Chapter 7: New Careers

Chapter 7: New Careers

 

 

Introduction

After longish headships, all three of us sensed the symptoms of what academic Eric Hoyle calls the potential run-down of school mission. We began to feel we had been round the track too often and were less and less happy with the surrounding policy environment. Bernard (1997) and Cherry (2009) accessed early retirement pensions that enabled them to pursue different, unplanned careers. Rob’s phone rang with an invitation to join the private consultancy sector (2002). Our fading enthusiasm was rekindled by unexpected opportunities and projects. We were full of energy and as determined as ever to improve education, especially for disadvantaged students. New missions beckoned.

 

Bernard started a doctorate but was soon teaching post-graduate history students as well as leading a school out of special measures. Rob had already gained a doctorate and joined a consultancy outfit that was winning contracts to improve failing schools and later assumed a senior role with the Church of England, responsible for school policy and setting up academies. Cherry created a community enterprise company to continue and extend the international student leadership project she launched during the second half of her headship. In very different ways these new, multi-faceted careers were about making schools better and helping young people to acquire interests and skills with the potential to change their lives. The cinema footage of Billy Casper flying his kestrel continued to stimulate our educational imagination.

 

The ‘New Labour’ Years and beyond– the setting for our new careers

The next and final stages of our careers included the New Labour period between 1997 and 2010. The government intended to appeal to a wider cross section of the electorate than before. Its politicians appreciated the shift from an industrial to a service economy, increasing globalisation and the less deferential, more individualistic nature of society. As a result, new social and economic policies were implemented to overcome the inequalities and divisiveness of the previous era through increased government spending combined with public sector reform.

 

This was an age of unparalleled prosperity and economic growth[i]. Although this prosperity was shared unequally, it touched most lives. Increased tax revenues were progressively invested in education and health. The government drove an unprecedented, far-reaching programme to tackle the issues of disadvantage and inequality. It understood how poor economic circumstances, including the decline of traditional industries, led to long-term deprivation and social exclusion, with generations of the same families missing out on education, health and opportunity. Nevertheless, one in three children were still living in poverty.

 

The government introduced changes in the tax and benefit system, with the explicit aim of ending child poverty. Working Families Tax Credit, increases in Child Benefit, Children’s Tax Credit and Income Support were amongst numerous measures intended to help families and improve their engagement with work, education and health care. Early intervention, such as Sure Start[ii], was believed vital if young people’s lives were to be improved.

 

A number of high-profile child abuse cases instigated a range of measures to reform and improve children’s care[iii]. Safeguarding policy and practice, intended to protect children from abuse or neglect and preventing impairment to health and development, became a key instrument. Similarly, the ‘Every Child Matters’ policy[iv] came into being as an emblematic and all-encompassing policy framework, designed to improve outcomes in terms of children being healthy, staying safe, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution and achieving economic well-being.

 

The emphasis on education as a major political priority led to sustained increases in funding for all schools as well as additional programmes and initiatives targeted on disadvantaged areas. The overall spend on education rose by 55 percent during this period and an additional 35,000 teachers were recruited, reducing primary and secondary class sizes significantly[v].

 

Struggling schools were re-launched as City Academies which promised high quality education in deprived areas. Education Action Zones were followed by Excellence in Cities and City Challenge, schemes designed to focus money and attention on inner city underachievement. It became common for schools in difficult areas to provide social care as well as education via breakfast and after-school clubs. Education Maintenance Allowances were introduced to encourage young people from low-income households to continue studying after age 16. 

 

There was also a strong emphasis on school improvement. The newly named Department for Education and Skills (DfES) commissioned a study of former coalfield areas in 2003[vi]. Five new strategies were devised to raise attainment and so break the cycle of poverty for children like Billy Casper. These included extra time and support for literacy and numeracy, professional development to enhance classroom practice, express groups to accelerate promising youngsters, the use of data to enhance decision-making and the provision of learning mentors. 

 

The social inclusion agenda, together with extra funding and a relentless determination to deal with underachievement, yielded significant progress for disadvantaged young people. At age 11 the attainment gap between those receiving free school meals and those that didn’t was gradually closing. Changes at age 16 were substantial. The number of disadvantaged children in receipt of free meals who left with no GCSEs fell from 13 percent to 2 percent between 1997 and 2010.[vii] The gap between free meal recipients and other students who achieved five higher grade GCSEs was also reduced over the same period, down from 30.7 percent to 20.2 percent.[viii] The creation of a new vocational curriculum track, with courses deemed equivalent in value to GCSE, was designed to enable many more students to achieve worthwhile qualifications and skills. 

