Turnaround heads, renewed schools

Good to see the Times celebrating success at Highcrest School in High Wycombe today, rightly praising the hard work that has transformed it. One of the highlights of my week has been a visit with fellow governors to the building site at Cressex Community School, also in High Wycombe.

For years Cressex was very much down the wrong end of the Buckinghamshire educational food chain. When I first visited Cressex a couple of years ago, I was, quite honestly, horrified by the utterly appalling state of buildings that had received no serious attention in years. Students encompassed a range of abilities and motivations, from pretty basic to frustrated. One or two staff were fantastically committed Cockleshell heroes, but the general picture was of containment, failure, disrespect and frustration.

When I asked a group of year 11 students how their school could be improved, I expected an obvious answer about buildings or facilities. The answer I got was completely different. “Our school would be worth going to if the staff had some continuity.” This sounded to me like students who actually wanted to learn, but had been badly let down. As a former numeracy governor (in another life), I also saw some inspirational extended numeracy work going on in year 7 — frankly a much higher standard of teaching and learning than I had seen that year in one County Grammar School.

So there was hope. Katy Simmons (Chair), fellow governors and friends in the community fought hard to have the whole site renewed, and after much struggle, Cressex is to be entirely renewed as part of the Government’s Building Schools for the Future Initiative. It’s really good to see a new school taking shape. There has been an evolving relationship with Wycombe Abbey, a centre of excellence, and one of the world’s highest achieving schools, where I am also a council member. This has involved a very high level of mutual engagement and earning, including a fantastic summer school week.

But of course renewing Cressex is about people, not buildings. Especially since David Hood, present head, arrived a year or so ago, the whole place is beginning to come together in a new way. Visiting earlier this year, I saw a couple of students who didn’t know I was watching spontaneously pick up litter. It’s noticeably more interactive, respectful, engaged. Attendance is up now, generally in the high nineties. There’s a proper and effective senior management team. A particular individual student problem was running, but I could see a team response. A larger number of parents offered places at Cressex next year are actually committing to coming to the school. These are all straws in the wind, but cumulatively the way things are going is the way they’ve got to go, if our students are to ever to receive the excellent learning experience the group of year 11’s I met three years ago never had.

So, watch this space, as the new school shapes up, physically and as a community. Kudos to Highcrest and the great work Shena Moynihan has done there. As a governor in a school that is working hard to turn around, one or two sour notes do sound, however:

1. The Government giveth, and the government taketh away. Whilst acknowledging all that is good, the National Challenge programme commits a major folly by bagging up all schools below a certain academic achievement line (30%) in one bin. There are, of course, schools that should close or merge. There are bad teachers and learners. Publicity-seeking sales puffs like National Challenge actually make it harder to turn things round, by waving the cane at everyone in the class. Crass one-size-fits-all assumptions about the process of renewal don’t actually achieve as much as our Political Wonks think they do.
   
   
2. We have a great leader in David, and the trends are visibly beginning to turn around. But he’s the first to say it’s a whole school community process, and climate does affect growth, as well as the gardener. I can guarantee renewal won’t happen without an able and dedicated educator leading the process, who's plugged in and up to the job. However, serious attention needs to be given by government at all levels to the rest of the process and the context they provide. Why will things renew? What people do you need, doing what and how? As in other selective authorities, the theory used to be that naff secondary moderns didn’t matter anyway, because their pupils would make their way in life, if they ever did, pretty much regardless of anything that had happened to them at their basic grotty schools. The strategy for anyone who showed any promise, against the odds, was to jet them out into a proper (= Grammar) school. Staff could struggle against it, students could bail out in frustration, but that unacknowledged pathetic philosophy oozed out of every rotten brick of the school I visited three years ago, every hole in the wall, every broken window, every collapsing roof. Changing that involves a different philosophical context and assumptions, as well as getting a new leader and trusting they will somehow just row the Atlantic single-handed. Staff, students, parents and governors need headroom and trust, resource and commitment as well.
   

Dear Sir

Governors meeting at Cressex Community School, High Wycombe. Slap in the middle of one of our very own Bishop of Rochester style “No-Go” Areas, TM, it’s a great place, with big challenges. I didn’t really mean to be a school governor in this job, but they asked and I really enjoy being part of this school community. All of Bucks’ Building Schools for the Future money from 2005 (£31m) is all going to Cressex and we’re getting a completely new school. Er, thank you very much, Mr Broon.

When you look at the picture of our technology block on the left, you can see we needed a few bob spending on the place. With Dr Simmons, our inspirational chair of governors and our committed staff and our dead good new headmaster, Mr Hood, we believe we can renew our school along with our buildings. David Hood has really hit the ground running. His report was 100% on the button. It seemed like he’d been here for ages.

