Documents and resources do not guarantee success.
But they do help frame your thinking and help you make concrete steps towards crystallising your approach.
This week I have oodles of them for you - all courtesy of your (very generous) fellow community members (huge thanks to them for sharing 🙏)
Resources to help you:
plan, monitor and improve your pastoral support - attendance, safeguarding and more
prepare and succeed in a review meeting about behaviour and attitudes
improve the consistency of teaching
We - schools - Are In Beta - always learning (when we share resources (and thank those who shared them).
This week
🎫 Pastoral Champions Conference 2024: Resources galore.
🎥 Improving behaviour and attitudes (Part II): how to prepare for an inspection meeting.
👨🏫 Subject (and non subject) specific resources to improve teaching consistency.
🎫 Pastoral Champions Conference 2024: Resources galore.
It’s two weeks to go until all the talks inside Pastoral Champions Conference 2024 go live.
If learning how others achieve their success isn’t enough for you, when you attend you also get to download the all the resources our brilliant speakers use to do the stuff they’ll be talking about in their schools.
So far they’ve offered to share things like:
📚 Recommended reading lists
🎯 Action plans
📊 Data and pastoral outcomes trackers
🤝 Staff guidance
✉️ Parent comms…
…covering topics such as attendance, safeguarding, mental health, trauma and more.
But only if you…
🗳️ Nominate / submit a session for the conference.
We’ve had a few requests for some flexibility around conference session submission timelines.
In case you, or a friend you think is ace, need some too, here are the dates again:
(Ideally) by 1st March - tell us you'd like to speak in this short form
By 12th March – create and upload your session, supported by your SLT
w/c 18th March – conference goes live! Jump in to meet fellow speakers, discuss sessions and learn from a wealth of ideas and resources on offer.
Below we’ve gathered everything you need to…
🎥 Improving behaviour and attitudes (Part II): how to prepare for an inspection meeting.
Talking to anyone you’re accountable to about your area is often stressful.
So how do you prepare for, and succeed in, a conversation about behaviour and attitudes - whether it be with your line manager or the inspectorate?
Join us to watch this role play where you'll hear:
the exact questions asked
how they were answered
why they were answered that way
📅 Wed 6th March
🕕 6pm
“What about the resources?” I hear you cry.
If you join us live you’ll see a:
a meeting planning template with key questions and
a collection of Ofsted’s enquiry questions gathered from across a range of schools.
👨🏫 Improve teaching consistency: subject (and non subject) specific resources.
The Subject Curriculum Goals Survey revealed improving the consistency of curriculum delivery was a top priority in subject areas in 2023/24.
So to make finding and sharing the resources your fellow members use as easy as possible, we've indexed every subject (and non subject) specific resource designed to help improve teaching consistency.
Again, huge thanks to everyone who shared them 🙏
On a personal note…
In a break from tradition, this note has nothing to do with the content above.
Over the past 5 years of starting and growing We Are In Beta, I have had some tough times. Some of which I’ve written about before.
But Friday might have been the most difficult day since it all began.
For some unknown reason the community went down. You couldn’t access it.
It took 7 hours to get it back online.
I logged in to domain providers, contacted website hosts and trawled technical forums.
Only to be met with faceless online forms, AI chat bots and how to’s that didn’t help.
All I wanted was a human to help work through the problem with.
But it was the last thing the big tech companies who provide our technology wanted to give.
It made me reflect on (and be grateful for) three things:
The humanity all schools provide to their students and families.
The connectivity the We Are In Beta community offers our members.
The patience and understanding of everyone who got in touch to ask when it might be back online.
If you’re looking to learn from (arguably) THE most caring and humane people in our sector, register for our Pastoral Champions Conference 2024.
If you’re looking for connectivity, post a question and we’ll make introductions for you.
If you were left frustrated by not being able to access the community on Friday, I apologise or any inconvenience. Thank you for understanding.
Thanks for reading.
@Niall Alcock and the We Are In Beta team
Sent this by a friend?
📱 Get 17,856 school leaders and teachers in your pocket - download We Are In Beta.
🚀 Looking for a new role? Get updates about specific jobs you’re looking for before anyone else.
🆕 New here? Catch up with previous editions, podcasts and webinars via the archive.