 

Internal streaming and setting became less divisive as school organisation adapted to the National Curriculum (for Key Stage 3) and to student choice (in Key Stages 4 and 5). In the core subjects (English, mathematics, science) setting became more important than streaming. In optional courses (art, drama, technology) students were usually placed in groups based on their choices rather than their ability. Flexible options and vocational pathways were developed for older students to ensure realistic chances of success for average and below average young people. These arrangements were quite different from those operating in small secondary modern schools fifty years ago. They reflect the organisational complexity of contemporary education and a strong managerial drive to push everyone towards good grades.

 

 ‘Lifelong learning’ became a key concept, with an emphasis on improving skills and employability. The aim was to increase the rate of participation by 18 – 30-year olds in higher education, especially of those from low-income families. Provision was expanded as the numbers in post-16 education increased dramatically. In 2015 the universities reported that the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds studying full time for a first degree increased by 42 per cent between 2005 and 2014.[ix]

 

These broadly positive trends were compromised by the government’s impatience for transformation. This led a key government spokesman to declare that ‘the day of the bog-standard comprehensive school is over.’ In future, diversity would be the ‘hallmark of secondary education’. The comprehensive principle that, wherever possible, children of all abilities and backgrounds should be educated together, with shared and equal access to facilities, resources and good teaching, was now discounted as old-fashioned and even irrelevant.

 

Parents were promised choice and diversity, with options that included specialist schools, trust schools, religious or faith-based schools and generously funded academies where wealthy sponsors enjoyed a controlling interest. It became common for schools struggling with disadvantage to be named and shamed as a prelude to closure or conversion into an academy. Unfortunately, the combination of league tables and social geography usually produced a mix of both popular and unpopular schools, with the demand for ‘good’ schools exceeding supply. Youngsters like Billy Casper, from disadvantaged homes, were least likely to have a real choice and often ended up in struggling institutions with a high percentage of pupils from deprived working class communities and this produced new forms of social exclusion, unrecognised by government agencies. 

 

At the end of this political era, as Labour left office in 2010, the link between relative wealth and GCSE performance, based on grades obtained, remained strong. At a national level, huge data sets showed the type of school attended made little difference and disadvantage continued to permeate all walks of life, despite a sustained effort to improve outcomes[x].

 

The arrival of a new Conservative government in 2010 heralded serious budget cuts and massive change in the education system. A host of new initiatives was encapsulated in the Academies Act 2010[xi] and the Education Act 2011[xii]. These included an increased emphasis on conversion to academy status, especially for so-called ‘failing schools’, the creation of free schools, changes to produce a more academic curriculum, a new assessment regime that excluded course work and the abolition of various education quangos[xiii]. There followed a period of deep unsettledness in the education world as new arrangements and new attitudes came to the fore. For instance, the powerful ‘Every Child Matters’ policy was consigned to the dusty shelf.

 

Despite these reservations, the last phase of our professional careers coincided with a uniquely favourable period when a British government finally tried to do something serious about the social, economic and educational injustice that blighted young people’s lives. Government funding streams and the organisational structures they created provided exciting openings for experienced heads like us looking for new ventures. We found new ways to help improve schools and encourage young people, especially in disadvantaged areas. Our motivation and professional instincts took us, therefore, into a career phase where we operated at a new and sometimes more detached level. But Billy Casper was not forgotten as we worked with the latest ideas and initiatives. These are our stories.

 

Bernard moves on from Stanground

By 1997, I had arrived at the fourth, disaffected, disillusioned stage of headship, where you have seen it all before and the world is over-familiar with your ideas and disposed to resist. Government agendas around standards, basics, testing, league tables and high stakes inspections seemed to me almost East European in their leaching of power from teachers. Although I still loved school, colleagues and students, my cycle had run out. The government offered early retirement packages for ‘jaded heads’ so I prepared to leave.

 

Looking for a retirement hobby, I started a PhD at Leicester and ended up teaching the history PGCE as well. With my 17-year incumbency at Stanground behind me, I sensed my energy and optimism return with surprising speed. My first PGCE visit to a Leicester student on teaching practice introduced me to Rowley Fields, placed in special measures by Ofsted and slated for closure by the City education authority. I was appointed to the vacant headship and embarked on a new mission, an opportunity to rescue teachers and children from the dark presence of Ofsted. There were excellent teachers amongst my new colleagues as I took over and it was unjust that they were subjected to intensive monitoring and endless inspection visits.

 

I began by leading the Parent Action Group charge against the City Council’s closure plan and worked at the same time to re-skill and inspire staff and students. I urged them to see Ofsted as providing useful hurdles to jump over to make us respectable again. The story became raw material for my PhD and my PGCE students taught in the school. I modernised and rescued the budget, timetable and administration as well as establishing an inclusive curriculum. We organised a host of celebrations (including Diwali) and activities (including an outdoor adventure trip for the staff).

