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System leadership
management teams, we have begun
formally to assist schools in our area.
The major example of this was my
appointment as Executive Headteacher,
for the autumn term, of a neighbouring
large secondary academy, with which
we already had links. During a difficult
interregnum before the newly appointed
Head took over, complicated by the near
simultaneous departure of the two Deputy
Heads leaving the school’s leadership in
crisis, a local plan was devised to help. As
Executive Head, I worked closely with
the acting Head, a co-opted Deputy Head
from Watford Grammar School for Boys,
for the term. The school is now running
smoothly and an unsettled staff has been
able to regain their focus on teaching and
learning under the new Head. I found
working with another governing body
challenging and enlightening; my own
beliefs and management were tried and
tested.
Watford Girls Grammar School has
also been able to work collaboratively
with five local primary schools by
providing support and services ranging
from site management, caretaking and
finance. This has increased the capacity
of the schools by sharing knowledge,
experience and resource which would
otherwise have been difficult to obtain.
This collaboration has allowed services
to be provided and delivered at lower
cost and in parallel allowed the sharing of
good practice, with a long term benefit to
the schools involved.
This outreach programme has
allowed the participants to benefit
from economies of scale and protect
the volatility in budgets of the primary
schools allowing for a more efficient
allocation of resources internally.
We have provided active assistance
with academy conversion to a number of
schools and developed a generic academy
guidance document that through FASNA
could be rolled out to other schools.
We are in the early stages of analysing
the results of our approach with a view to
developing a more formal collaborative
approach where WGGS takes a lead role
in providing a range of back office and
support services. We are in liaison with
more local schools to procure services
from us allowing for the achievement of
greater buying power and economies of
scale. The scale of the support and the
associated risks will be carefully assessed
before we move forward but there is the
potential for greater savings for mutual
benefit if sufficient synergies can be
identified.
Support for other schools of course
includes work on teaching and learning,
which is a rich source of professional
development for both staffs.
• The music department supports a
secondary school with ITT and G& T
work.
• The geography department has
provided CPD for other schools on
the use of interactive OS. They also
provide master classes for Year 6
pupils at primary schools.
• The head of chemistry provided
support to a local school, including
teaching classes for them, when they
had a staffing crisis.
• The second in charge of my maths
department spent one day a week
working in the department of a local
secondary school last year.
• The Latin and classics department
has arranged to support another
secondary school with their trainee
as the school does not have any
specialists in those subjects.
• Our professional mentor supports
other mentors and the university
teacher training programme.
• We regularly take additional trainees
when other schools have staffing
problems.
• We have supported a local school by
taking their Teach First trainees for
up to a week each at WGGS.
• Several teachers have spent a day in
other schools as a subject expert to
audit GTP/SD trainees, in maths,
Latin, psychology and history.
Supporting schools in the local and
direct way we do often remains
unrecognised, unknown and
uncelebrated. We support these schools
because we care deeply about helping
our colleagues. We want to help other
schools raise standards and, by doing so,
to provide opportunities for our own
colleagues and students. We are perhaps
fortunate to have the capacity to create
and manage these partnerships, to the
mutual advantage of both schools. But
the extent of our involvement in other
institutions is carefully monitored so that
we ensure this activity never results in
lowering the standards of our school.
Summer 2014 | 23