Outstanding schools: Belleville Primary

In turbulent times for the nation’s educators, Belleville Primary School has plotted a steady course that has led to an ‘outstanding’ inspection and beyond, says Jacob Stow...

Sometimes change is necessary. It is normally obvious when it is: you can feel your big toe sticking out of the end of your sock; your energy provider informs you it has raised its tariff again; Ofsted send you a strongly worded letter threatening special measures. What can be less obvious is how to effect it successfully.

The temptation is often to make wholesale alterations, to usher in an exciting new age with much fanfare… and expect instant results. But whilst that might work with socks and energy bills, it tends not to with organisations – at least if you believe Jim Collins of Good to Great fame. In the business world, those who rely on ‘miracle moments’ of metamorphosis to change their fortunes under perform relative to those who settle on a course of action and commit to making it work over the long term, he says.

John Grove, headteacher at Belleville Primary in Wandsworth, London, views the management of failing schools in much the same way. He has a copy of Good to Great squeezed into the well-stocked bookcase of his office, encourages staff to take its messages on board, and believes that for schools and policy makers, making changes motivated by short-termism is an easy trap to fall into. His ‘outstanding’ and oversubscribed Teaching School is far from set in its ways, but at the heart of its approach is a belief that once a clear target, and a clear method of reaching it, has been identified, the trick is to stick with it, tinker only when tinkering will return measurable benefits, and make sure that everybody knows that is the plan.

You only have to look through the last decade’s worth of Ofsted inspections to see that it is working: from a starting point of low attainment and standards, via the departure of 75 per cent of class-based staff (the initial revolution that proves the rule) Belleville has been judged ‘good’ and improving, then ‘outstanding’ then had its latest inspection deferred. Its induction into the ranks of the nation’s Teaching Schools is the latest recognition of its quality, though its efforts to support other schools date back several years. John and his team are confident in their vision of primary education, and the 700 plus students in their care are reaping the benefits.

1 Seeking consistency

The education sector is no stranger to change – indeed, upheaval has almost become the norm, and that, according to John, is to its detriment. He cites the Singaporean system as an example of good practice, having visited the country as part of the Fellowship Programme for National Leaders, and subsequently encouraged a number of his deputies to do the same. He speaks enthusiastically about the unified and structured approach employed there, which sees best practice from around the world identified, distilled and rolled out for use by one and all.

“I think there are too many changes in direction,” he says of the English model. “The education system is in a continual state of flux, and that’s not a good thing for schools or children. What is good education doesn’t change every time there’s a new secretary of state. It’s consistent year on year. I think we spend too much time as schools following the latest guidance.”

These views underpin the Belleville approach, which extols the value of continuity and consistency. “If you look at Jim Collins’ research,” John says, “it says the most successful companies know what they’re trying to do. What’s important is that you know what you’re trying to achieve, and you keep focusing on that. In a school you’re going to have new staff who you have to bring on, and new pupils too, so we aren’t the same as we were last year, or 10 years ago; but the general direction of the school remains constant.

“We’ve been looking at some of the work Peter Matthews did as HMI, looking at Ofsted reports,” he continues. “He talks about consistency, how it’s the reoccurring trait of ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools. The logic behind Belleville is that we’re consistent; we’re not too tightly structured – not as structured as we might be if we followed the National Strategies rigidly, for example – but we’re probably more structured than most schools. We’re trying to get consistency in our classrooms, especially as we expand and new pupils and staff come in, because the research says this is really important.

“We’ve created a pedagogical recipe,” he concludes. “It’s not hugely different to what is happening in Singapore on a systems level, but it’s on a minuscule scale – a single school. If you want to be purposeful and improve a school, then systems and structures and clarity of purpose are very important.”

2 Expanding horizons

The visits to Singapore and the bulging bookcase are both indicative of a schoolwide focus on the value of research at Belleville. “From September, we’re providing teachers with additional time outside of lessons – and PPA – with the intention that they use this to research,” John explains. “That could be reading a book, doing a study, watching a peer teach or even watching TED. At our last Inset meeting, we asked all of our staff to let us know which book they thought was the most important for teaching and learning – we ended up with very different styles of books, but we bought them all and are encouraging everyone to read them.

“I don’t think it’s as well developed as it should be yet,” he continues, “so we’re pushing it hard now. People don’t see themselves as researchers, so we’ve employed a retired professor for a day a week; if you’re a member of staff here you can meet with him. To him research is really easy, whereas we’re all a bit frightened of it, but if he makes it easy we can encourage that environment.

