The
Conversation: Adding value
March 14, 2008
Barry
Day's school has scored in the top 10 for CVA for five
years. He explains to Victoria Neumark how it was achieved
Q: What is the profile of your pupils and their background?
A: Greenwood Dale in Nottingham is a true comprehensive:
all Year 7 pupils live within a mile. Just under 800 of our
1,350 come from the most socially deprived 5 per cent of
families nationally. Our free school meals are at 35 per
cent; our special needs are at 40 per cent, at least.
Q: What are the main challenges the school faces?
A: Literacy. Of 230 Year 7s, one-third have a reading age
of less than eight and a further third are two years behind
their chronological age, which means they cannot access the
secondary curriculum.
On top of that, and linked to it, some have a history of
violence and/or low self-esteem: they've hit and pushed
other pupils and teachers. They can't express themselves,
so they revert to violence. We have zero- tolerance for
violence but focus intensely on helping them. As a result,
I haven't had to exclude anyone permanently for two years.
Q: How does the school focus on achievement?
A: We have a separate base for Year 7. Keeping them away
from the potentially destabilising influence of older
brothers and friends, we work on their behaviour and
communication skills. Every day they have literacy lessons
from a team of five teachers and three learning mentors.
They arrive with no love of reading; we encourage them to
want to read and write. This help continues throughout
their school careers. We are one of the few schools with
its own literacy, as well as English, department.
Q: What about higher achievers?
A: We set them from the moment they come in. I'm a maths
teacher and I believe in setting. When you differentiate
youngsters by ability, you can target their needs.
In key stage 3, everyone learns French, but our top three
sets learn Spanish as well. And they can choose Urdu at the
end of Year 7.
Mentoring runs throughout the school for all abilities.
Everything is targeted at making pupils believe they can be
successful. Top sets take geography AS-level a year early.
Peer mentoring and paired reading are run by our
sixth-formers, which develops them as well.
At present, a quarter of our pupils go to university to
study everything from law to astrophysics.
Q: How do you push up GCSE grades?
A: We pour staff into GCSEs. We make tutor groups smaller,
to give more pastoral care. We break the Year 11 cohort
into three, each with its own director of achievement to
monitor the work of six learning mentors and 12 tutors.
About half of our pupils are at risk of poor GCSEs for a
variety of reasons, including truancy or laziness. For them
the mentors are crucial: someone to say, "I'm going to sit
with you until you finish your homework" or "I'll talk to
that teacher and find out what's gone wrong." It's
parenting, really.
We also make sure they have enough to eat: serving
breakfast, hot meals at break, 800 nutritious lunches a
day. If you're hungry, or you've only eaten crisps and
processed food, it's hard to learn.
Q: Are you personally involved?
A: More than 50 per cent of our KS4 pupils consistently
tell us that their parents don't talk to them about their
reports. So I read every report at the end of Year 10 and
interview each pupil at length at the beginning of Year 11.
They and I both take it incredibly seriously. We set
targets and review progress in a positive way.
I also teach a Year 11 target set. At the end of Year 10,
we review the most challenging pupils in each subject, then
senior staff take them on. Last year, I took 35 pupils who
were predicted D, E and F grades in maths; all got Bs and
Cs. My deputies and assistant heads do the same in their
subjects.
Q: How do you respond to people who say that results are
not the only measure?
A: That is so true, but one of the most powerful ways to
break the cycle of deprivation is to help pupils achieve
decent GCSEs and A-levels. In 2007, our contextual value
added score was 1,069 and more than 80 per cent of pupils
got five GCSEs at A-C grades, including 51 per cent in
English and maths.
Our Ofsted
report in 2007 rated us "outstanding" for pastoral care,
but the most caring thing we can do for our pupils is to
give them the tools to go further.
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