Praise, praise, praise
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Margaret Eva BEd (Hons) MA (Ed) is Head teacher at Bourne Community College (the Bourne). With a budget of £4.5m, and a staff (both teaching and support staff) of just under 100, there are many similarities between her role as Head teacher and that of a CEO of an SME (small /medium enterprise).
When Margaret took over as Head teacher the school had been deemed by the DfES (now the Department for Education www.education.gov.uk) to be a “School in Challenging Circumstances” and rather than being over subscribed, as it is today, it was a last choice for many children in its catchment.
Today, Bourne Community College is a Combined Specialist Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) and Humanities (English) school. It is a mixed, inclusive comprehensive school for 11 – 16 year olds, with a full range of abilities, and achieved “outstanding” in every area of its Ofsted Inspection in November 2006. Situated on the western edge of Chichester, West Sussex, the Bourne serves the surrounding villages.
I met Margaret at recent business breakfast organised and hosted by the Bourne Community Resource Centre in partnership with Bourne Community College, Business Link and Chichester District Council. I was inspired by her passion, enthusiasm and positive energy and how it clearly has an effect on the students – two of whom gave excellent presentations during the breakfast.
Margaret Eva, Head TeacherSFM: When you became Head teacher, Bourne’s exam results were declining, staff morale and student esteem were rock bottom, parents were not very involved in their children’s learning, many students had social or emotional difficulties and attendance was poor. Tell me how you turned around a school with a huge number of problems into one that achieved an outstanding Ofsted report in 2006?
ME: I had been working as Deputy head at the Bourne Community College for 9 years when I was presented with a fantastic, but daunting opportunity, in March 2001 to become “Acting head”. My role as Deputy had been to support the Head teacher in delivering his strategy. When he was absent with long term sickness the Chairman of the Governors, appointed me as Acting Head. The role of Acting Head is usually to “hold the fort” and it’s a position which can be held for up to a year. At this time the school had just been identified as a school in “Challenging Circumstances”: attendance and morale amongst students and staff was extremely low and the problems you mentioned were just a few of those facing us. The school needed strong, professional leadership.
Because of these problems, and the fact we were anticipating an Ofsted inspection, I knew that I had to do something more than “hold the fort”! It was clear that we desperately needed to break the cycle of downward spiral or the school could have been put in “Special Measures” by HMI (HM Inspectorate of Education) and its future as a relatively small secondary school would be questionable. We were already haemorrhaging in student numbers.
I had then, and still have now, a genuine passion to make a difference to the students’ life chances and I knew that I could make a positive difference in the Head teacher’s absence. The school is on an industrial estate in a rural area where there was a huge problem – a problem I call a poverty of aspirations. Our students really didn’t believe they were good at anything so they thought they couldn’t achieve. As many parents worked on local farms, in local shops or in the local industrial estate, the students couldn’t see themselves doing anything better than their parents, and couldn’t see that their schooling would make a difference. Not everyone in the community valued education so student absence and poor behaviour in class were our biggest challenge.
SFM: You referred to the problems as a cycle. How did you start to break it?
ME: The first thing I knew I had to do was to change the culture to help the children feel good about themselves, raise their self esteem and see that they were at a school where they would achieve and would be in a position to get a job when they left. I needed to retain and recruit excellent teachers as these are the people who make the real difference to students’ achievement. It was also imperative that we changed parents’ perception about the school and the valuable education it provided for their children.
Poor student behaviour and lack of motivation had taken its toll on the staff, so sickness absence and high staff turnover added to our difficulties. Motivation was important for everyone, I needed staff to be positive, buoyant and upbeat. Teaching and Learning needed to engage students.
Student enjoying cookery classIn my role as Deputy I had always liaised closely with the teaching staff – team working is central to the way I work. It was a great advantage to be made Acting head in a school where I’d already worked with a team that I knew and trusted, and that trusted me. I had been promoting the Bourne to the local primary schools in the best possible way, but the school didn’t have great exam results so I had a difficult product to sell! Not surprisingly only 5 out of 50 students from the local junior school, which is only half a mile away, would come to the Bourne each year. Parents would choose schools in the City of Chichester 6 miles away. In those days the Bourne was the last choice and consequently we got what was perceived as the low achieving students and those with Special Educational Needs with whom we now achieve tremendous success.
I have a genuine passion to make a difference to students’ lives, and even though things were pretty bad, we knew that it would take time for the impact of our strategies to become apparent. However, with the great team I had – there was no budget for any additional staff – I knew we could turn the fortunes of the school around. Even if we had had a budget for additional resources I’m not sure how useful it would have been as attracting good staff to a school that wasn’t achieving, where behaviour was poor, was nigh on impossible.
My first move was to appoint, internally, a strong and effective new Senior Leadership Team. As I had worked closely with the key staff I knew the skills each had to offer. Together with the newly formed and enthusiastic Senior Leadership Team, we focussed on what we needed to do to change the culture. Our starting point was to create a vision and after a great deal of thinking and discussing we agreed on the following: “Our vision is to become a Centre of Excellence. A college that aspires to success for all without exception; a college that makes educational enjoyable, inspiring and challenging.” It’s still our vision today.
Once we’d agreed on the vision our starting point for delivery was to take steps to change the culture – amongst the students, their parents and some of the tired staff. We knew it could be a long, slow process. At the beginning behaviour was poor, none of the students felt good about themselves, they weren’t listening in class, they didn’t see the point of coming to school, and consequently the teachers didn’t enjoy coming to work every day to be faced with a classroom of unmotivated and disinterested children. Even the gifted and talented students were not achieving their potential.
To break the cycle we set ourselves a daily challenge of finding a reason to praise every student and every member of staff – teachers and all our support staff including Site Manager, Catering and Cleaning staff. We wanted our students and team to feel respected as individuals, to start believing in themselves and raise their self esteem. It was our starting point for raising their aspirations. We’d talk things up all the time and discuss education at Colleges of Further Education and University. We’d praise students for good work, attendance and looking smart in their uniform. We had, and still have, a rule that we will find as many ways to praise as possible and that we must try to give genuine praise four times as many times as we find fault.
Praise, celebration and appreciation are still central to what we do every day – everyone responds to praise and encouragement – staff and students!
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