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On Wednesday of this week, the four secondary schools in the Lighthouse Schools Partnership shared an inset day. Inset, which stands for “in-service training,” is a valuable opportunity for staff to refine their practice, collaborate, and develop their craft to ensure we provide the best possible education to our students. With staff from Gordano, Backwell, Chew Valley and Churchill all taking part, the day was a great success.

Subject and faculty leaders from across the trust all met at Backwell School. They met in subject groups to share lessons from analysing the summer’s GCSE, A-level and vocational exams results, to share strategies and techniques for ensuring the best possible outcomes for this year’s cohorts. This sharing of subject-specific expertise is invaluable, and all the schools in the trust benefit from these opportunities.

Later in the day, the subject and faculty leaders all came together for training in carrying out middle leadership reviews. This process sees subject experts from across the trust visiting one another’s schools to offer constructive critique, help identify areas of strength and development, and share practice to the benefit of all concerned. It is in these collaborations that the benefit of being part of a bigger trust are really apparent.

Meanwhile, back at Churchill, the day began early as we hosted the LSP’s business breakfast in the Pool Hall. Over 100 Business Partners and education colleagues attended to network, make connections, and collaborate. The main speaker at the event – Simon Lawrence OBE, General Manager of the National Trust Bristol Portfolio – provided an interesting and insightful reflection on the principles and values of ‘Servant Leadership’ that he has learnt throughout his military and diplomatic career.

Visitors also heard from Chew Valley School Headteacher, Gareth Beynon, who spoke about the importance of the outdoors when it comes to educating our children and young people. The event was closed by Sofia and Toby, from our own Churchill Sixth Form, sharing details of their upcoming trip to Madagascar.

Meanwhile, teaching staff were working on developing their questioning skills using resources from the Lighthouse Schools Partnership’s Pedagogy Framework. Questioning is fundamental teaching strategy, so getting the details right can be really significant in helping students to develop their thinking, practice key skills, and to help check for understanding. This was followed by a series of workshops on different aspects of SEND, to help us work more effectively with students with additional needs.

It was a packed day, with the importance of learning for staff at its heart: a great opportunity to refine and develop our practice across the trust to the benefit of our students. The next trust day – in February 2025 – will bring together all teaching staff from 33 primary and secondary schools in another day of collaborative learning. We can’t wait!

Inset stands for “in-service training”, and all schools have had five inset days each year since they were introduced in 1988. Schools close to students on inset days, but staff attend. Sometimes they can seem a bit mysterious to families and to students, so I thought in my blog this week I’d try to explain what actually happens on these days when the students are away!

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Inset days are designed to provide compulsory training time for teaching staff so that we can continue to improve our practice, keep up to date with changes in education, and ensure that we have appropriate training to deal with the challenges of our job. Here at Churchill, we often involve our support staff in training too, so that all staff have the knowledge and skills they need to do their job to the best of their ability. We supplement our inset days with on-the-job training and provide a range of opportunities throughout the year for all staff to learn, develop and improve, but the inset days give us a real opportunity to get everyone together and spend an extended period of time working on priority issues for the Academy.

Let’s take this coming Monday (27th June) for example. There are five different strands of training happening on the day.

Whole staff briefing: Strategic Planning

As a new Headteacher I’ve been busy working on the long-term plan for Churchill following the outstanding Ofsted achieved last summer. I’ll be sharing the plan on this blog towards the end of term, but I’ll start the day by briefing staff about our priorities and how we can all work together to achieve them first thing in the morning.

Safeguarding Training

All staff have to be trained to keep children safe in education – it’s the most fundamentally important part of our job. Because it’s so important, we “refresh” this training at least every two years to ensure that all our staff have the latest guidelines and procedures clearly in mind, and know exactly what to do if there are any concerns about children’s safety. This “refresher” training will be taking place for staff who are due to have this additional training.

Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP) Training

Prevent Strategy

Prevent is the Government’s strategy to counteract the threat of extremism in our society. As a school we have a duty to uphold and enact the Prevent strategy and ensure that all staff are aware of what to look out for and what to do to ensure that we respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat we face from those who promote it, and to prevent people from being drawn into extremism and terrorism. All staff are required to undertake training in these aspects of the Prevent strategy and we will be providing opportunities on our inset day for this to happen at Churchill.

Pastoral development

Staff will meet in their House teams on this inset day to review and plan the work that needs to be done over the rest of this term, and in preparation for September. This includes planning the Celebration of Success events, ensuring that everything is in place to provide a smooth transition for our new Year 7 students and their families, to look at mentoring for students within the Houses, and to take time to work on particular priorities within each House. At the same time, the Sixth Form pastoral team will be meeting to plan the specialist tutor programme for next year, and ensure that the best opportunities are in place for our new Sixth Form cohort starting in September.

Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) Training

We are extending our provision of the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) in Year 12 next year, so we are using our inset day to work in partnership with Backwell School to make sure that all staff involved in delivering the EPQ are properly trained by the exam board. We’re really looking forward to the opportunities that EPQ will give our Sixth Formers and we want to make sure we get it right!

Transition Drama Day

At the same time as all this training, our performing arts students and staff will be working hard with our new Year 7 intake on the famous “drama day” ahead of the transition day on Tuesday. There will be lots of fun, learning and confidence building going on! Watch the website for a full report…

Phew!

As you can see, it’s going to be a busy day! It’s a great opportunity to make sure that all our staff have the best and most up-to-date training to care for and deliver the best possible education to the students at the Academy. And, for our staff at least, it’s definitely not a day off!