Kingsbridge SCITT

It is with great pleasure I am now able to share his responses with you - I hope these answers are valuable in supporting your professional development and school improvement plans.

Questions for Sir David Carter

• How do you think the sector will manage the capacity requirements of implementing the ECF and NPQ when challenged by teacher retention?

Schools will need to work together in communities to address this-too many replicated models in close geographical areas means that some programmes will not be viable. Teacher retention will not get better without high quality CPD so I would prioritise this over any other activities where capacity is an issue

• With each school developing their own bespoke curriculum intent/offer, how can we ensure that pupils with high mobility access a full broad and balanced curriculum?

This is where the intent is so important. The content and the delivery might change but an emphasis on the fundamental expectations of strong curriculum design means a greater level of consistency. We also have to get away from schools all doing their own thing and work far more collaboratively to agree the pillars of learning before we think about the content in classroom delivery

• What capacity do you think primary schools have for teaching children with an increasingly high level of SEND with the demands of curriculum and outcomes?

Very little! This is why being in a trust gives these schools such an advantage as the expertise can be pooled, the best practitioners given a trust wide leadership role etc Building partnerships with strong special schools as advisors and guides is another way to tap into excellence that mainstream schools might not have

• If you felt there were many competing priorities, but you don’t have the capacity to focus on each, how would you identify your main priority?

These would be my 4 guiding questions:

• Which priority will have biggest impact on standards?
• Which priority requires the least capacity to do well?
• Which priority reduces work load?
• What other priorities are we going to stop doing?

• How would you manage the possible conflict between creating a supporting collaborative culture with monitoring that doesn’t compromise on expectations and standards?

Make the monitoring the collaborative exercise. Shift from collaboration that talks about what you just did (ie best practice) and start working together to assess if what you did is working

• How would you ensure that all staff in the school team have a shared vision and a commitment to the legacy to secure the best for all pupils?

The vision has to come from the leaders and trustees/governors. You don’t really want staff having their own vision! You want to make sure that each staff member understands their unique role in developing and implementing the vision and I would link the contribution into their performance objectives to cement this

• How would you ensure that there is effective communication within a school between staff and beyond school with parents/carers and the community?

Random phone calls to see how parents feel about the school. Ask every teacher to phone one parent a week and then create a digital database where they can summarise how the call went

Video messages work better for busy families than the newsletter at the bottom of the school bag!

Regular forum sessions for parents to attend and ask questions

Surveys of families that ask no more than 5 questions and only invite 20 families to comment at a time-repeat every month-much more effective than the big survey once a year

• What do you feel are the biggest barriers to effective collaboration between schools and trusts? How would you strive to overcome these?
  • Professional insecurity
  • Lack of humility-nothing to learn!
  • Time
  • Lack of purpose
• What do you feel are the biggest barriers to successful implementation of school improvement priorities/actions and how would you strive to overcome these?
  • Too complicated
  • Staff interpret what it means rather than addressing the core challenges
  • The plan is written for the staff team you wished you had rather than the one you have got!
  • It is written for OFSTED not for genuine improvement
  • Time scale are too long term - break the objectives into 100-day units and make incremental improvement over this time period
• How would you identify talent and develop talent within a school with high staff mobility?
  • Ask people what they believe they are good at and then test it
  • Build a coaching culture where everyone gets the chance to reflect on their performance and learn from it
  • Be clear about the talent you need and who might be able to fill that gap - if nobody can then look at this when you are recruiting
• What challenges do you anticipate schools will face in the upcoming years in line with the Opportunity for All White Paper?
  • White paper will never happen
  • Funding/capacity/retention/on going battle about academization of not.

• If you feel your school is a ‘capacity taker’, how can you develop your ability to offer capacity to others?

By improving standards so that you have the capacity to help others as well as yourself.

Get external validation of what you believe to be good actually is.

• Can schools joining a trust maintain levels of autonomy and still benefit from economics of scale and collaboration?
  • Yes! The question is more about what aspects does a school want to retain and why rather than a view about autonomy for its own sake. Have to recognise that challenging ones orthodoxy is a good thing and it might be that others have better practice that you should adopt.
• In working with struggling schools, what would be your initial actions to lead to rapid, sustained improvements in leadership and standards?

Focus on three areas

• Behaviour and Attendance
• Quality of leadership-what function does middle leadership have and are they capable of leading improvement quickly
• High visibility of leaders during lesson time - support for teachers to become better teachers

• Do you feel that moving to large MATs is the sole way to ensure financial stability and security for schools in the current climate?

Not really - large trusts often have higher overheads but if the trusts are well managed financially then there are clearly benefits. Small trusts can be sustainable if they adjust their operating model to reflect their scale.

• What advice would you give small academy trusts in growing their trust and increasing capacity?

Being really clear about doing a few things really well - focus on the core business so that there is authenticity in the offer being made. Grow slowly - adding a school or 2 every year. A trust that moves from 5 schools to 10 is a different trust and will face a cultural challenge

• What do you feel is your biggest success in your career?

Growing up in S Wales in a very ordinary comp and getting to be NSC was pretty special! Getting my golf handicap down to 17 was good!

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