10 leadership questions.
An observation of a pastoral nature; and what we're doing to help you get answers to your questions.
At We Are In Beta we believe most of the solutions to education’s challenges are in schools already.
Whether that be in their policies, their practices or inside their staff members’ heads.
Our job is to help you find them. That’s why we spend lots of our time helping you get answers to your questions.
This week, I’ve rounded up 10 questions for you to learn from.
Interesting to note there’s been an increase in the number of questions about pastoral stuff of late. A sign of the times in schools?
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we ask and answer questions).
This week
⭐️ Nominate colleagues to recognise their curriculum work.
💬 Learn from 10 threads inside the community.
⭐️ Nominate colleagues to recognise their curriculum work.
Thank you to everyone who’s nominated colleagues and submitted sessions for Curriculum Thinking Week Summer 2023 so far - the collective knowledge we’ve built across 285 sessions, 1000+ resources and 20 odd subjects inside CTW 2021, 2022 and 2023 is truly amazing. It would not be possible without you.
Here are three questions to help make it the biggest bank of curriculum knowledge around:
Who in your team is doing incredible work in your curriculum area?
What is it about their work that’s making such a difference?
Do others need to learn about it?
🤔📍10 questions school leaders are asking.
Looking for more subject specific help?
If you’re a subject leader, join our private groups for subject leaders.
If you want to meet and learn from people who teach your subject, we’ve gathered 30 subject specific questions from across the community here.
1. 📊Maths specific SEND policy.
“Good morning all; I am looking for some ideas. The head of Maths at my school is looking to develop a Maths specific SEND policy for guidance and ideas on how best to support SEND students in his subject. Has anybody seen one or has one who would be happy to share?”
2. ✅ Sixth From attendance.
“Hi all, I am the Head of the Sixth Form in an 11-18 school. We are a relatively small Sixth Form with about 200 students over the two years. Looking for ideas to improve Sixth Form attendance but especially punctuality.”
3. 📖 Modelling in English.
“Does anyone have any good reading material on modelling strategies for English? Looking to make it more engaging for students.”
4. 🏆Awards and rewards.
“Evening all, I am looking at connecting with any HoY and staff involved in awards and rewards. Would be great to hear what systems you have in place that are low stakes and high impact.”
5. 📈 Data visualisation - progress data for our secondary school.
“I have been asked by governors to look into data visualisation for some of the tables I routinely present to illustrate current progress data for our secondary school. (Average progress v target for subjects, estimated P8 for sub groups, impact of attendance on predictions etc)
“I have not been able to find anything that summarises the data better than my spreadsheets - but would welcome any examples that more data savy leaders might be able to provide.
“Any examples shared would be treated in strictest confidence and deleted once I had plagiarised the data presentation.
Thanks in advance for any guidance.”
6. ✅ Attendance.
“Good morning all, I look after the whole school attendance in my secondary school and I am looking for cheap/free ways to reward my 100% attenders each term. We already issue achievement points, certificates and postcards but would like to hear if there is something different that other schools use please.”
7. 🎖Rewards policy.
“We are looking at reviewing our rewards policy. Please can you share with me any useful resources etc.”
8. ⚖️ Centralised detentions.
“Hi, does anyone have a model for centralised detentions they could share. Or point me in the right direction please.”
9. 🛡Audit of our pastoral and wellbeing provision.
'“We are looking to do an audit of our pastoral and wellbeing provision. Is there anyone that has had this done in their school or has had experience of looking into what makes outstanding provision in this area? We want to benchmark our own provision to ensure we are offering our students top quality support pastorally. Perhaps someone has done some research into this in terms of visiting schools etc and would be willing to share their findings? Would really welcome anyone's thoughts/recommendations/people to speak to etc. Thank you.”
10. ⛑What safety means.
“Does anyone have any resources for learners on what safety means in regards to school that have been successful. We are trying to focus on what it means to be 'safe' and what feeling safe in school really means to our learners. Any guidance in this area would be much appreciated!”
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Got a question?
In case you missed it the last time I rounded up member questions, the We Are In Beta team invest 30+ hours a week helping you to get answers: keeping an eye on what’s happening, researching, replying, making introductions, signposting resources and updating our databases.
NB: due to the volume of questions asked, we now prioritise members of the Curriculum Thinkers Community and members of the Pastoral Champions Community.
Not a member?
On a personal note.
As someone who leads a team of people - some with challenges and some with solutions - you’ll appreciate what I am about so say.
One of the hardest things about running a community of school leaders and teachers is balancing what I call the member equation.
What do I mean by the member equation?
On one side, we have members with a question. On the other, we have members with answers.
Tracking where members are on the equations we’re balancing (and there are hundreds at any one time) takes a huge amount of time and effort.
I’ve had several conversations with school leaders lately, both at school and MAT level, who say they spend a lot their time doing the same thing.
Here are five questions I’ve jotted down in those conversations to help us serve you better inside We Are In Beta.
Five questions I hope can help you serve your teams even better too:
How can we identify those with a need (in a way that feels safe and non judgemental)?
How can we identify those with skills and experiences who can help (without asking too much of their time)?
How do we map those skills and experiences and make them as accessible to people so they help each other when they need it?
How do we celebrate and recognise those who have helped?
How do we make sure those with a need have benefitted from the help offered?
Today’s curation of 10 questions is just one part of how we’re trying to serve you better.
I’d love to hear how you map and match needs, skills and experiences to improve outcomes in your settings.
Is it an online form? A Google sheet? A shared drive? Speed dating?
As always, it’s great to hear from you - feel free to reply to this email.
Thanks for reading.
@NiallAlcock and the We Are In Beta team
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