 

Government advisers lurked and reported on our campaigning antics. We decided to counter attack, threatening demonstrations and disruption but meanwhile working hard to improve the school. We had to prove we were worthy of salvation and that closing us was more trouble than it was worth. I started a national conference of heads of schools in special measures, designed to expose Ofsted bullying. A government adviser shadowed my speaking engagements and told the City Council what I was saying. I was summoned to Sanctuary Buildings and shown my official file, full of cuttings from my articles in the Times Educational Supplement. They were unhappy with my criticism of their policies, especially the idea that education could be measured in terms of examination and test results. 

 

Rowley Fields was out of special measures by November 1998 and was saved from closure and expanded by the summer of 1999. But the reorganisation, the City Council agenda and the New Labour ‘pressure and support’ policy told another, less encouraging story. In blighted parishes, like Braunstone and Saffron Lane in Leicester, in former coalfields areas, in former shipyards and in former fishing towns, poverty was deep, free school meals were abundant and good GCSE results were scarce. Ofsted refused to listen to stories about poor parishes where there had been no work for generations or about whole districts where employment and community had vanished. They would hear no excuses and insisted on applying their formulae to improve school effectiveness. Their policies were unsuccessful, so they intensified reform and inspected more schools.

 

New Academies were created while established schools in poor areas were named and shamed. As schools were reorganised or re-launched, familiar teachers were uprooted or thrown out while cohorts of children were transferred to new establishments in the middle of their GCSE courses. Fear accompanied the inspectors from school to school but disadvantaged children were no more likely to thrive or love learning. Initiative followed initiative, with Education Action Zones followed by City Learning Centres and the Gifted and Talented scheme. The results were unclear. The so-called performance tables suggested that within each region and local authority there was an irreducible hierarchy of schools, a natural ecology closely related to wealth and class. Free School Meals (FSM) became a surrogate poverty measure, with a distribution through the country that was inversely related to good test and examination results.

 

During the New Labour period, however, schools were well-funded and were encouraged on a sustained basis to emphasise family and child welfare (especially through Sure Start and the Every Child Matters policy). Teacher pay improved and training was extended and enhanced, with the National College for School Leadership providing high quality courses for senior professionals. But schools and leaders were also subjected to an unrelenting, negative pressure based on disappointment – disadvantaged children were under-achieving and strenuous measures were needed to improve their teaching and results.

 

As I left headship behind in 1999, however, my reinvention gathered momentum. As a PGCE tutor I returned to my early days as an innovator and encouraged history graduates to experiment with new methods. I told them teaching should develop empathy with historical agents and actors, recognise their humanity and acknowledge the contexts in which they had to live and operate. Students should debate and discuss available options and decisions, should explore possible outcomes and appreciate how different courses of action can lead to varied consequences. Thoughtful consideration of options was more important than memorising apparently inevitable sequences of events. Above all, everyone should be involved through games, simulations, group work and problem solving. This was not possible without sound knowledge of what really happened in history but the accumulation of facts could not alone lead to understanding.

 

This was pioneering work when I began my career and published the Longman History Games (1973) and Blackwell’s History Replay series (1979). These resources were designed to help teachers organise simulations to explore the complexity of historical events. In the late nineties, my approach remained a challenge to the traditional order of textbooks, chalk and talk in place at many of the schools where PGCE students completed their teaching practices. In 1971, I was convinced simulation and problem solving in history, and the humanities more widely, would become the comprehensive pedagogy of the future, providing access for everyone, regardless of ability and promoting democratic citizenship, where people, not the elites, would be the decision makers. But the emphasis on results and facts was growing ever stronger and government agencies were reducing the space for imagination. The curriculum was increasingly designed for assessment.

 

My PhD, completed in 2002, became the foundation of an unintended academic career. I attacked the mad idea that there is a superior science of leadership, pedagogy and classroom practice that can be applied bureaucratically to ensure everyone gets good results. I argued that only teachers and children, working together in their schools, really know and understand what is needed for their education. Students are vital agents in their own learning and no formula can guarantee anything. Billy Casper’s teachers, with the exception of Mr Farthing, were unaware that after school he visits the library to research kestrels and their training. They did not trouble to find out that he keeps and trains a kestrel and forges a respectful and passionate relationship with a wild creature. They are ignorant of Billy’s mind, a triumph of human life over every obstacle to happiness. KES is more than a symbol of human possibility, even in the least promising circumstances; it is the embodiment of what a true education of young people should be like. 

 

As a teacher, I always wanted to make Billy’s passion centre stage, to create school and classroom conditions where it is possible for young people’s lives, experience and passions to be the main concern. We should use our imagination and human empathy to enable everyone to explore, discover and work on their dreams. This does not require a miracle of social transformation, only the patience and kindness to place children’s ideas at the centre of our project. This is especially important for young people growing up in poverty and disadvantage because their opportunities are fewer.

