Outstanding schools: Bowes Primary

When i came here, it was the least popular school in the area...

From humble foundations, staff at Bowes Primary have built a learning environment in which children of every background and ability are finding the opportunities they need to achieve, says Jacob Stow…

It’s a job to get a child into Bowes Primary School these days. That’s not a reference to the line of stationary traffic on the North Circular, present on the morning of Teach Primary’s visit and most likely still chugging its way onwards as I write, a fortnight later – though that can’t help. Rather, it’s a recognition of how much has changed at a school which its executive headteacher, Sarah Turner, admits was poor and leaking children upon her arrival 14 years ago.

Today, schools in Enfield are over-subscribed and Bowes is thriving – to the extent that it has opened a temporary, 120- place annexe to accommodate the borough’s growing demand for places – and its expertise is in demand. As part of the Bowes Learning Alliance, it works in partnership with the nearby Chesterfield School and in April this year it was awarded Teaching School Status. It’s quite a turnaround.

The school is spread across three floors of an impressive building, and the positive atmosphere within is palpable. As we’re shown around, Sarah reveals that one of her aims in recent times has been to create a new, modern learning environment and the evidence of her success is clear to see: beyond carefully decorated doors (more on which later) can be glimpsed bright, modern classrooms, populated by wedged-shaped tables – easy to rearrange, to encourage discussion, Sarah explains – and a host of technology, from iPads to a dedicated and rather futuristic-looking booth for the DJs of the school radio station.

As we take a peek into one, a self-appointed spokes-pupil rushes up to welcome us to the school – the sort of confidence, it emerges, that’s typical at a school in which staff are going the extra mile to ensure everybody feels like they belong.

1 All inclusive

Given the area Bowes serves, it comes as no surprise to learn that inclusivity is a key concern. “Inclusion is central to everything I believe in,” Sarah confirms, “and I would say we go much further than many schools do to keep children here happy and making good progress. You have to be very aware of who you are serving and the type of children you have, but you also have to remember that every child is different.

“We’re very diverse here and that’s a challenge for us,” she continues. “We have some of the most advantaged children, but we also have families who find parenting a little bit difficult, and individuals with complex needs – it’s why we have our children’s centre, our resource space for children with autism, and a deputy head who is totally devoted to working with those who need extra support. Our job is to help all of them be successful.”

Asked about how being inclusive works in practice, head of school, Androulla Nicou is clear: “We ask what needs does a child have, and what do we need to change to meet these needs. It’s not about how is that child going to change to fit into Bowes, and it’s not about making things equal for everyone. For example, we might set up a new room for a particular child, a break out space, or find an additional adult to help them. That child may be given a lot of additional resources, but that’s fine if it means they’ll have the same outcomes as other children.”

“I think some schools perhaps struggle with this a bit,” Sarah concludes. “They want everyone to be treated equally, but that’s not what equality is. Equality is making opportunities for children the same, but that means some children need more than others.”

2 Choose your own adventure

At Bowes, much of the knowledge and skills that children acquire are delivered via child-led topics known as Learning Journeys – developed in 2006 as a flexible and creative antidote to the QCA schemes of work and described by Sarah as “one of our most successful projects”. If the name sounds familiar, you’re likely to have come across it in relation to early years – and the choice is not a coincidence, as deputy head Kelly Hitchcock explains: “With the Learning Journey we’ve adapted the six areas of learning from the EYFS for use all the way through to Year 6. Sarah loved what children in the early years were doing – how they’re very independent and have lots of choice – and wanted our curriculum to be linked up and pupil-led.

“We came up with the idea that the children would have a discussion with their class teacher to choose their themes,” she continues. “And to complicate things even more, we decided to allow teachers and children to decide how long they would like each Learning Journey to be. We tell teachers not to drag things out – just because you set a six week target doesn’t mean you can’t finish after four if you’ve covered everything you need to. What we don’t want is for a Learning Journey to become dull or tired.”

