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A coastal primary school in north Wales that was built to combine three over-subscribed Welsh-medium primary schools in the area. The headteacher has been leading the school since 2008, and has been building a relationship with local school leaders in the area since. The schools are very close to one another, approximately ½ a mile to a mile in distance, with all schools feeding the same high school.
The headteacher reflected that there was little buy-in for collaboration and working together – when the headteacher did try and work with other schools to put things in place, they found teachers wouldn’t always follow through on commitments made at leadership level in other schools. The schools came together, however, and found “safety in numbers”. The rationale for joint working is solidarity in inspections from Estyn – if schools adopt similar approaches, and one gets a positive inspection visit, this provides other schools with assurance for their Estyn visits, too.
Prior to COVID-19 the school did not have any awareness of the School Partnership Programme, but found schools engaging in their own versions of collaborative peer review. There was an attempt to engage in peer review amongst their local schools, but this was halted due to COVID-19. COVID-19 was found to force more collaboration as everyone was trying to come up with similar solutions to common problems that had not been faced before.
When disruption from COVID-19 was coming to an end, a school recruitment adviser thought the school group would be a good candidate for SPP. After two rounds of training, SPP has now been considered accepted practice. It was thought to have embedded a formality and approach to working together.
Since starting SPP, the schools work together on more areas, for example, a common behaviour strategy, assessments, and generally coming together for shared approaches to common issues. One area of shared intervention has been on differentiation. Multiple schools in the partnership were coming up for Estyn inspection, and differentiation was considered to be a joint area where improvement was needed, with schools asking themselves:
"If Estyn were here tomorrow, what would we want them to see?"Coastal North Wales Primary School
The headteacher reflected that for the first few rounds of peer review it can be tempting to select ‘easier’ or ‘less meaty’ areas for improvement, but these would be areas that might provide easy wins and not drive-up standards. Though it was acknowledged as intimidating to have local ‘competitors’ coming in and viewing areas of weakness, the ultimate goal of improving standards was considered to override any fears associated with peer review. The headteacher reflected on the need for honesty and ultimately improving the lives of the children in the school.
In previous inspection frameworks there was a perceived view in schools that you had to demonstrate you were the best and it felt relative to other schools. New inspection frameworks promote collaboration, so SPP offers a good structure that fits into the Welsh inspection system. Teachers are constantly searching for new ideas and SPP opens up a structure to borrow ideas from other schools.
The schools now also have parallel systems of collaboration that sit alongside, and complement SPP. This has included bringing teachers together for curriculum planning and pupil voice. The schools have also welcome in outside experts to help shape approaches, such as a consultant to look into independent learning. This visit from the consultant has led to independent learning being the next topic of self-review for the school.
The next steps for the schools strengthening SPP were considered to be in more structure in how success is measured from peer visits, and making sure SPP visits aren’t “wasted on something that might be a quick fix”. There was a reflection that 90 day review windows can be quite unstructured, so more thought might be needed in measuring accomplishments and progress within that window. The school found that a really important element of keeping SPP going is to not cancel team visits, even if schools are feeling overworked or at minor inconveniences (one example given related to cancelling due to it being school photography day).
The only variable that would now lead to a cancellation from schools would be a visit from Estyn. The headteacher believes that SPP could be explained in clearer step-by-step approaches, and would recommend simplifying descriptions of the process at the start. The beauty of SPP is considered to be its simplicity, so promoting this simplicity was considered to be important. The headteacher also felt that introducing WAGOLLS (what a good one looks like) would be helpful in SPP resources. There was also a reflection that SPP may be challenging in small schools where staff might already be playing multiple roles.