my move to university which kickstarted my mental illness in earnest.

At school, I now realise, I existed in an environment where my mental health needs were actively, if unconsciously, nurtured and nourished.

There are five human psychological needs (all equally important, so not to be read Maslow’s hierarchy style): Love, Purpose, Achievement, Belonging and to be Heard and Understood.

At school, I was given a lot of individual attention, my talents were recognised and celebrated, I felt part of a community, I was given boundaries and the opportunity to voice my opinions. Whilst they didn’t have the same social understanding

of mental health, what my teachers did have was greater time, autonomy and the instincts to know that these things were important.

Of course, this was pre-mobile phones, largely pre-internet and because the job market was so much less competitive, we only gave a moderate amount of thought to how what we were studying would benefit our future employment prospects.

We enjoyed the freedom to learn for learning’s sake. Yet school succeeded in giving me what we now

call ‘resilience’ and allowed me to navigate my mental health challenges much more successfully than I was destined to thereafter.

The lesson to be learned here is that arbitrary PHSE lessons slapped on to an aggressively competitive and increasingly archaic education system aren’t an effective solution to the poor mental health of a generation. ‘Whole school approaches’ is a term often flung about, yet to me it means that awareness of and care for mental health becomes as normalised and instinctual as it presently is for physical health (if a child has a runny nose, you give them a tissue without a second thought. There are mental health equivalents). In the current educational climate, this simply isn’t feasible.

Technological and social advancements have rendered the curriculum largely unfit for purpose.

The system needs an entire and thorough overhaul. Whilst this was once dismissed as a pipe dream, current discussions about digital childhoods and mental health challenges at government level are all pointing, irresistibly, to that conclusion, with the teaching unions and the Labour Campaign for Mental Health led by Luciana Berger providing a catalyst.

For the first time in a long time, I am optimistic that the dramatic action required might follow.

N ATA S H A D E VO N A Beginner’s Guide to Being Mental (Bluebird, £12.99) is out now SUMMER 2018 | A B S O LU T E LY E D U C AT I O N | 75

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Fail & Fly The Head of Wimbledon High School GDST says we must encourage a risk-taking culture in our schools

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ou must do the thing you think you cannot do,” Eleanor Roosevelt famously said.

The fear of failure – much documented as the scourge of our education system – stops our children having a go, and too often holds them back from reaching their full potential.

So what can schools do to encourage a risk-taking culture in school? One thing I know works is helping children to ‘find their thing’; giving students every opportunity to try lots of different activities within and beyond the classroom. This is of course where independent schools add such enormous value. We have the resources to run vast numbers of clubs, from sports teams of all abilities to a whole range of esoteric groups.

JANE LUNNON

But embracing intellectual risk-taking will only work when the atmosphere amongst students is supportive. And this comes from a bottom-up approach to pastoral care – creating the environment and the trust amongst teachers and students that it’s ok to ask that question, to stretch yourself and risk coming up with the wrong answer. Write-on tables and walls can help (and makes the experience more fun). As can making a big noise about failure – and that is something we’ve done for some time at Wimbledon High.

My predecessor ran the school’s first Failure Week in 2012 and as a community we’ve built on this since – Fail Better, Great Girls Get Gritty…

Themed weeks across the school are not attention-grabbing for their own sake. They set the tone. We can have lots of fun and simultaneously build resilience. For example our ‘failure wall’, made up of individual bricks ‘celebrating’ our past failures.

Or the whole school sponsored walk on Wimbledon Common with its attendant navigational blunders which spoke so beautifully about the power of learning from failure – (eventually everyone returned). Our 'epic fail' stand-up comedy nights run by students with student performers showcase their courage (and unique perspectives on life at the school…).

But are all about risking failure and doing it anyway. Inviting speakers to share their experiences of setbacks has special resonance, of course.

Every athlete has a tale of digging deep, of being thwarted at a moment in their careers and learning to come back and fight another day.

All these positive examples can help

counter the perception – so acute in the online world – that others’ lives are perfect and are so much better than our own. Our recent #jomo campaign, celebrated the 'joy of missing out'. Girls were encouraged to post pictures of themselves not at the party or concert that everyone else was at, but perfectly happy chilling out on their own. Celebrating time they had control over. That too is about recalibrating failure.

Getting our kids to recognise that they can control the narrative and that the language they use to frame and describe their own lives not only to others but also to themselves, is absolutely critical in building

WE’VE BEEN MAKING A BIG NOISE ABOUT FAILURE FOR SOME TIME AT WIMBLEDON HIGH resilience. And it seems more and more vital as this century develops.

So, above all, any initiative celebrating failure should embed the language of grit and resilience into the school community – I can’t do algebra ‘yet’ say Wimbledon High girls, ironically miming the appropriate speech marks. But as student Lilly recently wrote in the student magazine: “We mock and poke fun at growth mindset, but in reality, what we’re doing is unpicking its true value in our school environment, looking at the purpose it’s intended to serve.” And if it’s become an accepted irony in the school, then that is when you know you’re really getting there.

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