 

Sustained consultancies (2002 and 2003) involved me with two more schools like Rowley Fields. The heads were clueless and occasionally malevolent, with little understanding of their own impact on others and even less grasp of school organisation. In some schools, a combination of poor leadership and a tough local environment could still lead to dismal experiences for Billy and his successors, despite lavish government expenditure and ceaseless policy initiatives.

 

At another school in Essex, the educational welfare officer drove me to visit ‘paedophiles’ row’ where lone parents and their children, decanted from London boroughs, were prey to predators. In a London Borough by the Thames, the head never visited classrooms. On paired observations with me he encountered hopeless lessons with a sigh and then anger. His teachers were letting him down again. The poor schools I visited featured similar characteristics, including a high concentration of short-term contract and supply teachers, slow, discursive lessons with minimal challenge and minimal engagement or interest, and the yawning sad space of falling rolls. Extra-curricular activities, sport, drama and music had disappeared while the staff struggled to cope with frequent visits from local authority inspectors.

 

I could not see the way out for this type of school as Blair embarked on the ultimate experiment – bulldozing failing schools in disadvantaged areas and starting again with academies housed in lavish buildings and fitted out with the latest electronic kit. Unfortunately, the decision to create new types of school and to encourage parental choice had the inevitable but unintended consequence of intensifying social segregation. As Diane Reay[xiv] has found, poor families and children drift towards less popular schools that are vulnerable to the pressure of concentrated disappointment and disaffection. Reay has interviewed these families and identifies the persistence of the ‘Billy’ phenomenon, with many girls and boys siphoned into the lowest tiers of our class-based education system.

 

This work, with leaders trapped in the perpetual shadow of Ofsted, was balanced by quite different experiences at two successful schools. I tutored senior and middle managers on school-based leadership programmes built around improvement projects. There was heartening evidence that given a broadly balanced intake, good teachers could make real progress. One project was in Hertfordshire, the other in South Yorkshire, not far from the original Barnsley secondary modern featured in KES. The schools were quite different in context, community and in the make-up of the local economy but they were similar in other respects.

 

Both were eager to develop school-based research and found the necessary funding and support for participants. They resembled one another in recruiting a positive mix of young people that included some from disadvantaged or disturbed backgrounds together with a significant number from professional backgrounds. Both possessed and improved good facilities and resources and were also successful in recruiting and retaining teachers. The heads were powerful and charismatic personalities. They drove hard for improvement and were good at mobilising and coordinating the resources available to them. The result for the children was tangible, with lots of positive activity, curricular and extra-curricular. Lessons were well organised and taught but were monitored through regular observation and appraisal. Both schools were highly rated by Ofsted and student views were carefully monitored through externally operated questionnaires. Pastoral care was highly resourced and organised so students were treated with kindness and respect regardless of their background.

 

Cherry leaves headship for new horizons

After 10 years of headship, I felt exhausted but ready for a new challenge. The school was in a good place, with new buildings, a full quota of qualified staff, a strong enterprise agenda, improved results and a supportive culture for teachers and students. It was time for a new voice and new energy. But what should I do? The last thing I wanted was to join an inspection team or take on another headship. I am much more of a front-line grafter and fellow worker than I am a consultant, although I always embraced with passion the task of mentoring my own staff.

 

To explain fully my post-headship plans, I need to talk about Flegg’s work on student leadership. We trained young people to become ‘peer supporters’ and created a strong culture of ‘befriending’ and ‘looking out for’ others. ChildLine chose Flegg as their training school for peer support in East Anglia, so our children often visited other schools to help students set up peer support systems. The marketing manager of our local football club, Norwich City, gave us a £5,000 grant the club itself had received for promoting ‘Fair Play’. We used the money to hold our first Fair Play Student Leadership Conference, held at the football ground.

 

All 52 high schools in Norfolk were invited to send young representatives to an event that displayed successful student leadership at our school and elsewhere, as well as featuring keynote presentations by adult speakers. About this time, I was also introduced to Starehe Boys’ School in Nairobi, Kenya. This is a charitable foundation where boys are responsible for most daily tasks on site, except catering, teaching and heavy maintenance. Starehe is a boarding school with houses where senior boys are responsible for pastoral care, well-being, discipline and standards. A colleague and I were awarded British Council funding to visit in autumn 2005 and were accompanied by other Norfolk head teachers and senior staff. The Centre - since it was both a home and a school - exceeded all expectations. A young woman then working with KPMG in London financed herself to join our trip and commented: ‘I have never heard our senior managers speak with such clarity and experience about leadership and management; they are no match for these boys.’

 

So began a long and fruitful relationship with Starehe. One of their staff, an outstanding speaker and promoter of the benefits of student leadership, helped launch our first ‘Fair Play’ Conference in 2005. After that, Flegg partnered Norwich City to host two conferences a year until I left in 2009. We showcased outstanding student leadership in Norfolk and promoted exemplars from Starehe that helped mix some of their outstanding culture and commitment with our own efforts.

