Month: September 2022

What happens on an inset day? September 2022

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The day after our Open Evening, staff were back in school for an inset day. Inset is a contraction of “in service training,” and all state schools have five inset days as part of their calendar to provide professional development to their staff. At Churchill, we like to make the very most of ours!

This year, our programme of professional development is focused on our Academy Development Plan, which has three priorities:

  • Challenge
  • The role of the tutor
  • Assessment

Our inset day drew in elements of all three priorities.

Challenge: every teacher a teacher of SEND

The morning was spent reflecting on our provision for students with special educational needs and disabilities. Our aim was to work hard to plan high quality, inclusive teaching to meet the needs of individuals and help them to overcome barriers to learning to support every student to be the very best they can be. We were supported in this work by Natalie Packer, a nationally renowned expert in the field.

Natalie took us through the five recommendations of the Education Endowment Fund’s Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools report. These recommendations, supported by robust evidence, provide the “best bets” for successful inclusive provision for all students.

Natalie also outlined the latest information regarding special educational needs and disabilities, including the Education Inspection Framework from Ofsted and recommendations about a high-quality, inclusive curriculum. Staff – and especially leaders – were then invited to reflect on our current practice, celebrate the many strengths, and identify areas of focus where we can develop through this year.

Lighthouse Schools Partnership

Following our SEND focused sessions, staff had a presentation from the Lighthouse Schools Partnership. The LSP is the multi-academy trust that we have committed to join, and the process of due diligence ahead of this is already well underway. School leaders have been working alongside colleagues from the partnership for many months, but this was the first opportunity for all staff to hear directly from the chief executive, chief operating officer and a deputy headteacher from a current Lighthouse Schools Partnership school. Our guests from the trust laid out their vision, their priorities, and how Churchill Academy & Sixth Form would both benefit from being part of the partnership, and strengthen it. There was then an opportunity to ask questions, and for further discussions. Work is continuing behind the scenes to ensure our transition into the trust goes as smoothly as possible.

The role of the tutor

The afternoon session began our exploration of the role of the tutor, which is our second key priority this year. Mrs James began the session by outlining the role of tutors with our Year 10 students as they start their GCSE courses. Over the coming weeks, tutors will be overseeing the target setting process with their Year 10s, ensuring that our students are fully engaged in being aspirational about their aims and objectives over the coming two years – and discussing the strategies they will need to employ to make those aspirations a reality.

We then turned our attention to six steps to being a brilliant form tutor, before the five houses (and the sixth form) got together to reflect on the skills and qualities that a brilliant form tutor needed. The house and sixth form teams also thought about the programme of activities running through our morning tutor sessions, beginning to plan to ensure we make the most of our vertical tutor groups and all the possibilities they have for growth and development.

This inset day was the starting point for this work, and we will return to it in January to develop it further.

There wasn’t time for us to watch it on the day itself, but the “role of the tutor” session was inspired by the Rita Pierson, whose famous TED talk “every kid needs a champion” provides the impetus for all of us who work in education to remember why we do it, and who we’re doing it for.

Although there were no students on site today, the thinking, reflecting and planning was really hard work. We’re confident that our students will feel the benefit over the coming weeks, months, and years as we continue to tweak, develop and improve our Academy.

Presentation Evening 2022

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Churchill’s Annual Presentation Evening took place on Wednesday 14th September 2022 – three years since our last in-person event. The evening celebrated the successes of the Academy community over the previous year, with awards focused on the exam results from Years 11 and 13 complemented by prizes for service to the community, for progress and improvement, compassion, resilience, and attitudes to learning. 

I was joined on stage by the Chair of Trustees, Mrs Anne Oakley, who introduced the evening. Our guest of honour was William Bjergfelt, cyclist with Team GB and competitor in the Tour of Britain. As a (very amateur!) cyclist myself, I have always enjoyed cycling at the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the Tour de France and Tour of Britain – those athletes are idols to me, so meeting William was a real honour. He gave a great speech about his own experiences in competitive sport, and how his own career has been defined by our Academy value of determination. As an elite mountain bike rider and aspiring road racer, William was involved in a head-on collision with a car in 2015 which left him with a bleed on the brain and his right leg shattered into 25 pieces. His leg was reconstructed with three titanium plates but he was told at the time he would never ride a bike again, let alone race one. William spoke to the audience of prize winners and their families about how his mental attitude was every bit as important as his physical recovery, as he defied the odds to return to elite cycling. He qualified as a para-cyclist for Team GB and returned to racing alongside able-bodied athletes in the Tour of Britain in 2021.

