Co-headship: why we think two heads are better than one

Co-heads Nick Tildesley and Evelyn Holdsworth share the responsiblity of working John Donne primary college in Southwark. Photograph: John Donne

Can you inform us how you came to perform with each other as co-heads?

Evelyn Holdsworth (EH): I was approached to turn into head of a new college to be formed from an amalgamation of two schools. It was a complicated and difficult circumstance. I’d previously accomplished items as a solo head in tough circumstances and had identified that when you work with each other as a two or a team of individuals who have a sturdy, shared philosophy you can deliver about modify in a positive and sustained way much far more swiftly, which was what was needed here.

Nick Tildesley (NT): I was a deputy head in Lewisham but knew Evelyn personally. It all took place by possibility that Evelyn asked if I would like to operate with her. So we had been appointed as a staff to this situation.

What has been the division of labour amongst the two of you?

NT: When we started out off we looked at dividing up specific locations but soon realised it really is also difficult to define like that – and you may define it but folks ignore it. So we really operate together. We have identified that’s the way it worked. 1 of keys is that we like each other. We never sit on the very same seat, but there is a culture and ethos that we share. It’s our selection to try and share on paper and each and every other way the obligation. So the two of our names go on the Ofsted report, that adjustments items.

How have you continued working together as co-heads?

EH: The model of co-heads worked so nicely that we became co-heads of a school called Pilgrim’s Way which had previously been judged as getting at the bottom of all the schools in London. We had designed and began steering the whole model of joint headships.

NT: We had been approached by Southwark Nearby Authority (LA) in 2005. At the time it was becoming run by Cambridge Training and had been given further funding to boost outcomes. Southwark didn’t have substantive heads in a number of schools and asked us to support them recruit some. But as we are constantly somewhat off message, we came up with a various idea that would introduce real sustainability into the system.

So how did you build your concept?

EH: We knew from experience that there was a problem recruiting heads for hard community colleges – it is large risk for younger heads because they have not had the encounter and also for a lot more knowledgeable heads because they are getting asked to place their neck on the line. If you do not be successful it really is not a query of okay, attempt yet again. You have been in charge of a college that is gone into a critical class on your watch – you are out. Number of individuals would recruit you once again, it truly is a higher risk strategy. But we knew there are tons of heads with fantastic skills who desired a challenge but didn’t fancy committing prospective professional suicide. We place an advert out which explained you could perform as pairs, we have been inundated with large-top quality replies. We had been also involved in Nationwide College study into joint headship.

What’s so excellent about the co-head model?

EH: It can be lonely at the leading and I’ve misplaced count of the times I have observed heads struggling in schools. I watch and be concerned and realise that individual is going to be broken and leave training. I see heads on their personal, miles down the wrong path, and think if only you’d had an individual with you this never would never have happened.

Do you the two operate complete time?

EH: Yes. We now each operate complete time at John Donne primary college. Our part right here has been by means of different distinct phases. This was a job share until finally two years ago when we were every spending 50% of our time undertaking operate with the LA and 50% as heads.

Has your co-head part threatened by modifications in the way LAs function with schools?

NT: We are extremely fortunate that our chair of governors has a great depth of understanding about how organisations and colleges work. So the local authority dimension is lessening, but our chair mentioned as long as you can bring globe class educational experiences for the youngsters then it is really worth possessing each of you complete time.

What rewards does the co-head model give you now?

NT: Portion the deal is we operate as national leaders of education and we are a national support school. We are finishing the Ofsted training and supported mentoring of headteachers. Since there are two of us we can model our philosophy that this is really learning local community.

EH: We have received the capability to give our staff remarkable options in instructor development, working closely with, for example, Swedish colleges on leadership and other instructor developmental tasks. I believe joint headship models distributive leadership as effectively. Our staff say what helps make them satisfied is to break new ground and we work on the basis of why not?

Do you often agree with each other?