 

We also started regular visits to Nairobi for our students to learn first-hand the style of leadership at Starehe. We introduced their boys to Tchoukball, an unusual handball game that was very popular at Flegg. Our head of PE took a team to Starehe in 2006 and coached the Kenyan boys in the sport. He also raised funds so we could donate equipment needed for the game. In this way we combined sporting competition with student leadership. When other schools heard about Starehe through our leadership conferences they asked if they could join in. We responded with a Norfolk inter-schools trip to Nairobi for four other high schools, taking a group that included around 70 pupils and 10 staff. The trip set the standard for future visits.

 

With no precise plans in my head, I left teaching eager to advance the cause of student leadership in some way. But my timing was unlucky. Global recession followed by austerity politics cut the funds flowing into training and dramatically reduced support for initiatives like ours. In addition, the Coalition government elected in 2010 emphasized examination performance, almost to the exclusion of everything else. Schools concentrated on GCSE higher grades and student leadership appeared marginal to their concerns.

 

Fortunately, the successful 2009 visit meant the schools involved were keen to send further cohorts. Other secondary schools asked to be included in future visits to Kenya. The project was growing but leaving Flegg deprived me of essential office support. Now there was no administrative backup and I lacked an approved financial channel for receiving and paying money to airlines, hotels, and transport groups.

 

The solution was to set up a Community Enterprise Company called Rise Young Leaders. A former Flegg student, a graphic designer, created our logo, printed our stationery and pointed me in the direction of website design. Now there was a brand, a website, a bank account and therefore a portal through which to manage the various funds. The Norfolk school visits advisor agreed to guide and monitor us. This ensured a robust vetting process to meet health and safety requirements. The risk assessment for the trip was about a month’s work alone. I quickly understood how much time the administrative side of the work would take up. 

 

After the 2006 Flegg trip, I began to collect supporters with links to Starehe School, the most influential of whom were members of the Old Starehian Society. This active and committed group of ‘old boys’ met monthly and supported their ‘alma mater’ as well as each other in business and the professions. Starehe has many friends worldwide who help fund this charitable institution for bright but destitute boys. They liked our work and introduced people who arranged so many aspects of each visit - from safe lodgings to drivers and safari bookings - at discounted prices. Starehe sends representatives to international student conferences but we were the only state school to visit from the UK at the time, with many in our groups living in underprivileged circumstances themselves. The Old Starehians warmed to our desire to learn from African initiatives and gave generous help.

 

Meanwhile in Norfolk, a chance acquaintance was also attracted to my initiative. Yvonne Mason founded a company that dealt in ship-to-ship transfer. Fortunately for me, she was not only the owner of a company with global reach but she was also looking to develop the range of her work. Yvonne wanted to invest in young people in Norfolk and Suffolk and help them with careers and wider life opportunities, aspects of education ill-served in her own journey through life. She deposited one million pounds in a trust fund to benefit young people in Norfolk and Suffolk with an emphasis on career development. They could seek help with coaching, equipment or fees for developing skills like ballet, tennis and rugby or international travel to broaden horizons. Yvonne and I became mutually supportive. I helped her to get known in schools and promote her Trust while she provided generous sponsorship for our visits to Kenya and came out with her son to support and monitor our work on two occasions.

 

Initially, almost half of the funds required for each student came from The Mason Trust while the students raised the rest. This enabled youngsters from homes where there was no spare cash for holidays or school trips to participate, provided they raised half the funds themselves. Preparations began about nine months in advance and money was raised by car washing, cake baking, packing in supermarkets, raffles, talent competitions, sponsored walks and even silences. 

 

After the first visit, with its emphasis on student leadership and developing the sport of Tchoukball, I expanded the offer to include community engagement and work based in three primary schools, located in Jericho, a very deprived area of Nairobi. Norfolk students were asked to plan and develop ball games so they could entertain cohorts from the primary classes. This was extended to mental mathematics, storytelling, painting - any style of work. The challenge for each student was to plan a full day’s activity and then deliver it three times in three separate schools. They were expected to source the materials required, including large format laminated posters that could be left in schools lacking resources. The students, their teachers and families did so much more - equipping the schools with stationery, paints, pencils, toys and resources for play and sport.

 

We exploited the long-haul travel allowance to transport these goods. Students were instructed to have one personal suitcase weighing up to 23kgs and one bag of charitable goods containing up to 23kgs. This was invaluable and allowed us to transport the equivalent of 70 x 23kgs every visit.

 

I also used our contacts to help participants understand the Kenyan way of life and the challenges ordinary people faced in making a living. With the help of our friend James Otieno, we lodged in a gated hotel with a swimming pool, restaurant and snack bar. The students worked hard during the day but they could return to the hotel later for a swim and to relax. The rooms were fairly basic but reasonably sized, with adequate shower facilities. We adopted a large suite for our briefing and training sessions. The suite was also perfect for hair braiding, beadwork, craft workshops and African singing. African activities were staged in the evenings to bring our young people into contact with local people and to invest in ordinary Kenyans and their small enterprises.

