Outstanding schools: Grinling Gibbons

At Grinling Gibbons Primary, staff and students alike are expected to excel – and as the school’s KS2 results illustrate, both are rising to the challenge. Jacob Stow explains...

Our main thrust is working with children who are average, because then you pull everybody up. If we target the work at children with low attainment, then everybody will drop back

How big a role do high expectations play in successful outcomes? In the case of my annually renewed hopes for a North London football club most often found playing in white, the impact is perennially limited. But when it comes to the performance of children and teaching staff at Grinling Gibbons Primary School, those of executive headteacher, Cynthia Eubank, head of school, Carol Wilson, and their senior leadership team appear crucial.

Grinling Gibbons is situated in Deptford in the Borough of Lewisham. It is an area in which levels of disadvantage are above average, and those given to low expectations might therefore expect below average academic achievement. The reality according to Grinling’s 2012 Key Stage 2 results is very different: not only did 97 per cent of the school’s children achieve a Level 4 or above in English and maths, the same 97 per cent achieved a Level 5 or above in maths, while 83 per cent managed the same feat in English. These are eye-catching statistics, even in a borough whose 11-year-olds are exceeding the national averages, and which proudly points to the fact that it is currently sitting fifth in the country for achievement at Level 4 or above.

Asked to explain the practice behind the performance, Cynthia and Carol point to the theme of high expectations time and again; “We would love for every child to go to university,” the latter says, but what could be taken as merely woolly sentiment is clearly far from it. Grinling Gibbons’ aspirations for its children are at the heart of its pedagogy, and there are strategies in place to help make them a reality. They include a holistic focus on children’s wellbeing, a continual drive to improve teaching standards – already judged ‘outstanding’ following the school’s most recent inspection in 2010 – and a willingness to do things a little differently, whether it’s something as simple as bringing the start of the day forward to 8.30, or as complex as reworking the manner in which the curriculum is delivered…

1. Great expectations  

“Belief is very important to us,” Cynthia says. “We believe that the children can. We believe that they have the potential. What really riles me is the teacher who says a child is only capable of so much. How do they know that? If children have enough confidence, someone who believes in them, and the correct environment, who knows what they can achieve.”

Believing in children’s potential is clearly a matter of principle for Cynthia and Carol (Dominic Cummings’ thoughts on genetics are unlikely to be pinned to the staffroom noticeboard); but it’s not solely a matter of principle – it underpins the high expectations there are of children, and the high expectations are in turn a pragmatic attempt to ensure as many children as possible have real options open to them when they enter the world of work. “They have to get their A levels,” Carol says as the conversation moves to the importance of higher education, “and in order to get their A levels they need to get their GCSEs. We know that if children do not leave our school with Level 5 then they are not going to get grades A–C in GCSE, and all of our children know that as well.”

Whilst mindset is important, Cynthia admits it’s not as simple as deciding to shift aim from 4c to 4b and beyond, and waiting for the marks to roll in. “You have to look at what needs to be put in place to allow children to reach the goals we set them,” she says. “We reached a point where we were achieving around 79–80 per cent average Level 4s consistently – for me, it was then about what do we need to do as a school to go a step further.” One response was to develop a sharp focus on data tracking, a move Cynthia identifies as a key factor in breaking through the results ‘glass ceiling’: “We started tracking groups before groups became the buzzword; we were looking at points progressed, and we wanted more points progressed than was expected,” she explains. “Whatever the average was, we always set our bar higher.”

2. Teaching standards    
Because so much is expected of children at Grinling Gibbons, the same is true of staff. High standards are non-negotiable, which is unsurprising given Cynthia has spent time working with the local authority’s school improvement team, and now works part-time at federation partner Lucas Vale Primary, sharing the school’s recipe for success. It’s obvious that this isn’t a place where anybody is left to rest on their laurels.

“We have a clear expectation that the quality of our teaching is ‘good’ or better, and we have ways of tracking that to ensure standards are maintained,” Cynthia says. “If, despite our support, a member of staff can’t make it to ‘good’ or better, then obviously we’re too challenging a place for that person. We’re not going to have teachers on the staff who constantly, year after year, require improvement. It’s not easy,” she admits; “we’ve had people who’ve said, ‘You have to work too hard here’.”

