Creating Value In Schools
Sean Harris is Director of PLACE at Tees Valley Education. He’s also That Poverty Guy, author of Tackling Poverty and Disadvantage in Schools – and furiously curious about tackling inequality. This blog is an extract from our longer conversation, Know your place: how to tackle inequality in education. ‘A commitment to deep social justice needs deep social listening, and that involves having to work alongside and talk to people that are facing the lived and the living reality of these issues.’ There are three practical pointers that sit behind our structure of PLACE (People, Learning And Community Engagement): our three Ps, people, place and policy. People are our biggest lever for changing communities. And that isn't just teachers. We're really deliberate that we don’t just say teachers anymore, we say leaders, support staff, canteen staff, and people and partnerships externally. But all of those need a level of expertise. So we think about, for example, the professional learning, the CPD that needs to underpin it. Something that we offer to other schools, but something we receive as well. We talk about place being the hyper-local alleviation of pain for the families that we face. And we can't just simply sit in back rooms or ivory towers and be curious about poverty and read research literature. We absolutely have to be within the community offering support. How could we work with others to really try and shift those policies? Place, for example, might involve us having a food bank in our schools. In one of our schools, we have a farm shop organised by families and children alongside staff, because they felt that the language and dynamics of a farm shop carried way more dignity than that of a food bank. Policy – this is the part that might be a bit of a provocation! We all like to think we're doing a great job, and we all like to get on and solve and do, but sometimes that can lead us to only firefighting, right? So if all we're doing is delivering expert CPD and doing lots of charitable projects to tackle the local need, well, that's just the people and place part. There is a danger that if that's all we're doing, what we're not doing is shifting the conditions that hold the problem in place. And so we talk about policy; for example, what policies are driving us as a trust to have schools that are inclusive, but more importantly, how could we get involved in trying to shape national policy? What's the legacy that we want for this community? For example, scrapping the two child benefit cap. Advocating for auto enrollment of free school meals. How could we work with others to really try and shift those policies? Because research tells us that's holding some of those problems in place. We work in a system that is still so obsessed with being furiously curious, but less about child poverty and more about the standards of GCSE results or Ofsted rating that we might get. What we are never suggesting is that somehow we dilute or we don't care about that. If a child leaves with a real sense of care and belonging, but flunks in all their exams, well that's not helping the child, is it? So we absolutely do need to be, to an extent, obsessed with standards, and absolutely quality outcomes. But here's the thing: it's all school improvement. That was a real learning for us. It's not, you do school improvement and good education and all this other stuff that's value added. The more we see it as one, less egg yolk or egg white, and more all as one big egg, right? We are absolutely offering quality first education when we are, for example, providing food and tackling policies nationally to secure a better deal for the communities that we serve. We went out to families and asked: what do you really think of this? However, we do accept that at times schools go through turbulence, and sometimes it might be that your priority has to be on a particular thing at a particular time. But you should always have that one eye on what we are going to do in the long term here, to really try and shift the narrative for the children that we serve. The problem with sometimes getting obsessed with, for example, the school year and how much we're going to do in one school development plan in a year, is that we go for short-term solutions. We go for really cohort specific interventions and of course that matters, but we should all always be thinking about that long-term goal. One of the things our CEO Katrina Morley really pushed us on was to say, what's our hundred year legacy? What's the legacy that we want for this community? That means that we're passing the baton onto others, another 10, 20, 30 years down the line. Because what we should be trying to do here is shift the narrative of the communities that we serve. Katrina talks about the importance of seeing ourselves less as educators and more as civil architects. This isn’t just a theoretical theory of change that sits there in the background. But what I will say is, it might seem that somehow we've got this mastered, that somehow we are at the point where everything we do is so well codified. It's been a real learning curve for us. And what I would say is that you need to be thinking about the strategy, and actually sometimes just getting on and trying things, and all of that then feeds into the theory of change. So, let me give some examples of how that looks in practice, from a people and place perspective. A tangible example that I think most schools would be able to relate to: newsletters. Like every other educational establishment out there, we had academy newsletters that we published quarterly, with great achievements from little Johnny or Bethany or whoever. We went out to families and asked: what do you really think of this? We assumed because we didn't find any copies in our bins or in the school gates that somehow it was being read. And families were fairly brutal with us in that what they said was, we only read it when our child's in it, when we know that their sporting or academic achievement is being featured. We did a survey and then went out to focus groups. One of the mums in the focus group said: ‘Yeah, and another thing is, you talk a lot about poverty…’ and our hearts sank. We