 

We were introduced to the Anglican cathedral in Jericho. The choirmaster came to our hotel to teach songs in Kiswahili for the students to perform during family service on Sunday morning. Most of our youngsters did not worship in church at home and were delighted to be so warmly received and to discover a cathedral full to bursting, with uplifting music at the heart of worship. We added new features annually, based on feedback from staff and students as well as the new friends we continued to make in Kenya.

 

I expanded the project to include two visits per year. A smaller group went out during the February half term and a much bigger group travelled in June or early July, following their examinations. I would go out to Kenya four or five times a year for planning and to inspect venues, as well as deepening relationships with Starehe and the primary schools. In 2014 Ormiston Victory Academy joined the project and I saw how introducing academy chains could help build the project into something bigger. I began to think about raising funds to pay extra workers, though I worked myself as a volunteer.

 

We were growing, with new schools expressing interest and students from previous trips asking for follow-up opportunities. The answer to their request became clear one morning in February 2012, as we concluded one of our Kenyan expeditions with a two-day safari in Amboseli National Park. Drinking tea at dawn and witnessing snow-capped Kilimanjaro in the morning light, the young man next to me said: ‘I think we had better climb that, Miss.’ The seed was sown for the follow-on project. We would take 18+ year olds to Tanzania, aiming to climb Kilimanjaro and raise funds for needy children in Nairobi. 

 

I trialled the expedition in August 2013. Nine of us climbed Kilimanjaro, raising funds to equip an orphanage in Kibera, reputed to be the largest slum in Africa. We found this orphanage through an old Starehian friend who grew up there. We raised the money and equipped the orphanage ourselves rather than passing funds to others. By September 2013, there were two contrasting projects providing very different experiences, one for those under 18 and one for older students.

 

As it turned out, all this was unnecessary. The 2014 Al Shabaab atrocities ended the project. In June we had a group of 75 ready to visit. But the Westgate Mall bombing and shootings were followed by the lobbing of hand grenades at various sites in and around Nairobi. I visited to reroute the trip but parents were fearful. One school withdrew. The local media escalated fears so all the other participating schools followed suit, only weeks before we were due to go. A worthwhile project takes a long time to grow but can be killed very quickly.

 

Rob takes up new challenges

After seventeen years as a head, I was growing bored. There was a risk of saying to enthusiasts with bright ideas, ‘ah, we’ve tried this before and...’ This is always a tell-tale sign it’s time to move on. I was also fed up with the reduction of learning to crude utilitarian measures that do not reflect a school’s context or the un-bottle-able attributes of a good education that, in time, ‘maketh the person’. I was then 52 and full of energy, enthusiasm and unwarranted optimism. The idea of retirement was alien. I still wanted to make an impact on education. 

 

My challenge was what to do next. I regularly looked at the phone on my desk and implored it to ring. And one day it did. A large national company was setting up a new educational consultancy to bid for and win government contracts for school improvement up and down the country. They were already working in Nottingham and Hull. Would I be interested in joining the team? There followed a curious process of covert dinners in fine restaurants, a furtive trip to Hull to meet the lead consultant and then the negotiation of terms. In the end we got there and I signed the contract. 

 

Consultancy became the perfect antidote to headship. This was a time when money was poured into education in search of solutions to endemic problems. Public/private partnerships were the order of the day and the firm, originally a civil engineering company, became a big player. Our leaders were hyper-energised now they were part of the commercial world with all its trappings and were free from the parsimony of the local authorities they previously worked for. They seemed at ease with the New Labour gospel. 

 

My colleague consultants were different. They were seasoned educators who knew what it was like to struggle with school leadership in former coalfields or other poor, run down areas. They had all battled at various points in their careers to do something positive for disadvantaged children. The project managers, bless them, were bright young things with good degrees from good universities with huge knowledge of scheduling techniques but little practical wisdom as yet.

 

At first, I worked mainly in Hull, Leeds, Hillingdon and Walsall where there were numerous schools in crisis that had been named and shamed by the government. Life at a typical school in special measures was little different from Billy Casper’s experience in KES. Most were on the road to being dismantled to become academies. Our purpose was to support and help them to become better, but the biggest problem was that their energies were entirely consumed with getting by on a day-to-day basis. They did not know how to use extra support effectively and often our presence was seen as a further burden rather than additional support. Often one had to break through the resistance before being able to help.

 

I went to one of our designated schools on a bleak day in December. Situated on the east side of Hull in a massive housing estate, there was little between it and the North Pole. The wind blew and the rain travelled horizontally. The head, for political reasons, wanted nothing to do with us and had successfully repelled all boarders so far. But our government contract said we consultants must ‘improve’ this place and another sixteen like it. Hull was languishing at the bottom of every league table and we were contracted to be saviours. I was sent in to work a miracle. 