Hard work it may be, but the school’s staff are not left to fend for themselves. Ongoing support is provided to help teachers improve their practice. “We have a system where we ask teachers to reflect on what they’ve done for the week on a weekly basis,” Cynthia offers, by way of example. “They have to think about what has and hasn’t worked, and be able to identify why in each case. That then needs to feed back into their planning. It’s never a case of, ‘Well, I am all right, Jack. It’s all the kids’!”

“We monitor this reflection on teaching and learning every Friday,” Carol says, “and by Tuesday every teacher is given feedback. We use the coaching method of asking pertinent questions that get them to reflect on that document again. The outcome of this is then put into practice the following week – and then we reflect on that as well. It’s like a watered down version of the journals they would keep as a trainee teacher. It’s been really effective.”

A responsibility for raising standards is embedded throughout the school. Phase 1 Leader Charmaine Williams acknowledges the support she has received to reach the expected standard, and explains how staff support each other at every level: “There’s a lot of peer work,” she says. “Often we’ll be asked to buddy up with another teacher and observe each other, to give each other pointers and take things away. We look at our strengths and weaknesses as a whole school and if, for instance, a teacher needs help with D&T, we can match them up with another teacher who is good at this subject. As phase leader I’ll do observations – informal drop-in sessions within other year groups, to look at their learning environments and make sure it’s up to the school’s expectations. And I have meetings every two weeks with the teachers in my phase, during which we’ll do training together, too.”

3.  Applied knowledge
The way in which the curriculum at Grinling Gibbons is delivered departs from the norm somewhat. The school’s six-week cycles of learning conclude with two weeks of what is labelled ‘Application Focus’. “Children learn when they’re able to practise whatever it is they’ve been taught, and that’s what our Application Focus week is about – practising skills,” Cynthia explains. “We’re trying to move away from the traditional approach, in which the teacher does all the work; we want the children to work and the teacher to use higher level questioning to move their thinking on.”

These cross-curricular sessions focus on the development of workplace skills, for example, collaboration and leadership, rather than the acquisition of knowledge. Working around a set theme, children are given freedom to choose the path their endeavours take, and operate in self-organised groups to produce an end product – for example, a project book, many of which adorn the school’s walls, or an assembly for the class.

Again, Cynthia and her team have an eye on the bigger picture – children’s lives after they leave the school and, ultimately, education. “It’s designed to encourage enterprise, but there’s more to it than that,” Cynthia says. “It’s about you taking control of your life. The times are a-changing; when I grew up there where X number of manufacturing companies at which you could get a job once you left school, but as the years have gone by that’s changed. We want to help children to realise they can create something for themselves.”

That the development of the Application Focus has contributed to Grinling Gibbons’ impressive results is not in doubt, according to deputy head, Lisa Willis. “It’s grown out of all proportion and it has impacted directly on the levels and the learning that we’re getting.” she tells us. “If you look back to when it started, the improvement is really noticeable. It’s given children an outlet to practise skills such as speaking and listening – things that are going to be so important once they get to secondary school – and ownership of their learning.”

4. A holistic view
Providing children with the necessary academic skills, and the quality of teaching, to succeed is vital; but it is not enough at Grinling Gibbons. “A school needs to take a holistic view,” Cynthia says. “For me it’s about how the children come to be. For example, I walked into Year 1b, children of just six, and a little boy was talking about his assembly. He was going to be presenting in front of the whole class, and he told me that he was confident. Whatever it was what he was going to do, he was confident – he was not shy and he was not scared. Yes, children need to learn to read and write and do maths, but for me, to judge whether or not a school is good, you’ve got to look at how its children are when they come in, how they are during the day, and how they engage with adults. Are they comfortable? Can they walk into the head’s office and start talking and it’s not a big issue? I would never have had the confidence to have done that as a child, but here it’s different.”

“I’ve worked in four Lewisham schools and there is a very special relationship between the children and every member of staff that we have here,” Carol agrees. “We know every child, their family, what makes them tick. Our children know they are listened to – regardless of what they’re saying, they are listened to. We build a real sense of trust with them, so they will tell our staff anything and everything; they lay their hearts bare. They have a real connection.”

“And that’s the position we want to get them to,” Cynthia concludes. “As a parent, you know how you treat your child, and how you speak to them and what you want for them. If you’re looking for a school then that’s what you’re looking for as well. You want them to treat your child as you would, and you want them to have the same goals for your child as you do.”