You may know already that we have been working for two years now with four other schools in our cluster to help each other on our improvement journeys. The schools involved are Lord Deramore’s, Dunnington, Wheldrake, Fishergate and Naburn. It is a programme developed by the Education Development Trust and is proving to be a supportive and helpful process for all five schools and one which we decided as Heads to join together to pursue.

We were visited earlier this month by a team led by the Fishergate Head to look at Maths and resilience here at Naburn and last week it was my turn to lead the review at Fishergate, which focused on Reading. I led a team which comprised of two teachers from Dunnington and Mrs Wood too. We spent the day at Fishergate observing lessons and groups, talking to staff, hearing children read and talking to subject leaders and children, before feeding back to staff with our findings at the end of the day. Here is what Mrs Clarke, the Head at Fishergate said:

“Thankyou so much for our review. My staff thought that the whole day was really useful. Although it was rigorous and they had some tough questions to answer, they felt that it was always friendly and supportive and they trusted your feedback and comments. As a result of the review we have something very specific to work on to improve our reading and I think that you may have helped to crack a problem that we couldn’t seem to find an answer to.”

The next stage for us is a staff meeting next week led by two ‘Improvement Champions’ from other schools (Miss Brett is now trained as an Improvement Champion and led such a meeting at Lord Deramore’s). We will look at resilience and growth mindset and how we can help our pupils at Naburn to keep going through maths problems and not give up.

Watch this space for more updates on where we go next on our journey and how we can involve parents and the community further.