EH: Not always. But we have a core philosophy. For instance in recruitment we are like minded that we recruit the individual not the abilities, so we look for attitude and philosophy rather than a track record in raising achievement. The greatest teachers and teaching assistants (TAs) are the ones who are truly existing as themselves and have the greatest relationships with the youngsters and then right after that you can much more or less teach anything at all.

How critical are SATs consequence and amounts?

NT: There are young children in this college who are as vibrant as children in personal sector schools. Why should not the inner city young children we teach apply to Oxbridge if they want to? That is sort of what drives us rather than these statutory bits of testing. We get excellent final results, but SATs are an final result, they are not our principal objective.

Our function is to generate initial-class learners and the result is you get really great outcomes. There are distinct methods to that end. Other schools have totally different methods of getting great benefits. We hope to stand out from the crowd, at the second there is a whole lot of talk of driving young children in a linear style, a didactic strategy. We don’t feel that produces good learners.

EH: I went to Brazil 10 many years in the past with the British Council and it was a actual lifestyle changer in all kinds of techniques. The young children we met were from quite bad families and were quite explicit about saying our route to freedom is our training. They couldn’t imagine how we could have any behaviour problems in the Uk since they had been driven by the want for schooling. A lot of of our households who reside in this element of Peckham have come to the United kingdom from other nations for some thing comparable to that. So you feel you have to not let them down underneath any circumstances.

Could you perform alone now?

EH: Speaking personally, I’d never ever be interested in going back and taking on a single headship once more.

Do men and women feel you are married?

NT: The children do. They usually get in touch with me Mr Holdsworth, which is rather humorous! Apologies to Evelyn’s husband.

How can your college afford to have two heads?

EH: We had some governors here the other day from an additional school who asked, how can you possibly afford it? But I’ve acquired to the stage when I think: how can you afford not to? This school has gone from becoming 150 plus undersubscribed to being full with bulge courses, and that alterations your price range, we can bring in whatever we can to the college so it offsets our expenses as properly.

NT: The co-head model is not flavour of the month with the Department for Training. You can’t in fact have two heads so we are a co-headship, a shared headship. Officially there is a single leader at any time in the college and the other time we are undertaking other developmental routines.

How can other colleges consider on this model?

EH: You want a governing body that’s ready to be brave but it is attainable to do and there are plenty of various techniques to do it. You could even have 3 days each with a changeover day in the middle, but for me that is not the greatest since there is as well significantly time when you are not working together. You also want to find an individual you could operate who is interested in a collaborative way of operating.

Additional reading on co-headship

Headteachers that want to uncover out much more about the co-head model could be interested to read the Independent Review into College leadership which Evelyn and Nick contributed to. The entire report is interesting and it truly is really worth searching at paragraphs 19, five.44, five.52, 5.75 and five.76 which Evelyn and Nick come to feel that the co-head model addresses really successfully.

Also see the Hold your head report from the Institute of Schooling.

Evelyn Holdsworth and Nick Tildesley are co-heads of John Donne principal college in Peckham, south London.

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Co-headship: why we think two heads are better than one

Without counselling in schools, we are left banging our heads against a wall

Counselling in Welsh secondary colleges has reduced students’ distress and enhanced their behaviour. Photograph: Angela Hampton Image Library/Alamy

Young children are prone to hyperbole. So when one particular shouted: “Miiisss, Zak is banging his head against a brick wall”, I reserved judgment till I got there. Unfortunately, Zak was banging his head against the wall. Tough, and repeatedly. He was furious about some thing and needed aid. Acquiring it, however, is never ever easy.

The latest announcements about modifications to GCSEs and the curriculum have reminded me of Zak (not his actual title). We are now told students will acquire numerical grades for GCSEs – 1 to 9 as an alternative of A to G. Likewise, 3 lengthy rewrites of the national curriculum now imply the coalition has stuffed in romantic poetry and laptop coding, and the background curriculum is more in depth. But beyond that, it all feels comparable to what came just before.

Put these changes alongside a shift back to exams more than coursework, and in essence a massive quantity of the previous 3 and a half years of parliamentary debate about education has resulted in minor a lot more than a tidying about the edges of an examination method for 16-yr-olds, most of whom will automatically transfer to university programs anyway.