 

The head was isolated and worn down, wanting nothing to do with a bunch of grandiose consultants. He greeted me uncivilly and we huffed and puffed to his office. For want of conversation, I suggested he was having a difficult day, the weather was awful and the kids would be all over the place. The school would be on critical alert, just like Wycliffe would have been on a similar day. He suddenly understood that I knew what he was going through and we very soon formed an empathetic bond that resulted in some significant gains for the school. 

 

We had no clear methodology for school improvement and usually flew by the seat of our pants. Once a good relationship and trust had been achieved with the head and senior leaders, we were able to help them to be more objective, to recognise how to harness energies and to work more effectively to get their schools out of the swamp and on to the high ground. There were notable successes but many situations were intractable. Now and again we recommended the removal of a head or even supported closure as the only way forward. Our gains were small but sometimes significant. The self-evident truth for many such schools was that, without a demographic redistribution, very little could be achieved in terms of the government’s utilitarian measures. I sometimes felt that many disadvantaged children were intractably doomed and trapped in their socio-economic dilemma. 

 

But, of course, politicians were dreaming up another game changer. All you had to do was bulldoze the school, bring in a magnificent entrepreneur with pots of money, spend untold millions on a new building, find a super head and start all over again, this time by putting the children into braided blazers. The contracts to set up these academies were lucrative and we won contract after contract to do the impossible. I was drafted across to be the educational consultant on academy projects. For the second half of my six years with the company, I was deeply involved in establishing seventeen brand new academies. 

 

My task was to lead on the educational philosophy, policy and structures that would fulfill the sponsor’s aspirations. Usually working through a committee, I would formulate the education brief (usually several hundred pages long) for each academy. Before the academy could be signed off, the brief had to be approved by the Secretary of State. The brief was in effect the workshop manual for the new school. It was the Trustees’ charter. In many ways this was a marvellous opportunity to innovate and develop creative education strategies, but working with bigoted billionaire sponsors was often a nightmare. One such person wanted caning to be the order of the day in his academy. He was caned at school and it did him no harm. Another sponsor offered me a ride to London in his private jet after a meeting in Newcastle. Where, I thought, do children from deprived estates fit into this game?

 

Not all this work was in vain. Some excellent new schools were created and some sponsors were enlightened and enthusiastic. Most sponsors certainly knew about poor children and one or two had come up the hard way themselves. But two problems bedevilled the visionary and creative plans we devised. One was that often worn out and incompetent staff had a right to be transferred to the new academies and so little changed for the children in the classroom, despite their smart blazers and glitzy buildings. The second problem was that the wonderful education brief was often put on the shelf to gather dust once the new Principal was appointed. He or she would inevitably come with his or her own preconceptions and want to do it their way. Strangely enough, seemingly omnipotent sponsors soon abrogated their trusteeship to the whims of a transient head. Many hours of hard work and carefully thought through innovations were wasted. 

 

I learned about the nationwide network of Church of England schools while working with sponsors who were committed Christians. At this time, the Church wanted to expand its secondary provision and ministers grudgingly allowed it to become a sponsor. I worked on five such developments and found the underlying principles and values to be in tune with my own thinking. Never did the church or religiosity get in the way of wanting to achieve a good school for all children, including the disadvantaged.

 

After six years of daily travel up and down the country and the travails of working in the commercial sector, I was once again bored and for the first time ever thinking about retirement and a complete change of direction. Ordination and a country parish with its Norman church suddenly seemed very attractive. I shared my thoughts of semi-retirement with one of the Diocesan Directors of Education I was working with on an academy project. He suggested I looked at the post of Head of School Strategy and Deputy General Secretary for Church of England schools that was being advertised.

 

I applied and was offered the post. The mysteries of the job and the mystique of the Church’s labyrinthine civil service took a bit of getting used to but I felt fulfilled again. I worked with the national Director of Education on the school side of things and she focused on other aspects such as pre-school, youth and universities (of which 12 have Anglican foundations) as well as schools.

 

I had very little power but a great deal of influence. My constituents were the 42 Diocesan Directors of Education, the Bishops with an interest in schools, the Church’s legal advisors and the high-ranking civil servants across the road at the DfE. We oversaw nearly 5,000 schools and the education of nearly one million children. The Diocesan Directors headed up legally constituted bodies managing voluntary aide and voluntary controlled schools as well as academies. My job was to influence the overarching policies for school development through the Directors and to mediate between our system and the DfE. I never lost sight of below average youngsters and refused to be swayed by the idea that C of E schools existed for the middle classes who couldn’t afford the fees for the private sector. The vast majority of our schools served multi-ethnic urban communities in disadvantaged areas.

