isolation to achieve
common goals;
let’s get together
and work smarter.
Governordistinctive character and identity (such as their school uniform), while also benefiting from access to a broader range of resources (physical, human, intellectual and social) which will enrich the life of pupils and the wider community. In our view, this combination of benefits makes the case for small-school federation overwhelming, enabling small schools to overcome problems of limited resources and isolation, whilst at the same time allowing them to retain important aspects of their unique character and distinctive identity.
As illustrated in Figure 2b, the benefits for pupils’ learning that come from stronger leadership capacity and teachers’ professional develop- ment are particularly compelling. Research focused specifically on issues facing small, rural schools has found that many headteachers express concerns over feelings of isolation due to their geographic location, which are often compounded by their heavy workload.61 The fact that
most small school headteachers have significant teaching commitments places considerable additional demands on their time above and beyond their leadership role, making it hard to access professional development opportunities for themselves as leaders, and to ensure that members of staff have the support they need. We believe that no school can afford not to have a headteacher with the time and capacity for leadership. The significant advantage of a formal partnership arrangement is that it can significantly increase the resources and capacity for leadership, allowing a headteacher or executive head working across the federation to devote all of her time to the demands of leadership, rather than being squeezed by classroom duties.
As a further incentive to federate, Suffolk County Council and the Schools Forum should explore options for giving a grant to small schools and those in more isolated rural areas working in partnership, which schools could use to invest in their technological infrastructure or computer hardware, to facilitate joint working across the two sites.
Figure 2c: Mutual Benefits of Small-School Federation
Leadership and governance
Greater capacity for performance & business management
Curriculum (formal and informal) Curriculum
(formal and informal)
PREMISES & PHYSICAL ASSETS PREMISES & PHYSICAL ASSETS PEOPLE PROCESSES INTELLECTUAL & SOCIAL CAPITAL PEOPLE PROCESSES INTELLECTUAL &
SOCIAL CAPITAL Professional collaboration
Enriched learning opportunities Enhanced relationships
Many schools have developed strong links with parents and families, providing effective forms of communication and information between home and school. Nevertheless, we believe that there is more that could be done to enhance the school’s openness and democratic accountability and to ensure that parents’ voice is heard, especially when schools enter into a formal partnership or ‘hard’ federation with other schools.
R8: Federation for Small Schools
We recommend that any small school with a roll lower than 100 pupils should enter a federation. Schools would be well advised to begin the process as early as possible, to allow for greater time to find an appropriate school partner and work together to establish strong relationships, maximise resources and ensure a smooth transition to the new partnership. While the County Council should continue to provide information about the federation process, the new SPEL will be well-placed to coordinate advice and guidance about how federated schools can achieve cost-savings, as well as organising ‘match making’ events to assist schools with finding appropriate partner school to meet the learning and wider needs of their pupils.
R9: Promote parental voice through a parent and community council for every school, especially those in a trust or federation
In recognition of the value of parental involvement, we suggest that every school should establish a parents’ council, with representatives from the local community, which should be given specific responsibility for engaging with the school leadership to ‘support pupils’ achievement, behaviour and safety and their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development’.62 Although important
for all schools, we believe that establishing a parent and local community council will be especially beneficial in the case of schools which enter a formal Federation or Multi-Academy Trust, as it will help promote parents’ voice and protect the distinctive identify of each federated school.
3. Enhance and enrich
the quality of teaching
and learning
Achieving a step-change in school performance depends above all on improving the quality of teaching.63 Teachers must be equipped to meet
the diverse needs of their students, focusing on improving the ‘basics’ of literacy and numeracy, whilst also broadening and enriching children’s learning inside and outside the classroom. A combination of incentives are needed to attract, retain and develop the entire teaching profession, the challenge being to ensure that all of Suffolk’s teachers and support staff get better at what they do.64 Importantly, developing the capacity
of teachers and school leaders cannot be accomplished just by focusing on the qualities of individual members of staff. Building capacity across the whole system depends on changes in the organisational culture in every school, so that all staff are encouraged to become more innovative, more outward looking and better informed – that is, more ready to learn from others and draw on evidence about effective practice – as well as being more sensitive to the needs of the children and families in their care.
Diagnosing the problem
Improving the quality of teaching clearly needs to start by addressing identified weaknesses in teaching quality, including improving the use of marking and feedback, which studies have shown is the single most effec- tive way of improving school performance.65 Concerns about the quality
of teaching were recurrent throughout the Ofsted inspection reports sampled for the inquiry. Drawing on a sub-sample of schools rated as inadequate or requiring improvement (previously labelled ‘satisfactory’), our analysis identified a number of common issues around inconsistent quality, lack of differentiation and inadequate use of information to meet pupils’ needs and poor use of marking to provide feedback to pupils and students.
Inconsistent quality:
There are pockets of good teaching but this is not sufficiently wide- spread to ensure that pupils make sufficient progress, particularly in their writing.
Lack of differentiation to meet learners’ needs:
Not enough attention is paid to providing high-quality challenges to the most-able pupils. Where this happens, the most-able pupils often complete tasks early and are left with nothing to do.
The main reason that teaching is not good is that this information [about how well pupils are doing and progressing] is not always used well in class. This means that what is taught is sometimes too easy for some pupils and too hard for others.
Poor use of marking and feedback:
Where teaching is weaker, marking is not helpful to pupils and
assessment information is not used to inform lesson planning. In turn, the work set does not match the learning needs of pupils of different abilities. There is no common approach to planning lessons across the school and plans do not have enough detail about what the pupils are to learn.
In too many instances, marking is too brief and does not explain to students how they have made their mistakes or what they need to do to improve. Poor presentation is not challenged enough and, although spelling errors are pointed out, students are not shown how to spell words correctly.
Action is being taken by the Learning Improvement Service to address these weaknesses by brokering targeted support for the schools with lowest levels of attainment and pupil progress. Although this package of support is an essential first step to improve the quality of teaching in schools targeted for improvement, we believe that it must be accompanied by a wider package of action to transform the culture of professional learning across the County, by motivating, challenging and inspiring teachers to develop their professional expertise.
3.1 Challenge and inspire teachers through collaborative
learning and a new ‘Suffolk Teacher’ identity
Since September 2012, teachers in England have been assessed against a revised and shortened set of Teacher Standards, which clarify the pro- fessional characteristics that a teacher should demonstrate and continue to build on at each stage of their career (from Newly-Qualified Teacher (NQT) to mid-career teacher, or a more experienced practitioner).66 While
the new Teacher Standards provide a useful baseline of expectations, we believe that schools in Suffolk could go further in challenging teachers not just to meet the standards but to surpass them. In particular, we suggest that it would be useful to define what good and outstanding teaching looks like in the Suffolk context, recognising the demands that come from work- ing in a large, rural and coastal county, and responding to the particular cultural and organisational challenges identified through this inquiry.67
To challenge and inspire Suffolk teachers to develop their professional expertise, we recommend that the Suffolk-based teaching schools work