And do we feel that troubled Zak, with his bloodied head and tear-soaked encounter, will see any variation from these changes? Does this alleged new exam “rigour” offer anything at all to the students who, under the previous method, have been failing? If it does, I can’t see it.

At the moment, virtually 70% of GCSEs are awarded at grade C or over. So even ahead of “extra rigour”, 30% have been awarded at reduced grades. For some pupils, minimal grades will reflect an concern with their cognitive potential, frequently relevant to a particular understanding disability. But for a great chunk of that group, their problem will be behavioural and emotional, for which there is very small support in schools and which – so far – the coalition has failed to tackle.

Zak’s troubles were not extraordinary. He was consistently in contrast with an older “ideal” sibling, and his partnership with his parents had broken down. They wished him to go and live with his uncle. He was angry, bitter and puzzled. Pupils face all sorts of triggers for disordered behaviour. A beloved grandparent dies, dad and mom divorce, bailiffs enter a residence and wrench prized possessions from a parent’s fists. Every situation can carry problematic ruminations that do not disappear from a child’s thoughts just since they enter a classroom. These thoughts fester, and they block understanding.

Although teachers can be a aid, they are not skilled psychologists and cannot realistically educate six hours a day and provide the interest a troubled pupil demands. Estimates propose only 60%-80% of England’s and Scotland’s colleges have counselling obtainable, and exactly where it is accessible, hours are often short and waiting lists long. If a youngster is not physically harming or triggering classroom disruption, there is a respectable likelihood they will never make the record. There are, nonetheless, two glimmers of hope.

In 2008, the Welsh government set a purpose of guaranteeing every single secondary school little one could accessibility counselling as needed. Evaluations of the programme’s initial three many years showed dramatic reductions in children’s psychological distress and teachers reported that behaviour of students enhanced in above 80% of cases. Offered these successes, the Welsh government has committed close to £14.5m to making certain the continuation of the undertaking.

Likewise, in October, the shadow overall health secretary, Andy Burnham, pledged that if Labour had been to win the 2015 election, it would enshrine into the NHS constitution the right of any individual to entry counselling for mental overall health problems. Though underneath-reported by the media, it is an essential phase forward for mental health policy and Labour should not be quiet about it. If something, Tristram Hunt – the new shadow education secretary – should also enter the fray and commit to extending this pledge to kids through a network of school-based expert counsellors based mostly on the Welsh model.

If we are to truly tackle the “challenging 30%” of students who continue failing GCSEs regardless of the previous decade’s interventions, we have to be trustworthy about the difficulty. The problem is not that they had been lacking in romantic poetry or that a G grade was not regarded as meaningful to “employers”. The issue is that a lot of young individuals have difficulties that are not simple to see, or to resolve.

Wales has proven, nevertheless, that they can be helped. Allow us now do the exact same in England, rather than leaving us all banging our heads against a brick wall when faced with college students like Zak.

• Laura McInerney taught in London for six many years and is now a Fulbright scholar

Without counselling in schools, we are left banging our heads against a wall

Talking heads: why we decided to become a co-operative school

Speaking heads: becoming a co-operative college fitted in with the schools vision for developing college students into global citizens, says Julie Wilson. Photograph: Julie Wilson

What was your biggest challenge when you took on the position of head at Northfleet school for Ladies?

Right after a long occupation functioning in mixed comprehensives, I moved to Northfleet college for Girls (my initial headship). It was about to be rebuilt below the Developing Colleges for the Future (BSF) programme, so I spent the first many years functioning on preparing for the rebuild. Of program this was extremely time consuming with so many main priorities and decisions that had to be produced continually. I enjoyed it, but felt it detracted at occasions from the day-to-day company of the school – so it was really a relief when the new creating was finished in 2009. But BSF was about significantly much more than new buildings. It was about true vision for transforming understanding and reconsidering training in a a lot wider sense.

What influence did BSF have on you and your college?