William’s inspiring message capped off a wonderful evening of awards – the full roll of honour can be seen on the Prize Winners page of our website. The Headteachers’ award for achievement at GCSE went to Maddie Pole, and the Captain G. J. Picton-Davies Cup for Best Overall Performance at A-level, was handed to Sarah Browne, who, with 3 A* and 1 A and will be going on to study Chemistry at New College, Oxford.

We were also delighted to award the Barry Wratten Prize for Resilience, for the second time, to Jamie Campbell. Jamie received the award for the first time in 2019, when he received it from the wheelchair he needed to move around the Academy at the time. Now in the Sixth Form, and following many years of surgery and hard work, Jamie walked up the steps unaided to collect the award from the stage. His example of determination was warmly applauded by everyone present.

Welcome back – September 2022

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Term has started really smoothly at Churchill. Our staff training day on Thursday 1st September focused on expectations and priorities for the year ahead – with the same messages emphasised to students through the start of term assemblies in the first full week back. Our new Year 7 and Year 12 students had the school to themselves on Friday 2nd September, to acclimatise to their new surroundings and prepare for their “step up.”

Priorities for the year ahead

As a school we are focused on three priorities for this academic year:

  1. Challenge: to ensure that the highest expectations of behaviour, learning and progress are evident in every experience that students have at Churchill
  2. The role of the tutor: to ensure that tutoring engages students in the values, ethos and purpose of the Academy, developing the inclusion, diversity and sustainability agendas and providing exemplary pastoral and academic support and guidance
  3. Assessment: to ensure that assessment provides valuable and accurate formative and summative information which accurately reflects students’ learning and progress, to inform next steps

There is more detail on these in the Academy Priorities and Development Plan on our website. The three priorities have been identified to ensure that our students continue to make the best possible progress through the curriculum at the Academy, with the right balance of challenge and support around them.

Expectations

In the start of year house assemblies, we introduced the Senior Leadership Team to the students and laid out our expectations. These included the six learning values which underpin our systems at Churchill Academy & Sixth Form. We believe in the value of:

  • Determined and consistent effort
  • A hunger to learn new things
  • Challenging ourselves to go beyond what is comfortable
  • Viewing setbacks and mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow
  • Seeking and responding to feedback
  • Encouraging others to succeed

These values – especially the first – inform the effort grades we include on each student’s progress report, so we took the opportunity to run through the criteria teachers use to award “Good” or “Excellent” effort grades. We emphasised the fact that any student, no matter their ability, can meet the criteria for “Good” or “Excellent” effort – and it is effort that will ensure the best possible progress and attainment.

We also took the opportunity to run through the Top 5 Classroom Behaviour expectations that we established last year, to ensure that students know what is expected of them – every lesson, every time.

  1. Strong start: We arrive on time, line up and enter the classroom calmly
  2. Full attention: We are immediately silent and face the speaker when called to attention 
  3. Full effort: We apply ourselves with our full effort to the learning tasks set
  4. Full focus: We focus all our attention on the learning tasks set
  5. Calm finish: At the end of the lesson we wait in silence for the member of staff to dismiss us

We also reminded students of the Code of Conduct and the Academy’s mobile phone policy. It has been fantastic to see students stepping up to these expectations in this first week, starting the term in just the right frame of mind. But a school year is a marathon, not a sprint – and we expect our students to maintain their high standards consistently throughout the year.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

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Our Academy community joins the whole country in a period of national mourning for the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. We are flying our flag at half mast, and we will be paying our respects to the Queen through tutor time and assembly activities. Where students need support, we will provide it.

We will be encouraging all students to respect one another, using the Academy’s value of kindness. Not everyone will feel the same thing. Some people will be feeling this loss deeply. Even if others do not share that feeling, we should all be respectful and sensitive.

The Queen has reigned throughout my life. I have the utmost respect for her as a model of public service; as someone who dedicated their life to the service of the nation. I will remember the shock and sheer joy I felt when she participated in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, accompanying Daniel Craig’s James Bond on a mission to get to the Olympic Stadium in the most epic way imaginable.

She showed that same mischievous spirit at her Platinum Jubilee, enjoying a marmalade sandwich with Paddington Bear.

But my abiding memory of Her Majesty will be her address to the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the midst of a national crisis, when so many of us were uncertain and afraid, Queen Elizabeth found the words we needed. She used all the experience of her long reign, including her wartime broadcast to children during World War II in 1940, to assure us that “better days will return…we will meet again.”

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: thank you, Ma’am.