3 Training teachers

It is early days for Bowes as a Teaching School, having only been awarded the status in April, but Sarah has long taken responsibility for the training of her school’s own staff. “That’s probably at the top of my list of reasons why we’re outstanding,” she admits. “Succession planning is very important to us. It’s something we’ve always done, and our track record in training leaders and teachers has led to a partnership with Anglia Ruskin University. We have 10 trainee teachers across the Alliance at the moment, and the majority of our NQTs are graduates we have trained ourselves. People like Kelly, who is now our deputy head. Obviously, as a Teaching School we won’t just be training people for ourselves. We can place teachers in other schools in our Alliance, such as Chesterfield – which isn’t yet ‘outstanding’ – and support their training too.

“We appoint our staff together, so staff are recruited to the Alliance. We do joint interviews at one of our schools with all of us involved and the staff are able to nominate a school they want to work at, though we reserve the right to move people as and where we see a need.”

4 Best behaviour

Alongside Bowes’ leadership team and complement of class teachers are a number of support staff, including learning mentor, Debbie Harris. She has obviously made a good impression. “If teachers can’t sort out an argument, you can come to Debbie,” student ambassador Abshar enthuses. “She’s fantastic at understands you.”

“For the children she is someone they can go to with friendship problems,” Kelly explains, “but she also worked with the school council on our Bebowes behaviour for learning code. When I started we had the Bowes Code – 10 points that we’d all agreed to adhere to. But actually 10 points is quite a lot for younger children, so we wanted to come up with something that was more visual. The idea is that you’re responsible for your behaviour and this feeds into your learning. There are six characters, each with a short key statement about what we will all do.

“Bowes has always been a school where children have to take responsibility for their own actions,” she adds. “Good behaviour here is built on relationships between children and adults – that’s why we use first names and you won’t see children walking round with stickers, or teachers awarding house points.”

5 Reflective practice

In Androulla’s view, Bowes’ partnership with Chesterfield is benefiting both parties: as the latter receives the benefit of the former’s ‘outstanding’ practice, Bowes is given the opportunity to evaluate its methods – in her own words, “When you’re disseminating your practice, it makes you a reflective practitioners who are reflective.”

It is a point echoed by Sarah. “Reflective practice has become part of the culture of the school,” she says. “We move very fast. We don’t plan projects for two years’ time – if something needs to be changed, we do it now. New ideas are welcomed, but if we don’t see the evidence of the impact on children’s learning, we’ll try something else.”

“Whenever we make a suggestion,” Androulla agrees, “Sarah will say, ‘So what? How has that made things better for children?’ So every time we’re doing something we’re thinking about the impact. We’ve spent this amount of resources on it, how much of a difference has it made?”

“And every member of the leadership team – and there are a lot of us – is held to account,” adds Sarah. “Every term they have to write a report that says, ‘These are the resources I had, this is what I did and this was the outcome’, and it goes to the governing body.”

6 Entrepreneurial spirit

When the excitement of choosing their own Learning Journey isn’t enough to get students buzzing with inspiration, Bowes breaks out a wow event. “One that we’re hoping to do again this year is our Enterprise Project,” says Kelly. “In KS2, for a week, the children work in small groups to run a business. They write a bid for money to Sarah to finance it, and the week concludes with a trade fair.

“It’s quite competitive, even among the adults!” she continues. “Last time, one company was a photo booth, so you’d come and pay to have your photo taken and they would present it in a frame, which you would buy. Some stands had refreshments, so we had chocolate fountains going on and that sort of thing. One company took care of marketing, so if you wanted posters, you had to go to them first and negotiate costings.

“And the fair wasn’t just a case of going out there. There was a company managing the tables, so you had to decide whether you wanted one or two tables for your stall. If you needed the site manager to help you, there was a cost. Groups got between £50 and £100 and they all made money in the end – the group that made the most got to use their profits for a nice trip.”