BSF took up a good deal of time in sensible terms, but it was also a genuine driver to taking into consideration appropriately what we had been about as a college. I have been really interested in operating with the regional, national and global neighborhood and in my preceding school had worked with a group then known as Imaginative Partnerships which really inspired me. Its technique was to make teaching and finding out prepared for the 21st century and brought creative workers such as artists, architects and scientists into schools to operate with teachers to inspire young individuals and support them find out.

This linked in effectively to the RSA method of inquiry-based mostly understanding. With Inventive Partnerships we acquired involved in a three 12 months undertaking named Change Schools the place college students and employees worked collaboratively on new visions for educating and learning which moved away from just ‘delivering’ lessons to using our open program studying surroundings truly creatively.

You are now a Co-operative Believe in school, what does that imply?

It implies we are sharing the values of the co-operative society, this kind of as democracy, equality and caring for others. Clearly these are values that most colleges subscribe to and couple of would argue with but producing them obvious does in fact make a genuine distinction. There are much more than 200 co-operative colleges in the United kingdom (and a enormous network in other countries) some like ours are co-operative trusts and other folks are co-operative academies. The co-operative schools motion is massive in the north and the south west but it really is developing in the south east.

What was the mechanism for turning out to be a co-operative college?

Initial we had to turn out to be a basis college so we could stand independently. Our funding stays the same from the local authority but the land transfers to the college and the trustees. After consulting widely, we now have co-operative trust standing. Element of becoming a co-operative college is doing work closely with the community and setting up a forum where all stakeholders have a say including workers, college students, parents and members of the local community. This is in addition to governors – and there are governors who are trustees and trustees that are governors.

Why did you decide to turn into a co-operative school?

I had go through a good deal about the co-operative schools motion and imagined it sounded truly intriguing. The governors and I looked at what it would mean and we felt turning into a co-operative college fitted in with our vision for the college as becoming a location in which the improvement of youthful individuals into lively worldwide citizens was at the core of our philosophy.

The entire process took a couple of many years and we moved at the point when the Labour government was actively supporting this – but more and more the recent government is exploring and supporting the ways colleges can function collaboratively as local authorities shed funding and staff. There are more than 600 co-operative colleges in the United kingdom with much more joining virtually daily. I absolutely come to feel the power in numbers and getting component of a motion is really fascinating and supportive. It truly is very difficult for any school to perform on their personal now.

How critical are the college students in a co-operative school?

Pupil voice is a essential characteristic. College students are fully concerned in what we want the college to be like and how we ought to move forwards. One of my sixth formers is getting to be a trustee and governor. Our students are creating a brief film to describe what a co-operative school seems like to the wider local community and how it differs from an academy and the place the school is going.

How important is the nationwide and international dimension of currently being a co-operative college?

I’ve constantly believed it was essential that young folks have their eyes open to what goes on in the planet. We are element of a large network of ethical companies, organisations and colleges across the globe who have signed up to the same ideas of democracy and fairness. Our strapline as a school is: “always learning, studying all methods” so a huge part of our remit is discovering partners locally, nationally and globally to reinforce this. By pulling in the correct kind of partners we’ve been capable to make such a distinction in our college.

Our trustees contain Age Uk, University of the Initial Age, University of Greenwich and we have recently taken on Ground Works Trust – we also have our personal orchard and are expanding our own foods aided by and offered to the local community.

Would you advise other heads to think about becoming a co-operative school?

Yes, it is a genuinely viable substitute to turning into component of a chain which probably isn’t what you have picked. I would say undoubtedly do your background study. Any heads are welcome to get in touch with me and talk about our journey to this point. The Colleges Co-operative Society was quite supportive on the work that demands to be carried out relating to governors and the community, which enabled me to work on developing visions for the college.

Julie Wilson is head of Northfleet college for women in Kent. Uncover out far more about the co-operative colleges at the Colleges Co-operative Society website. Julie is part of a group in London and the south-east area (LASER) co-operative colleges network.

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Talking heads: why we decided to become a co-operative school