 

In 2010, everything changed with a jolt. Across the road at the DfE all the insignia of ‘Every Child Matters’ disappeared and along came Michael Gove as Secretary of State and the full force of austerity. We had to defend our system from his determined wish to dismantle everything we stood for, despite his alleged enthusiasm for church schools. I found myself writing speeches for angry Bishops to make in the Lords and one of my finest moments came when I told the schools minister that he could not take the ‘church’ out of ‘church schools’. Our schools were in themselves legally constituted trusts, often pre-dating the 1870 Education Act. Gove was determined, but happily failed, to hand our under-performing schools to any sponsor who would take them. There were several occasions when I found myself playing high stakes political poker with ministers and civil servants. It made me wily and determined. By and large, we succeeded. 

 

All this was a wake-up call for the Diocesan Directors who were often more used to focusing on religious education and caring for their people. Over time and with a lot of effort, we persuaded the directors that unless they started leading their schools and driving up educational achievement, they would lose control. The DfE’s Rottweilers were on the prowl. Gradually, this vast system began to adapt and along the way we created several completely new secondary schools and academies.

 

I have great affection and admiration for this part of our education system. I knew little about it before getting the job but enjoyed leading, invigorating and defending the aspect for which I was responsible. Church schools engender for the whole community, for those of the faith and those of other faiths, a set of values appealing to many parents. They are genuinely inclusive and are committed to doing the best for all their pupils. Large numbers of disadvantaged children attend them. With rare exceptions, Church of England schools do not attempt to indoctrinate or proselytize their students. I visited many schools situated in the most deprived areas of the country and saw first-hand the efforts being made to overcome adversity and disadvantage. 

 

In 2012 I retired from education with a strong sense of having done my best.

 

 

Discussion

Our exits from headship were a measure of the changed structure, organisation and direction of education since the 1960s. Under Conservative and Labour governments, there was a similar relentless drive to improve school effectiveness and raise standards through a strong emphasis on test and examination results, competition in the market place and accountability through performance tables and regular inspection. Government agencies and private providers engaged in multiple initiatives to pressure heads and schools forward, with no excuses allowed for disadvantage or poverty. As we have seen, New Labour added another dimension to the mix, with an emphasis on inclusion and support for families, children and schools, with funds available for initiatives intended to overcome the barriers faced by isolated and impoverished families and communities.

 

We discovered, therefore, new and unsuspected opportunities to play a variety of roles, from PGCE tutor and university researcher to consultant, trainer, adviser and even volunteer. New players, including national agencies, consultancy companies, the National College for School Leadership (NCSL) and even university education departments needed us! We especially welcomed the government’s central concern that all children could achieve and should have equal opportunities to enjoy high quality education. The scenes of our post-school careers glittered with ambition, possibilities and rewards beyond the imagination of Mr Gryce and his generation of secondary modern heads and teachers. 

 

But even in these prosperous times, thirty years on from our induction into the profession, we encountered heads and schools, especially in areas affected by long-term social and economic isolation and difficulty, where there were problems as severe as those identified by David Hargreaves at Lumley and then estimated to affect about 20 per cent of the secondary modern sector. Rob and Bernard supported numerous dysfunctional schools with poor leadership, resistance to outside help, frequent changes of staff and simple disorganisation. Although Rob believed that consultants could win significant gains, the underlying issues remained. He began to suspect that disadvantaged children were ‘intractably doomed and trapped in their socio-economic dilemma’. Rowley Fields was saved but within a short time failed another inspection and was eventually closed in 2011. These intractable problems, with their origins in economic failure and social disadvantage, could be read in the performance tables, despite the huge efforts to improve school effectiveness. Rob and Bernard were not convinced that even bulldozing failing schools and building glitzy City Academies would make much difference if the intake remained the same.

 

Gaps closed a little bit, but the association between low family income and low grades was unchanged, with relative poverty, as measured by the Free School Meals (FSM) indicator, generating relatively poor results (Andrews et al., 2017). In aggregate, national GCSE data sets showed a steady and consistent decline in performance across the income range, with those from less prosperous wards achieving results well below the norm. This was the case in failing schools with concentrations of disadvantaged pupils, but even in supposedly ‘good’ schools, FSM children matched the national trend to underperform their classmates (Cook, 2012). To us, it seemed that schools were not the main influence on examination results and that the unrelenting pursuit of better grades was unlikely to succeed, despite the resources devoted to the goal.

 

Cherry’s work on student leadership at Flegg, followed up as a volunteer and partner with Starehe in Kenya, was a much more promising example of how to improve schools, engage and motivate students, and broaden experience through international partnership. The depth and quality of life for students and also for their teachers was immeasurably enhanced. This specific project was compromised by the need to raise funds in an unfavourable climate and eventually killed by terrorism but Cherry’s work at Flegg shows the extent to which steady and determined work on human relationships can improve life for young people. Schools in general have become better places and can become better still.

 

 

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