thought, are they going to suggest that we've got it wrong? And the stigma of poverty is too much? Sometimes we do well-intentioned things in schools, but it lands badly because we haven't considered the problem or working with those who have lived experience. But their point was, ‘it’s not visible in your school newsletter’. Ok, I said. What might that look like? Well, for example, she said, ideas for cooking on a budget would be useful in half terms; where to access free days out; or low cost activities, particularly in school holidays. So we worked with the families and children and said, what would it look like for you to perhaps help us produce this, and you write for it? We now have a termly community magazine that is run by children and families, with contributions from teaching staff, local industries and charities as well. It’s something we're really proud about, because it's just a really tangible example of listening to the needs of families, instead of just putting our agenda across. And I'll share quite a harsh thing that was said in one of the meetings by a parent, about the magazine being printed on ‘posh paper’. What she meant was, we chose a high stock, glossy paper because it looked good for external stakeholders. But what we hadn't considered was families as our primary stakeholder. The craft activities that we provided in the newsletter, they couldn't use a pen on because the paper was too glossy. So now we have a high quality stock paper which allows for them to do that. And I think it's just a great example of how sometimes we do well-intentioned things in schools, but it lands badly because we haven't considered the problem or working with those who have a lived experience of this stuff. Another example. We have funding from the National Lottery Community Foundation to develop what we call our TOCC, our theory of change and collaboration (like all educators, we love a good acronym!). We knew sleep hardship was an issue in our communities, but we didn't have the data to hand, because no one had really done a hyper-local lens on that. These things have come from us being curious about the problem and realising where the real gaps were So we worked with Zarach (the bed poverty and sleep charity) and the National Lottery Community fund to establish a Zarach worker. We now have a system whereby all families, not just in our schools, can refer to Zarach, or be referred to Zarach by support staff in those schools. The families receive a brand new bed and a mattress. Schools and families can get sleep training. We've trained almost 50 sleep champions just in the last couple of months in Teesside, meaning that more and more children’s needs, and the whole issue of child poverty and hardship in terms of sleep poverty, is addressed through a local collaboration that we and others have helped to orchestrate. Let me give one final example. And again, what I wouldn't want educators to think is, all right, now we need to go and do that. What I would say is that these things have come from us being curious about the problem and realising where the real gaps were. Children said to us, well, we like taking part in research and learning about things like poverty, but actually don't just use us as research guinea pigs. We want to do something about it as well. So we have a programme called Placemakers, where children identify some of the local inequalities that they care about and that they themselves are furiously curious about. And we had a group of children who, working with their friends, realised that most of them read only David Walliams' books. They wondered, why is this? The more you listen to children and families, the more we see an element of myth-busting going on as well It was because they were on two for £7.00 in the supermarket, and the local libraries had closed. And even though we had great reading provision in the schools, it was still an issue. The children wrote to local businesses, worked with a local bookshop, and produced a list of the texts they think all children should read before they're 11 and three quarters. With the local bookshop, they produced a virtual bookstore. Children then wrote to businesses, we got hundreds of donations of books, and they also worked with their local school leaders to install book vending machines so children could access them. They came up with a hashtag: stories not stuff. They said, we love things like toy donations at Christmas, but sometimes that's misplaced because the ages don't always match the toys that we're given. So instead, could we use books? From our perspective, that was just a wonderful thing to be a part of. What we found though is that children are really fiscally aware. And actually, again, we should be furious about that. We should really challenge the fact that children are so aware that the cost of living is so much more astronomical than it was. For example, there’s the child that said: ‘I know when times are tough because mum has to start putting stuff back on the counter.’ When we asked, well, what would you do in those times, his response was: I try harder at school because it's one less thing for mum to worry about.’ I think that should make us furious. But what that also led to, was us being curious about the fact that what we often hear is low income pupils lack aspiration, low income pupils just have turbulence, low income children are disruptive in classrooms, and so on. And actually what that child was saying to us was, it's in those times I try even harder because I'm aware this is an issue. So, what I would say is the more you listen to children and families, the more we see an element of myth-busting going on as well. Listen to the full conversation with Sean Harris (35 minutes).
Find all the places to listen to the podcast. For more reading recommendations, check out the Creating Value in Schools bookshop Disclosure: If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.Three Ps: People, Place and Policy
Firefighting or policy shifting?
It’s all school improvement
What’s your legacy?
Policy into practice: the termly newsletter
Social listening and co-production
Tackling sleep hardship
Stories not stuff
Getting furious about fiscal awareness
What next?