Eventually we want everyone to share their findings online.” The quest for knowledge also extends to residential trips for staff at Belleville and local schools, which provide opportunities to visit ‘outstanding’ primaries across the country.

3 Teaching by subject

Belleville favours a timetabled, subject-based approached to children’s learning. “The creative curriculum has been talked about a lot recently,” John says, “and when I first started here there was a topic-based curriculum – but when we reviewed that approach, we realised that we were trying to create something that didn’t come naturally to us. On reflection, we decided that we wanted to have outstanding history and geography and science teaching, and that to do that within an integrated curriculum is really difficult.”

Both John and assistant head Ella Macpherson are adamant that the subject-based approach does not stifle creativity – cross-curricular links are made by teachers and subject-based topics are introduced to children through SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environments) sessions. Introduced after a visit by Professor Sugata Mitra, these allow children to lead their own research into what they are about to study. “The danger is that you do a history topic, the teacher reads a book, they type it out, and then the children are asked to read what they’ve typed out and answer some questions,” John says. “But using SOLE every three weeks or so stops teachers from trying to take too much control over the learning and restricting the lesson.”

4 Specialist knowledge

Dovetailing neatly with Belleville’s subject-based curriculum is its decision to call upon the expertise of subject specialists. “We have specialist teachers for PE, French, Art and Music,” John explains. “The logic behind that is that if you’re a very good primary school teacher you can teach English, you can teach maths and you can teach history; but it may be you find it more difficult with PE, music, French and art.

“You can argue that if you take your art teaching out of the classroom it has a negative impact on teacher-pupil relationships,” he continues, “but when the government brought in PPA, a system was created where teachers don’t have children all day every day. Some of our younger staff think there was a golden time in primary education where your teacher taught you everything and it was all great, but I’m not sure that time ever existed!”

As well as those taking responsibility for the delivery of a given subject, specialists are also employed to advise on core subjects – John notes that the school’s biggest investment into curriculum development last year was a history consultant, who reviewed the way the subject was being taught across all year groups. A review in geography teaching is planned for the near future.

5 Quality first

As you might expect at a primary school with in excess of 700 students, there is a sizeable leadership team at Belleville, one of whose main responsibilities is to improve teaching standards. “We call it Quality First education,” John says. “The research says that the quality of a school can’t exceed the quality of teaching, so that’s our main focus. If you want to improve a teacher, somebody has to spend time with them, model teaching with them, coach them, show them how it is done. The key person for me is the person who comes in and does this.

“I have two-point-six deputy heads – one does three days a week,” he explains, “two assistant heads and people whose job it is to improve classroom pedagogy, all of whom are non class-based. Four of the assistant and deputy heads are responsible for a phase, and for the quality of provision within that phase – teaching, pupil standards and pupil progress. We have one who is responsible for standards across the school.”

All very well for a school of this size, some might say, but is it a viable model for those with fewer resources? “When I was head of a one form entry school, we had deputies who were responsible for literacy and numeracy,” John says. “You can do it, but it depends on what your focus is – you can have anything, but you can’t have everything. If your priority is to have someone non class-based, it will have implications for your class size or your number of support staff.”

6 Sharing practice

Whilst Belleville’s non class-based leadership team are able to support the development of the school’s own staff, Teaching School status is providing John with a new way in which to share his team’s expertise with a wider audience. It is not without its challenges, though. “As a school you can look inwards or outwards,” John says, “and at the moment we’re looking outwards. A few years ago it was City Challenge, currently it’s called Teaching Schools.

“One of the problems we face is that as a job-share teaching school, we only receive half the funding – so at the moment we’re subsidising the system. The governors of this school want us to have a positive impact on other schools in the area, so the fact the economics don’t quite add up isn’t a problem. But our target is to break even, we have to make sure it’s sustainable.”

To this end, whilst a number of free initiatives such as Professional Learning Communities (see panel above for more on these) continue, Improving and Outstanding Teaching Programmes, led termly by six trained members of staff are offered at a cost. Feedback to date has been positive: “Teachers come here in groups of 12–15 and do one day a week with us for six and eight weeks respectively,” John explains. “The courses are a mixture of facilitated sessions, lesson observations, and doing things like coming up with creative lesson starters that have to be performed to the group and critiqued. Attendees go to each other’s schools to watch lessons in practice too.

“What makes it successful is that it’s school-based and delivered by our deputies, who are experienced practitioners. We give people practical tasks to work on between sessions as well, so there’s no danger of teachers forgetting it all; it’s quite intense.”