Mr Broon’s friend Mr Balls has also announced a shiny new programme to help schools like ours raise standards. He’s got us on his list. We’re now officially a National Challenge School. Oh goody. You get a biro and a clipboard and some exciting stickers to swap with your chums. You can get invited to special events by Mr Broon’s friend Mr Balls. You might even get to meet Mr Balls. I’m not sure if his real name is Balls. P’raps that’s just what we all call him.

Oh, and there’s an exciting “Death or Glory by 2011” game specially for you. If you don’t get 30% of your kids 5 GCSE’s or more by then, Mr Balls will chuck you off a cliff. Actually I made up the bit about the biro. And the bit about the cliff. But Mr Balls will come along and take over your school and run it better than you obviously could, or close you down. Carrot and Stick, you see. £400 million of carrot; a great big yummy custard pie full of cash. What could be wrong with that. Play our cards right and we could get closed down the day after we open our new school. Which leads me to say this solution looks a bit one-size-fits-all. Oh, and 2011 is election year. There’s a thing. [No it’s not. Election year is 2010. Which goes to show I should listen more in Citizenship. I was being too cynical. Sorry. Mr Broon and Mr Balls probably have no interest in winning the next election and if by any chance it happens needs to point out it was nothing to do with Schools. They just does it all for the sheer joy of doing it, like birds sing.]

But, of course we peasants rejoiced. Thank you very much Mr Broon. Thank you, thank you, Mr Balls. By the way, I hope you are well. We will try and find something to throw your money at so that you can win your eleckshun. Sadly, like Mr Broon, I am cursed with supercharged Scots genes, and thus a congential dystopic whiner. Thus I could even find something to whine about with the being an official National Challenge failing school, TM.

It’s always nice to have a yummy custard pie, but nicer still not to get it in the face. The way this was handled, with a blaze of publicity about “failing schools” and how central government is going to sort them all out, we instantly got slated for closure in the media! This does not raise morale, or help those of us who are trying to turn things round. We will work our socks off to meet this target, but the way this was delivered actually undermines our ability to deliver. There are all sorts of reasons schools do not achieve high academic results, especially in a selective authority. A centralised one size fits all solution will help, but is part of a bigger picture that is more complex than the way this was announced makes it sound. We could tell all kinds of tales about our LEA, no doubt, but we work in close partnership with Bucks who are OK really. Anything that undermines our LEA doesn’t actually help us; because they are our partners as much as central government. There are, no doubt, failing schools out there. Our trends are beginning to go the right way, and we would like to think that is no coincidence. Various people have been working their tails off to make this happen, and we don’t feel it helps us to be tarred with this brush in the media.
We notice the vast wadge of this money is slated for consultants. We’ve met millions of them down the years, and very nice people they are too. Actually we don’t feel we need more consultants to faff about with our structures and load us down with more things to do on rainy afternoons. We are developing a plan for renewing them ourselves, and we think it is pretty cool. What we need is a secure platform on which to work (and we’ve got that with the buildings money. Thanking you). We’d rather spend our management consultant money on teaching and learning support. We’d like to grow the stability of our staff so that they can stay for longer. We’d like academic mentors. We’re building partnerships with all sorts of people — Bucks new Uni and Wycombe Abbey (other school I govern) to help our students lift their sights a bit academically. Please don’t shoot us in the back just to make a political point. My friend’s mum says you understand failing schools, because your guvment is failing too. Thank you Mr Broon. Thank you Mr Balls.
PS There is a very rude song on South Park about Brown Salty Balls, but we do not listen to smut like that.

School renewal at Cressex

Cressex Community School in High Wycombe is rebuilding, and I was there yesterday for the architects' presentation. Selective education creates big winners and big losers, and for years Cressex has been down the far end of the food chain. There have also been some racial justice issues in the air. Chronic underfunding meant the buildings were basically falling apart, and have been for years.

Governors, staff and community groups (including churches and Steve Whitmore, the local vicar) have been fighting hard to do something about it, led by Dr Katy Simmonds — it's a tough but inspiring story, with highlights and, frankly, some pretty awful lowlights. But there's a happy ending. Thanks to the government's Building Schools for the Future programme, and great support by Bucks County Council once they were fully on side, a new build was announced about this time last year, now upped to £31m — a completely new school by 2010!

I visited Cressex a few months ago and spent time with students and staff. They're 100% commited to the school and each other, and even with all the limitations of the building things are really turning round. I saw some amazing maths and history work, and perceptive students who really cared about their education. Many of the metrics that drive the UK educational standards debate are academic measurables, and the clever bit will be to enhance the quality of vocational learning along with the academic and social improvements that are obviously happening. But things are well on their way, and Cressex is an inspiring story of a community pulling together.

After all the ups and downs along the way, it's only now, looking at HBG's visualisations for a flexible learning space and community campus (with a zero carbon footprint!) that it all seems real. Yesterday really was Kleenex time for various of us who've been backing this project — Kudos to Katy and her governors, partners in local and national government, and, above all to students and staff.

Someone ought to make a movie about this story!